Chef Carla Pellegrino: Keeping it simple, fresh, fruity and healthy for my guests
Editor’s Note: After a glorious nearly month-long family vacation in the Italian and Sicilian countryside, Robin Leach is back and resuming his new daily columns today with an exclusive on Celine Dion’s emotional and triumphant return home to Montreal.
We’ll continue his guest columnists in August while Robin works from the cooler climes of La Jolla near San Diego in advance of our newly designed website launching midmonth.
Today, we start a weeklong salute to the culinary kings and queens of our restaurant and culinary industry. Those kitchen warriors who work long hours serving taste treats our 41 million annual visitors have come to expect here. We welcome today Bratalian owner and chef Carla Pellegrino and N9NE Steakhouse chef Barry S. Dakake at The Palms.
Covering both coasts, Carla is currently the executive chef and owner of Bratalian Neapolitan Cantina in Henderson. Previously executive chef and owner of Rao’s Las Vegas at Caesars Palace, she has been featured on TOP CHEF, TODAY, CBS THIS MORNING and FOX NEWS and in Bon Appetit and Food & Wine.
Bratalian was named Best New Restaurant, while the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Best of Las Vegas Awards named her restaurant Bacio Best Italian Restaurant in 2011. Carla has been recognized multiple times by the James Beard Foundation as host of the organization’s “Spring in Italy” and “Women in Food.”
Here’s Carla back in Las Vegas after a two-year stint in Miami:
By Carla Pellegrino
It is that time of year again. Our friend is out and about enjoying his annual “escape the heat” trips to Italy and La Jolla, and we, friends and admirers, are having a ball guest writing for his column and expressing to the world how dear Robin Leach is to us. Thanks, handsome! I hope that you’re having a blast and enjoying all the champagne wishes we are sending your way.
I had a great, unwinding first half of the year since I came back home in January from a two-year project in Florida. I’ve been getting back in touch with my home, business, customers, friends, staff and Las Vegas. I have been enjoying Las Vegas’ dry heat and warm nights’ breeze, which is unlikely to be found anywhere else. Gosh, I missed home!
Bratalian is going great. Thank you! I just got a full liquor license (it has been wine and beer only since we opened in 2011) and just started a brand new Bratalian’s Breakfast service. I decided to focus on giving more options to my loyal Henderson clientele and spending more time with them before expanding to new projects.
The daily contact with my people and their friendly faces is so refreshing to me. A great dose of warm “welcome back” comes to mind every time I greet a guest in my dining room. It has been such a pleasure for me to get up early in the morning and cook breakfast, which will always be my favorite meal of the day. I am keeping it simple, fresh, fruity and healthy for my guests.
Las Vegas feels revitalized. Growing more voluptuous and sophisticated, this young lady, who never disappoints, is offering new venues, hotels, shows, arenas and a vibrant EDC festival. She is growing stronger every day, and all that goes on in a city that accommodates its people so maternally and comfortably.
Only Las Vegas has this versatility of giving tourists all sorts of crazy fun options and at the same time holding close her locals as a nurturing mother. No wonder why so many of us from all over the world chose Las Vegas to be home.
In the year that presidential elections are taking place, and we have all ended up basically without choices, in a time of indecisions and doubts, where radical terrorism is expending as a plague, it feels reassuring to be back home among my loved ones.
I want to take a minute to congratulate my dear friend Elizabeth Blau for her new ventures and say that I was honored to be Honey Salt’s chef guest for a one-time dinner event July 26. It was a fun way to catch up with my Summerlin friends.
I also look forward to seeing all of you at Bratalian for breakfast, weekend brunch and dinner. I will be there. More: ChefCarlaPellegrino.com and Bratalian.com. Champagne wishes to all of you!
Be sure to check out our other guest chef column today from Barry S. Dakake of N9NE Steakhouse at The Palms and Robin’s stories on Celine Dion’s emotional Montreal homecoming, THE SOUND OF MUSIC at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts and his daily Red Carpet Report.
