Food & Drink
Editors’ choices
Best worth-the-wait Italian
Pinocchio’s Bar & Grill
551 E. Moana Lane
826-5151
On weekends, Pinocchio’s draws a crowd. Sometimes, it’s 30 to 45 minutes to get a table. We always hang, waiting at one of the patio tables in front or heading down to Jake’s Bar—owned by the same cool folks. Why do we stick around? Chicken and wild mushroom lasagna. It’s a creamy soft noodley deal with the perfect blend of cheeses, chunks of chicken breast and mouth-watering mushrooms. It’s groovy that the food at Pinocchio’s is priced reasonably. With the main dish, you get a basket of warm bread and a large family-style bowl of the best house salad in town—with tangy dressing, chunks of blue cheese, buttery croutons and finely diced red onion. There are plusher Italian joints in Reno. We dropped $100 at a fine Italian eatery recently, paying plenty for entrees plus extra for plates of greens—and getting a dim look from the waiter when ordering a bottle of Chianti $10 less the bottle he’d recommended. The folks at Pinocchio’s are never snooty. They keep it real.
Best place to imagine Halle Berry in a tube top
Jalapeños Fresh Express
4997 Longley Lane, 825-4411
9570 S. McCarran Blvd. 747-5277
2828 Vista Blvd., Sparks, 356-8500
Jalapeños is the place where you have the option of getting your burrito in a bowl, the place where every quesadilla comes with a side of guacamole and sour cream, the place where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. Jalapeños Fresh Express’s rooster beak salsa, more familiarly known as pico de gallo, might be the freshest tasting variety in town, although it will leave your mouth tasting onion-y for at least five or six hours. The mango habañero salsa is hotter than Halle Berry in a tube top—you’ll feel like you could breathe fire for at least an hour. With three locations across the Truckee Meadows, all founded and owned by the same Mexican-food-savvy businessman, a Jalapeños is never more than a seven-minute drive away.
Best place to put your hands on a grande burrito
La Michoacana
4950 S. Virginia St.
826-4144
Who cares what the huddled masses yearning to be filled have to say on the matter? There is only one best burrito in town, and while Beto’s on West Fifth Street makes a fine, if somewhat skimpy, burrito, and there’s no place better for a wet, hangover-curing, pork burrito than Super Burrito on Plumb Lane, the champion burrito has got to belong to those fine folks over at the La Michoacana. There’s only one thing—surely it’s cultural—if you walk up to the counterman during a busy lunch hour and ask him if he’s got a big burrito, he may look at you as though you weren’t entirely there. Never mind the look, he has a grande spicy pork burrito that’ll rock your world.