Ventano Italian Grill & Seafood

The Restaurant

Ventano Italian Grill & Seafood occupies a hillside corner on South Arroyo Grande Boulevard in the McDonald Ranch grid of Henderson, opened in 2003 by chefs Arnauld Briand (a Strip and Wynn veteran) and Carmine Vento. The dining room is a comfortable Italian-tradition format — terracotta-tile flooring, exposed-beam ceilings, an open oyster-bar marble counter at the entrance — but the room's headline is the outdoor patio, which sits at the highest elevation in central Henderson and looks west across the Las Vegas Valley with the Strip skyline lit at the centre of the view. The patio at sunset is the single most romantic dining table in the Greater Las Vegas area.

The kitchen is unambiguously Italian with a Pacific seafood depth that few resort-area Italians match. The cioppino — a Briand signature — arrives in a wide bowl with king crab leg, shrimp, scallops, mussels, clams, and a slow-simmered tomato-and-fennel broth that the kitchen has been refining for twenty-two years. The potato-wrapped salmon (a James-Beard-Foundation–nominated dish from Briand's earlier Strip work) appears on the menu seasonally. The pasta programme runs hand-made daily — the lobster ravioli, the pappardelle bolognese, and a wild mushroom risotto with shaved black truffle are the regulars' rotation. The oyster bar offers a working East-and-West-Coast rotation with a half-dozen for $24 at happy hour.

The wine list is medium-deep (about 180 bottles) with a particular Italian Tuscan and Piemontese anchor and a working California section. Service is fluent and unrushed; the patio holds 32 covers at six tables and books out a week ahead for sunset on weekends. The room runs daily lunch and dinner — one of the few serious Henderson rooms that does — and lunch on the patio in autumn and spring is one of the city's underrated meals.