PRESIDENT CLINTON LEADS STAR CROWD FOR RAO’S 1ST YEAR
Hard to believe that the Rao’s Italian family-styled restaurant in Caesars Palace is celebrating its first anniversary. Time does fly! For over 110 years, four generations of the family have served up their authentic southern Neapolitan family recipes at the oh-so-tough to get into Rao’s in Manhattan’s East Harlem district. The few tiny tables, packed with celebs and VIP’s, just never has an empty seat—so it was a case of sighed breaths and hallelujahs when Frank and Carla Pellegrino opened up the Vegas outpost with dad Frank and uncle Ronnie.
Ever since the doors opened it’s also been a fab-fan-favorite. I took my pal, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show co-host John Melendez there for dinner and we ran into President Bill Clinton!
My favorite nanny, Fran Drescher was there another night I ordered up “Uncle Vincent’s Famous Lemon Chicken.” Since then the celeb-crowd just keeps on escalating, oohing and aahing about the vodka penne, the rigatoni and the orecchiette with sausages! Some of the famed and fortunate have included Steven Spielberg, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay-Z with Beyoncé, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Mary J. Blige, Kevin Spacey, Jason Giambi, Dan Akroyd, Cameron Diaz, Simon Cowell, Billy Crystal, Andy Garcia, Damon Wayans and Jennifer Love Hewitt—just to name a few!
Just to give one an idea of this Italian eatery’s on-going star-pulling power check out last nights simultaneous 8 p.m. seating: legendary Vegas veteran comedy king, Jerry Lewis, comedian and actor Richard Belzer, and talk-show host Sally Jessie Raphael, in town for the TV programming convention. When they all bumped into each other at the check-in reservation desk it took several minutes before they could be pried apart from their reunion hugs and catch-up conversations before they all sat down for dinner with their respective parties separately!
Frank and Carla, who is also the chef there, welcomed family and friends to the one-year celebration and led the first-dance across the restaurant cleared after dinner for dancing. Everybody got an autographed RAO’s cookbook as a souvenir memory of the night. The walls of the restaurant here are decorated with over 200 souvenir celebrity customer photographs—identical to the ones that line the wall of the New York hangout, including one from me!