Las Vegas Weekly

March 16, 2010 · 2:45 PM

Three food critics aim to name 50 best L.V. restaurants for new book

By Robin Leach

Holly Madison participates in a cooking demonstration led by chef Rick Moonen at Three Square Food Bank.

Photo: Scott Harrison/Retna/www.harrisonphotos.com

With all the fabulous, rich and royal restaurants and charmed celebrity chefs we have in the Las Vegas area, is it possible to narrow the list down to just 50 top restaurants? Respected food critics John Curtas, Max Jacobson and Al Mancini aim to try for a new book being published this year titled Eating Las Vegas: The 50 Essential Restaurants. The Top 10 will be the best high-end restaurants on the Strip, and then the remaining 40 can be located anywhere in the valley.

“It’s the familiar and definitely the unfamiliar” Al, my former ABC Radio News producer, told me. “We definitely have three totally different viewpoints, and the tough part is that all three of us must agree on each of the 50.”

The project, dreamed up by Al after talking with chefs Rick Moonen and Adam Sobel of RM Seafood at Mandalay Bay, has been a year in the making. He promises me that there will be a veto chapter where the arguments among the three writers are shown so that readers will know what establishments got nixed and why -- but anonymously. They’re hoping to be ready for Huntington Press to publish by late summer after six months of tastings -- and fights!

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

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Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.

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