Bambini’s does Italian the old-fashioned way with tasty pizza, pasta

A motorsports/rodeo writer knows something about food? Who knew?

I'm being facetious, of course; lots of my readers and co-workers are among the best food sleuths in town, and since I can't scope out every valley neighborhood on a regular basis, I highly value their tips. So when the Sports section's Jeff Wolf raved about Bambini's in North Las Vegas, it immediately went on the list. And what a find Bambini's is.

So what's so special about it? Is it menu innovation? Some sort of revolutionary technique? Maybe some sort of fusion experiment, along the lines of Marco Polo goes to China?

Not at all. I love restaurants that do all of those things (well, maybe except for an Italian-Chinese fusion experiment), but Bambini's strength is that it does things well, the old-fashioned way.

And that would start with the sauce, the backbone of any Southern Italian restaurant. Although Bambini's serves rotisserie chicken and ribs and a few other non-Italian things, its specialties clearly are pizzas and pastas, and for those a good red sauce is essential. And good this one was, with the soulful depth of flavor that comes only with adding a whole bunch of stuff to basic tomatoes (among those I've encountered over the years including sugar, carrots, wine and various meats in addition to the requisite garlic, onions, basil and oregano) and simmering it until everything comes together in a process that can seem a lot like alchemy.

I'm usually drawn to a menu's offbeat items, but since this one honored the classics, that's what it would be, and what's more classic than a plate of pasta (from nine cuts available we chose rigatoni) with meatballs ($9.99)? The pasta was a tad past al dente but the sauce was spot-on, and the meatballs, which were made with a mix of meats, were moist and not overly dense and seasoned thoroughly but with appropriate restraint.

Bambini's offers a number of pizzas, most of which are rather generously sized (especially the Giant Pizza, which is 30 inches in diameter). A deep-dish pizza with asparagus, roasted red peppers and fresh garlic was definitely intriguing but also more than one person could handle, so we decided to stick with a 10-inch version from the list of specialty pizzas, the classic Margarita ($10.99). And it was pretty close to perfect, the crust thin but definitely stretchy, the cheese generous without overkill, just enough of that excellent sauce and a profusion of fresh basil leaves.

As we're garlic-knot aficionados, we couldn't bypass those ($2.99 for a half-dozen, $4.99 for a dozen) and found them much better than most because the dough was somehow sort of light, the olive oil in evidence without making the knots greasy, the garlic just right, and more of that great marinara sauce for dipping. We also were served a loaf of crisp-crusted Italian bread with butter, so there was lots of dough on the table, but it didn't cost a lot of dough (but you saw that coming).

And a small antipasto platter ($8.99) was tantamount to a salad, with lettuce topped with artfully arranged cappicolla, salami, provolone, roasted peppers, artichoke hearts, stuffed cherry peppers and on and on.

Service throughout was good, aside from an initial lag on the part of the kitchen. Our waiter was teeth-in-braces young and had to have someone else bring the glasses of wine to our table, but what he lacked in years, he more than made up for in training and common sense. Bambini's struck us as a family-owned kind of place, and we wouldn't be surprised if he'd grown up in the business.

And if that was his grandmother's red sauce that he brought to our table.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com.