The restaurant with A.D.D.

Food is an instrumental part of any good vacation. So it sure was a good thing we managed to squeeze in a few really good meals after the, um, interesting dining experience we had our first night in Vegas.

A few days before our trip, Linda Lou, Rich's host over at Harrah's called to ask if there was any way we would be willing to go to an entirely comped dinner over at Cafe Martorano, the newest Italian restaurant at the Rio Hotel and Casino. She'd even sent a limo for us. Somehow we mustered up enough strength to oblige.

Of course I'm still not entirely sure what I make of the restaurant itself nor its proprietor, wannabe celebrity chef and soon-to-be reality TV show star Steve Martorano. The food was good enough but I could have done without the, ahem, attitude and atmosphere.

It was as if the restaurant was in severe need of some Ritalin. The decor and music literally changed every few minutes. You'd go from a disco ball and Sinatra music to strobe lights and Baby Got Back, all before you had a chance to scarf down the $1200-a-block cheese.

Ah, the insanely expensive cheese. This is where the attitude came in. Our waiter took great delight in telling us how much money Martorano spends on his ingredients and how that made the food so good. As I said before, the food was fine -- I particularly enjoyed the macaroni -- but if the food is really that good, I don't need my greasy waiter continuously bragging about it throughout the meal. Good food should speak for itself. Besides, by the third or fourth time that the waiter barked "Gimme your plate" I knew we'd lost a bit of the magic.

I'm also not too impressed with some of the restaurant's policies. For one, there's a strict no changes and no substitutions policy. Chef Martorano says he makes his food one way and one way only. Now I'm a very picky eater and we dine out practically everyday. I honestly can't remember the last time I ordered something without adding, subtracting, or substituting something. If I'm paying for something, it's going to be what I want. (Of course we weren't paying for anything that evening so I had to suck it up.) Somehow I managed to survive this particular meal but only because they basically brought us everything on the menu to sample so I could pick and choose what I wanted.

The other quirky rule is that you can't have a cocktail with dinner. Apparently Martorano believes a drink would distract from the taste of his food. We learned this the hard way when the drink Rich had just gotten at the bar was quickly abducted from the table. Sadly, the drink may have been the tastiest thing that night.

The appetizers included Martorano's homemade meatballs, shrimp scampi bread, and an eggplant stack made up of breaded eggplant, fresh mozzarella and other things I've only heard of on the Food Network. The meatballs were okay but nowhere near as good as the ones my dad makes. I'm generally not a fan of shrimp but I did enjoy the shrimp scampi bread. The eggplant stack was okay too, but mostly because of the cheese.

For our entree, we sampled the chicken cutlet downtown, some kind of sea bass (I passed on this) and the specialty macaroni. I enjoyed the chicken but it was nothing special. I'm also not clear on what makes the specialty macaroni so special. They could have substituted Kraft dinner and I wouldn't have known any better.

I lost track of how many desserts there were but I do remember a very good white cupcake topped in chocolate and some kind of mind-blowing cake. I was so stuffed that I passed on the cannoli and ice cream. For some reason, the waiter kept bragging about how the ice cream was Haagen-Dazs and encouraging us to try it. They must have some sort of deal with them.

The highlight of the evening wasn't the meal but rather a nice perk the casino threw in for us after dinner. They gave us $300 in promotional chips to play. Not being regular table game players, we headed straight for the roulette table where we were lucky enough to parlay the $300 in promotional chips into $300 in actual money.

While it may not sound that way, I actually really enjoyed the evening. A free limo, dinner, drinks, and $300? I could learn to live like this.