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The street address is 9809 S. Eastern Avenue. The phone is (702) 896.3382. There's a store in Henderson at 1290
West Warm Springs Road. The phone there is (702) 454.1136. On the west side, in Summerlin, you can find Fazoli's at
1260 N. Town Center Dr. The phone number is (702) 869.5959.
Here's one place where you get WAY more than you pay for. The food is almost at casino give-away prices. Every
time the waitress added up my tab I felt guilty. Most of the chi chi Italian eateries in LVNV charge $14.99 for spaghetti and meatballs when all Fazoli's wants is $4.99. This place knows how to charge.
Second, Fazoli's is FAST. The company's slogan is "Real Italian. Real fast." And kids, they
mean it. 37 percent of the patrons order their meal using the drive through. I preferred to eat in the dining room. It took longer to run my MasterCard and print up a receipt than it did to produce a
piping hot tub of delicious baked spaghetti.
Actually, one of the secrets to the fast delivery is all the prep work that's done before. General Manager Tom
Connelly told me his kitchen staff shows up at 7 a.m. every morning to start slicing and dicing to be ready for the lunch crowd at 11:30.
Fast and cheap rarely add up to TASTY FOOD. But what's so remarkable about Fazoli's is that the food is
terrific. It's much tastier than many of its costlier cousins. I haven't had a better slice of pizza anywhere except at Pacifica Pizza, my LVNV favorite. The panini sandwiches - Italian sandwiches that
are oven baked to order- are light-hearted and flavorful, making them a perfect meal in this triple digit heat. And my all time favorite Italian dish is something I discovered at Fazoli's - the baked
spaghetti.
Fazoli's is a fusion of two popular restaurant concepts: the family-style trattoria like Buca di Beppo and fast
food outlets like McDonald's. Surprisingly, Fazoli's is much more like Buca than McDonald's. The dining room has silk flowers on the table, fresh parmesan and threatening dried red peppers in jar, and
rows of colorful can goods that decorate many of the upscale Italian joints. And the managers jovially cruise the dining room, making sure you're happy, just like the star chefs do at places like
Fleming's.
One more plus: the place is spotless. I mean, these people are anal about cleanliness. Not one dribble
anywhere. You could eat off the floors. Not like the Burger Kings I know.
History: Jerrico, which was then the parent company of Long John Silver's, created the Fazoli's concept in
1988. Two years and five restaurants later, Jerrico sold the concept to Seed Restaurant Group, Inc., based in Lexington, Kentucky. Today there are more than 400 Fazoli's restaurants.
Ok, so what's the food like? One of the major reasons to eat at Fazoli's is the breadsticks. These are long,
yeasty, chewy finger sized breadsticks brushed with rich butter and rolled in salt and garlic powder. You get two of these just-out-of-the-oven breadsticks when you leave the counter. In addition, a very
polite young associate patrols the dining room. If he spies you've inhaled your allotment, he's ready to offer some more. The Fazoli's on Eastern bakes 300 pans of these breadsticks a day. There are 60
in a pan. Las Vegas! We're eating a lot of breadsticks!
My favorite dish at Fazoli's is the baked spaghetti with meatballs. What a great idea. Picture this: perfectly
al dente spaghetti doused in a dark red tomato sauce, then covered with a thick coating of mozzarella. Place some hefty meatballs on top and then bake the whole thing like a pizza in a metal tin. Kids,
you can do this at home!
The concoction comes out with the cheese still bubbling. Dig in and steam erupts like an angry volcano. And all
the flavors meld together in perfect three-part harmony. The tomato sauce tastes like it's been simmering all day. It's very traditional, using just the standard Italian spices, none of those weird new
additions. The meatballs, made of pork and beef, look like tennis balls. And they are very tasty. And everything tastes great with melted mozzarella cheese.
A close cousin is the pizza baked spaghetti. This pile of spaghetti is tossed with the tomato sauce the
restaurant uses for its pizza. Then the cooks load up on mozzarella cheese. Finally, they add circles of spicy pepperoni in a circle. The pepperoni bakes into the cheese in the oven. In essence, Fazoli's
substituted spaghetti for the standard pizza crust.
My second favorite entrée is the four cheese and tomato panini sandwich. These sandwiches use wonderfully light
foccacia bread. Provolone, Swiss, white cheddar and parmesan are layered with huge wagon wheel circles of beefsteak tomatoes and strips of fresh red peppers. The oven melds everything together into one
delicious goo. The four cheese and tomato panini is the best vegetarian offerings I've sampled in LVNV so far.
Choice number three: The club submarino. I needed a doggie bag for the half submarino sandwich, which is 7 ½
inches long. Thick, tasty, crunchy Italian loaves are sliced in half and stuffed with the typical club sandwich stuff: ham, turkey, bacon, provolone cheese plus lettuce and tomato. Serving time in the
oven causes the cheese to bake onto the bread, a great addition.
Two other don't miss items: the pepperoni pizza, thick-crusted, Chicago style, and the honey French salad
dressing. This is a yin-yang dressing that I'm going to have to learn how to make at home. It combines the sharp tang of the French dressing with a sweet overlay of honey.
One item to avoid: fettucine alfredo. I found the sauce too sticky and rich. I preferred the alfredo lite that
I enjoyed at Al Dente last week.
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