Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
■ Specials help elevate Anna Marie’s above other Italian restaurants, Heidi Knapp Rinella says.
Family-owned Anna Marie’s worth a try
WHEN a restaurant’s regular menu holds few surprises, specials can provide interest and variety, as Anna Marie’s Italian Cuisine proves.
The vibe at Anna Marie’s, which opened in June on West Tropicana Avenue at Hualapai Way, is
metropolitan quasi-industrial, but the menu is mostly reflective of a traditional red-sauce joint with the pastas and pizzas and Parmesans. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but a special of salmon oreganata ($28; a Provencalinspired version was the other off-menu dish) sounded like a refreshing change and was.
In the course of trying to balance salmon’s assertive flavor a lot of kitchens end up destroying its nature, but that wasn’t the case here. The thick, briny-fresh fillet had been topped with the classic oreganata mix of crisp breadcrumbs and aromatic herbs, and was deftly cooked until it was translucent at the center. The finishing touch: a delicate winebased beurre blanc. From the choice of sides, the garlic broccoli was crisp-tender, the garlic agreeably noticeable.
More along the lines of Southern Italian classics was Chicken Sorrentino ($18), a moist breast fillet gently sauteed and layered with eggplant, prosciutto and melted mozzarella, all of the elements making their presence known without taking over. Side pasta options include the underappreciated rigatoni, which was properly al dente and sauced with a soulful marinara.
But back to the starter. Fried mozzarella and the mozzarella en carozza from which it evolved are as common as kale these days but at Anne Marie’s the cheese is cut into thinnish squares ($7) and the smoked variety is used. With that smoky element, a configuration that provides plenty of crunchy coating and the light marinara (almost a pink sauce, but not quite) on which they rested, they had tons of flavor as well as textural contrast while still delivering the cheese’s stretchy-chewy appeal.
And there were lots of textural contrasts of a different sort in the shades-of-gray interior of the restaurant, where tiles with large raised optical-illusion-inducing dots make it very difficult not to reach out and touch. Lighting fixtures also are an example of the visual seeming tactile in that they bring to mind Spirograph doodles wrought large and in 3-D.
The family-owned Anna Marie had some initial rough patches, the affable server volunteered, before adding that new management was trying to smooth things out. Apparently it’s working because it’s pretty smooth now. And more of those well-conceived specials will help carry Anna Marie’s above the valley’s crowd of Italian restaurants.