The Restaurant
La Strada has occupied a quiet corner of the Eldorado Resort Casino at 345 North Virginia Street since the early 1990s — a downtown Reno dining room that has been recognised among the top ten Italian restaurants in the United States by national food press, and one of the few casino fine-dining rooms in the American West to maintain its kitchen identity through three decades of property changes. The dining room runs about ninety covers across a softly-lit space of Tuscan-villa register: hand-painted murals of the Amalfi coast, terracotta tile, leather banquettes, and an open pasta station at the rear where the day's hand-cut tagliatelle, pappardelle and mushroom ravioli are made fresh through dinner service.
The kitchen is run by chefs trained in Milan, and the cooking is genuine Northern Italian rather than the broad Italian-American template that defines most Reno Italian rooms. Pastas are made daily — the wild-mushroom ravioli, named by Food Network as the best pasta in the country, is the room's most-ordered single item, served with a brown-butter and sage glaze and a shaving of Reggiano. Beyond pasta, the menu runs through veal osso buco with saffron risotto, a Tuscan-style grilled lamb chop with rosemary-balsamic reduction, a pan-seared branzino with capers and Castelvetrano olives, and a 14-ounce bone-in veal chop that holds its own against any of the steakhouses on the same block.
The wine programme is the quiet luxury and the reason La Strada has held a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for nine consecutive years. The list runs to around two hundred and fifty references with serious depth in Tuscan reds (Brunello di Montalcino, Super Tuscans, multiple producers of Chianti Classico Riserva), real Piedmont (Barolo and Barbaresco from a focused list of growers), and a thoughtful selection of Italian whites that pair with the seafood side of the menu. The bar at the entrance pours one of the most ambitious negroni programmes in Reno, and the espresso machine at the back handles the kind of post-dinner espresso service that an Italian regular expects to find.
Why This Is Reno’s First Date Pick
La Strada is the Reno first-date room because the format does the romantic work without any of the formality that can derail a first evening together. The dining room is intimate enough for a long conversation, lit warmly enough to flatter every face at the table, and paced loosely enough that a four-course Italian dinner can stretch comfortably across two and a half hours. The Food Network-honoured mushroom ravioli gives the conversation a natural opening — every Reno regular has an opinion — and the wine programme gives a date with real interest a place to go without forcing the bottle commitment. The downtown setting puts the evening within a five-minute walk of the Eldorado bar programme, two casino lounges, and the Truckee Riverwalk.
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