Giada De Laurentiis Almost Ready To Debut in Baltimore

BALTIMORE — Celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis is close to opening her first restaurant on the East Coast. GDL Italian by Giada plans to open in April with a 180-seat eatery at the Horseshoe Casino. The Food Network star tells Eater DC that this casual dining experience will focus on local seafood, pasta, and antipasti. Much like her first restaurant, Giada at The Cromwell, this one will feature an antipasto station, while chefs will work in an open kitchen. Like Pronto by Giada, which just opened at Caesars Palace, the wine list leans toward California and Italy, while the cocktails find inspiration from her grandfather’s movies. [Eater DC]

JBF AWARDS — The James Beard Foundation honored chef José Andrés of ThinkFoodGroup and founder of World Central Kitchen, with the 2018 James Beard Humanitarian Award. Together with World Central Kitchen and #ChefsforPuertoRico, Andrés served more than 3.3 million meals in Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017. He has Bazaar Meat at the SLS Las Vegas, and é Bar, Jaleo, and China Poblano at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. [EaterWire]

NEW YORK CITY — New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells sure doesn’t like Las Vegas. His latest review of Masayoshi Takayama’s Tetsu, which opened in November in TriBecA takes a few stabs at the dining scene in Las Vegas. “Eating in that city can be a wild ride, but the dining rooms often have an oversize, mall-like scale and the menus a safe, something-for-everyone vagueness — qualities that, transplanted to New York, can be real buzzkills,” he writes. “As far as restaurants go, what happens in Vegas should usually stay in Vegas.” Of course, the Vegas version inside BarMasa at Aria closes in April. [NYT]

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