Bacio Authentic Italian Restaurant at Tropicana Las Vegas
Since we’re from Europe, have visited Italy more than once and have Italian friends who cook in a traditional Southern Italian way, we always look for nice and inviting Italian restaurants. Another requirement is that the food is cooked like they would in Italy. A lot of Italian restaurants don’t serve traditional Italian dishes, prepared in a traditional Italian way. If you’ve travelled around the world a bit you’ll recognize what we’re trying to explain here. Ever noticed that the taste and names of Chinese dishes are completely different in Europe and the USA? The same goes for traditional Italian food.

Bacio at Tropicana Las Vegas is one of those restaurants where you can find traditional Italian food, cooked to perfection. It’s located behind the casino floor on the right side of the walkway from the casino to the Club Tower. You can sit ‘outside’ and have a view of the entrance of Biscayne Steakhouse and people passing by on their way to the Club Tower. You can also be seated ‘inside’ and have a view of the Tropicana gardens and pool area. We were seated inside and our server was there right away to introduce himself. We received our menus and got our drinks within a minute. There were only two vacant tables inisde the restaurant, the outside part was occupied for about 50% so that’s a first good sign.

We took some time to study the menu and decided to order the Fritto Misto di Mare as a starter. This is a plate of deep-fried fresh calamari, shrimp, tilapia and zucchini, served with rémoulade and tomato sauce. When our starters were served we were very surprised, but in a good way. We expected a ‘starter-sized’ portion but received a plate filled with wonderful, tasty seafood. The portion was large, large enough to fit as a full meal. Every piece of seafood was tasty, had the right amount of flavour and perfect seasoning. We really wanted to finish all the fried seafood but simple couldn’t without completely ruining our appetite. We still had a main course and dessert to go…..

For our main course we ordered the Gamberoni in Umido. This is a plate of jumbo shrimp sautéed in garlic, butter and lemon sauce over capellini noodles. Compared to our starter, the portion of this dish was on the small side. But we weren’t complaining since we wouldn’t have been able to finish another big plate of food anyhow. The shrimp were very fresh and the garlic flavour was exactly strong enough. The noodles were just noodles but the butter and lemon sauce made them to die for. Bacio hit another homerun with this second course.

We were pretty stuffed already but their Tiramisu was looking very tempting. We decided to order just one and share the dessert just to experience the taste of it. The presentation was beautiful and the taste out of this world. We wanted to jump for joy since it was so lovely. It was a rather large portion and just enough for the two of us.

Overall, we had a great relaxing meal. We stayed at Bacio for about two hours because we decided to take it slow. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves and the ambiance was great. Total price for this meal (drinks and tip included) was $145 and worth every penny.

When we had dinner at Bacio, chef Carla Pellegrino was in charge of its kitchen. During the last quarter of 2012 chef Pellegrino left Bacio for bigger and better things so we’re kinda curious what will happen to the quality of the food now she’s left.