Nove Italiano

Its grays-from-the-neighborhood afternoon clientele notwithstanding, The Palms definitely is a hipster kind of place. How else would you characterize a resort that has an area called the Fantasy Tower, complete with massive Playboy Bunny head winking over the city?

The hipster vibe would apply, as well, to Nove Italiano Restaurant, which is on the 50-somethingth floor of the Fantasy Tower. To get there, you approach a desk at The Palms' Fantasy Tower entrance hall, are directed to a private elevator and away you go.

In the restaurant, the walls are of course glass, to maximize that height advantage. The decor is vaguely clubby but mostly sleek, with intricately tiled ceilings, glass-studded pillars, flashy crystal chandeliers and metal-studded table edges. The soundtrack during our visit was mostly '70s, much of it Motown, though it wouldn't surprise me if it gets younger as the night wears on.

The menu? Well, among all this we'd expect trendy food, too, with probably a lot of small plates and exotic ingredients and terms seldom spotted outside of Italy (and not very often there). So how could we not be charmed by a dish called "My Grandmother's Agnolotti"?

My Grandmother's Agnolotti, when we're sitting right smack-dab at Playboy Central. Man, you have to love that. The name alone made me want to try it -- I love that chef Geno Bernardo honors his grandmother with a spot on his menu -- but the short-rib filling and sage brown butter would be more appetizing in, say, November, than on a day when there were no shadows on the ground.

Red sauce, though; that's something that any self-respecting Italian, and most of the rest of us, can indulge in all year. So Sunday Gravy ($25) it would be.

But we had yet to get there; first there would be appetizers. Yes, there were some hipster baits there, such as an evening special described as "sashimi with an Italian accent," but for us it would be a couple of old-school favorites, the arancino ($12) and the tomato soup and grilled-cheese sandwich, which the restaurant calls Pomodoro/Formaggio ($10).

And yes, old-school favorites, but updated. The arancino (which I think should actually be arancini, plural, because there were three, but whatever) were the classic rice balls, filled with sausage and fried to crisp the exterior. The sausage was packed with fennel seed -- always a good thing, in my book -- but this Mama-always-made-it dish had been updated by serving the balls atop a roasted-red-pepper-and-tomato sauce, circled by a little basil-infused oil, which provided bright punches of flavor.

The soup also was an updated version of the classic, the tomatoes coarsely chopped for lots of meaty texture and the three cheeses actually distributed throughout the soup, so that when you took a spoonful you generally encountered a melty lump of cheesy goodness. A pesto-and-bread sandwich triangle rested on the edge.

OK, so back to the Sunday Gravy. It was billed as containing bracciole, sausage and meatballs, which sounded pretty authentic, and wow, was it ever. Our waiter, bless him, had asked how hungry we were and then suggested a half-portion, which at $13.50 was only slightly more than half-price. Good thing we took his suggestion, because this was a substantial bowl, with a lot of old-school penne that was rolled instead of extruded, topped by a large piece of sausage and a massive meatball and pieces of what appeared to be bracciole, the nonintact status of which didn't adversely affect it in the least. A little snowbank of mascarpone topped by grated cheese was just gilding the lily.

But the best part: the sauce. Oh! The sauce! This has to be Bernardo's grandmother's, too, because it's the kind of soulful mix of so many levels of flavor that can only be captured by perfecting it for years, and handing it down from one generation to the next. The best old-school Italian dishes are characterized by an intensity of flavor, and that was definitely the case here.

But not in the case of our other entree, the Veal Nove ($42). This was a far more delicate dish, the scalloppine sauted slightly and napped with a gentle lemon sauce, with the more assertive (read: bitter) flavor of the arugula served on the side a bracing counterpoint.

Our bread basket contained some excellent grissini, foccacia and classic Italian, accompanied by a trio dish containing olive oil, grated Parmesan and dried red pepper. Service throughout was very good, from both our waiter and his assistant.

The Sunday Gravy sort of precluded dessert but the veal provided for it, so it would be a Nutella Tower ($9) rich Nutella semifreddo layered with chocolate praline crunch and some creme fraiche gelato and draped with a hazelnut sauce.

Hipsters never had it so good.

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.