Male: The Italian in annunciation is Rao but it became Rao’s and everyone in New York always called it Rao’s.
Female: For a minute here I was a little bit confused. I thought I was in New York City but in fact we’re here at Rao’s in Las Vegas.
Male: Well the restaurant is now 113 years old still in the same family. I mean that’s amazing. There are very few restaurants that can make that claim. There are some restaurants that are that old but not still in the same family. In location, we came to Las Vegas 21/2 years and my son Frank is the prosier and even here in Las Vegas there is always one of us each to bring the hospitality and the warmth and the camaraderie and the ambiance to Vegas.
Male: It's about simplicity, good cooking is simple. You don’t overdo it. You don’t try to make it what it's not. It's more difficult to achieve than overseas name or adding flavors that really don’t mesh together with the heart and soul of the dish. If you take a look at our lemon chicken dish, it is lemony and it is chicken and it's absolutely delicious. And you can't miss it. It's right there. But guess what, it's not that easy to do. It's really about bringing out the flavor of everything that’s in that dish. It's really wonderful.
Male: The lemon chicken recipe is my Uncle Vincent’s recipe. The meatball recipe is my nana, my grandmother. These recipes are in the neighborhood of 100 years old. We all learned to cook at home and we took those dishes and cook them in a restaurant.
Female: We do a home-style cooking, that’s the first thing because Rhea hasn’t been around forever. The people should feel like as they are eating in their grandma’s house. But we just make sure that the ingredients are very fresh and our source of meat daily. You see this veal chop, this it's a milk veal chop. You can see it by the color. This is the best quality. We also—find it. I think this is the secret of a good cuisine.
We’re going to sear all the sides and then you're going to bring to the –and like that. You're going to cook this side and I'll take it to the temperature that we desire. We’re going to have lettuce round. We have sweet and hot chili pepper. We’re going to the wine, white wine sauce.
Female: So while Rao’s has no menu—
Female: No menus, so basically when you sit down and the chef will sit down with you and it's how you want him to prepare for you that day which is great you know.
Female: And what are we doing here now? This is?
Female: This is a chicken stock. And we’re going to finish with butter. It's that simple but we’re going to put the veal a little bit of heat because this is as you said, it's a spicy sauce. We’re going to make the veal, finish to cook in the sauce.
Female: It is very simple. It's like it’s boys. You know this dish is all of the guys love that. So here I think in here we can start to finish this. We can put some butter. And we’re just going to add this butter in the end. This is going to give the best.
Female: Oh, that’s mouthwatering.
Female: It's hot. This is it. It is a very simple dish.
Female: And how did you meet your wife Carla?
Male: Believe it or not, I meet Carla at Rao’s. She was dining with one of our regular guest and as I was walking over to the table to take their order, I just stopped dead on my tracks and I saw this woman and I said to myself “that’s the one”. “That’s it”. And they came over to me and he pointed and he said you see that girl? “Yeah, I'm going to marry her”.
Female: That’s a beautiful story. I love that.
Male: Okay.
Female: I have to ask you guys, what’s with the Christmas lights?
Male: The Christmas lights in Rao’s have probably been up for 60 years or so. And obviously what happened is one year they put them up and decided not to take them down. They like the way it looked. A lot of love is generated by Christmas decorations. It's Christmas everyday.
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