Las Vegas Weekly

Gina is from Molise, a small province in the extreme south of Italy, so cooking tends toward southern Italian as well, meaning hearty red sauces, lots of cheese and bread like nonna, your Italian grandmother, used to make. The heart of the Italian bistro menu are the pastas. One of the best choices is strozzapreti alla Norcina (the colorful name means “strangle the priest,” ostensibly because it was so delicious, he ate it too fast and choked on it). These are oddly shaped, hand-rolled noodles that look almost worm-like, laced with a light tomato cream sauce packed with ground sausage meat and scented with truffles. Chicken alla Valdostana, a frequent special, is a pan-sautéed, deboned breast, blanketed with an impossibly rich sauce made from cream and fresh mushrooms. The big splurge is zuppa di pesce, mussels, clams, shrimp, calamari and fish in a white wintomato sauce. I hope you have saved room for dessert. Because if you have, Gina’s is one of the few local places serving cassata Siciliana, a frozen cream confection made with dried fruits and nuts. There are also profiteroles from Italy, frozen cream puffs topped with chocolate sauce, the most delicious Italian import I can think of—other than Gina herself.