Buon Gusto serves Italian comfort food in cozy setting

With so many Italian restaurants in Las Vegas — as is the case with most American metropolitan areas, Italian being one of the most popular restaurant genres nationally — when I review one, I look for something that makes it stand out from the crowd.

When that was Buon Gusto in 2011, I wrote that I thought the main appeal of the then-10-year-old restaurant was that it was a cozy place where regulars could feel at home. There's been an ownership change since then, and I'd say that appeal still applies.

As for the food, Buon Gusto's website notes that the chef is a culinary-school grad and that all sauces are made in-house. Like a lot of things, the evaluation of an Italian sauce is inherently subjective; the one that tastes like what Mama or the lady down the street or the neighborhood restaurant made will usually be the "right" one.

But we thought these sauces were a bit of a mixed bag. An entree of sausage and mushroom rigatoni ($15.95) was an excellent dish. We liked that they served rigatoni, one of the most overlooked of pasta cuts and one that was perfect with the chunky mushrooms and sliced sweet Italian sausage, and the dish really came together because of the pink sauce with an impressive depth of flavor.

We weren't as charmed with the marinara sauce that was served on a side dish of penne. This sauce was very pulpy and seemed under-seasoned, lacking the soul of the pink one. Often a restaurant's pink sauce is simply its marinara lightened with a touch of cream, but that did not appear to be the case here.

We were, however, charmed with the entree that that pasta side came with: the Veal Trieste ($23.95), delicate veal scallops lightly sauteed and served with artichoke hearts and mushrooms in a creamy sauce sparked with a bit of port.

Artichoke hearts also starred in our starter, Artichokes Italiano ($8.95), a worthy specialty of the house that also involved bits of pancetta in a light sauce of garlic and wine.

Oh, and we did appreciate that Buon Gusto's entrees include a choice of soup or salad, on this evening a workmanlike Italian wedding soup, and a salad with a nice mix of greens but a vinaigrette that was heavy on the oil.

Service throughout was great, the single server maintaining good humor as she made her way around the room. The decor is simple but cozy, with little accents adding a lot of charm — and there's that word again.

So no, Buon Gusto doesn't break a whole lot of culinary ground, the chef's pedigree notwithstanding. But sometimes, what we're really looking for is comfort food amid friendly faces and, yes, a bit of charm.

— Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Email Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories at www.reviewjournal.com and follow @HKRinella on Twitter.