On the outside, I try to project an image of having it all together. But underneath that, I'm kind of a disaster. Hence... the name of the site: GlossyVeneer. Not only has this place been ranked in the Las Vegas Review Journal’s annual Best of Las Vegas feature repeatedly, it was also recently picked by USA Today, Las Vegas Weekly and Zagats Review as the best pizza in Las Vegas. So with such glowing recommendations, I knew we had to give it a try.
We got there early on a Saturday evening, about 5:30 pm, and yet we still had a 25 minute wait for a table. Once we were seated they gave us our menus and left us alone. About 1 minute after we were seated a server quietly slid a couple of plates and a basket of bread onto our table. The bread was warm with very soft insides but a nice crusty crust with a sprinkling of sesame seeds. They also served it with butter from Anderson Dairy, a local dairy, which was a nice touch.
They had several salad options on the menu, but we chose a simple dinner salad. It had romaine lettuce, cucumbers, tomato slices, purple cabbage, onion and typical croutons. Nothing truly extraordinary, but at least all the ingredients were fresh. The balsamic vinaigrette was a really good dressing though.
Then the pizza was delivered. Even though they have a lot of specialty pizzas, we decided to play it fairly straight on our first visit with a ham and mushroom pizza. It was huge with tons and tons and tons of sauteed mushrooms. In fact, it had so many mushrooms Kevin made the comment, “I don’t think there are any mushrooms left in this town.” I love mushrooms, so I was pleased. The pizza was, to be blunt, simply awesome. It had a nice thin crust but the outer edges puffed up large and crispy. It didn’t have too much cheese, which was good with me. But we did see some other tables that had very cheesy pizzas. And since I had done 14 miles of marathon training, I ate 3 slices… I felt so indulgent.
They had a little calendar on the table that mentioned specials throughout the month, such as days where they offer free fries or desserts and sometimes give discounts if you have a specific name or it is your birthday. They try to put the calendar on their web site too, but their site sucks and doesn’t seem to be maintained as much as would be appropriate.
They also mentioned that they will begin construction on their new location in the northwest part of the valley, at the 95 and 215. So that means there will be one closer to us and we’ll be able to go back. Which is good because I want to go back, it was really tasty and I’m very interested in the specialty pizzas that include shrimp. But it will also be bad as it will be more of a temptation to eat pizza! Guess I’ll just have to train for marathons for the rest of my life in order to be able to indulge, right?
