And, uh, about that chef...thirtysomething Dante Bocuzzi is to-die-for cute, with twinkling eyes and a soul patch. Cleveland-born, he attended the Culinary Institute of America, trained under Palmer, then spent three years in Italy, France and London, including a stint at the Michelin three-star Gualtiero Marchesi in Brescia, Italy. A three-year tenure at Silks at the Mandarin Oriental San Francisco followed; there he won two James Beard nominations for Rising Chef of the Year. After a stint at Italy’s Nobu, he returned to take the helm at Aureole. If he weren’t happily married with three small kids, we’d invite him to take the helm in our kitchens anytime.

New York’s Aureole is much quieter than its larger, more theatrical Las Vegas sister. The latter is best known for its four-story, 42-foot-tall steel and glass wine tower that keeps 9,865 bottles of wine at the perfect temperature and humidity. “Wine angels,” nimble women in black cat suits, fly up and down the tower. They communicate with wine director, Steven Geddes via a wireless microphone. It looks like a scene from a wine enthusiast Mission Impossible. The entire inventory hovers at around 35,000 bottles including the largest Austrian wine list outside Austria. But Palmer’s bold, clean-flavored food, created in collaboration with Executive Chef Vincent Pouessel, more than holds its own with the extravagant Mandalay Bay setting.

We then meandered to FiAMMA Osteria, which has its Vegas equivalent in FiAMMA Trattoria at MGM Grand. Chef Michael White, an Esquire magazine Chef of the Year, snared a rare three-star review from the New York Times in 2003, as well as a coveted Michelin star in 2006. Not to be outdone, FiAMMA’s wine program won an award of excellence from Wine Spectator magazine in 2005. The restaurant, designed by Jeffrey Beers, features deep, warm red and brown tones, plenty of clubby leather and Brazilian mahogany, sleek Italian chairs designed by Ferrari, a three-story glass elevator that offers its passengers a view of the Soho street below, and a “flame wall” licked with actual fire (“FiAMMA” means flame in Italian). Charming General Manager Daniele Sbordi joked, “It’s called FiAMMA because Fuoco [“fire” in Italian] doesn’t work in English!” Say it out loud and you’ll see what he meant.