What the Critics Have To Say About Lago

Looks like everyone is checking out Lago, the new Italian restaurant from Julian Serrano at the Bellagio. Al Mancini picks apart the two-page menu that he says is "tough to know where to begin." His favorite pasta is the gnocchi with blue cheese he says the "nice chewy crusts" on the pizettes "works well whether they’re topped with simple fresh tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil, or drenched in creamy ricotta and piled high with slices of salty speck." He descirbes the vitello tonnato as "adequate" and he was "truly disappointed with an order of squid stuffed with chilled shrimp that looked like a hard-boiled quail egg and needed a lot more flavor and color." [VS]

Brock Radke writes that "Maybe Lago is Bellagio’s way of enticing the younger set to spend more time on property, but that doesn’t mean the cuisine drifts from the always-impeccable Bellagio standard." He says the osso buco is "peerless" and calls the "raw crudo of Skuna Bay salmon with crispy capers or the lemon oil-doused broiled langostinos" don’t miss dishes. Radke differed on his opinion of the shrimp-stuffed squid, calling it "one of the cleanest ocean bites I’ve ever encountered." [LVW]