Restaurants in Sparks

The clean white linen tablecloths at Bella Italia sit like yet-to-be-painted canvases. The restaurant’s chefs, or culinary painters, if you will, use Italian recipes to put a little beauty on display. And their palette’s hardly skimpy—16 pasta entrees form the core of the extensive menu, anchored by fusilli with pesto and rigatoni with sausages and vegetables. Ravioli, risotto, and seafood dishes such as salmon with lemon and capers complement the primary color that is the restaurant’s pasta selection. To boot, the kitchen prepares seven veal entrees, one for each veal entree Napoleon attacked with his fork during his Elba exile.

Thin-crust pizza, black-and-white-checked floors, and a panoramic view of the New York skyline. A Taste of New York has all the makings of a cozy, Brooklyn trattoria save for one key detail—it’s located in Nevada. Owner Steve Fanning designed the eatery’s menu of crispy pizzas and hot sandwiches using ingredients and ancient wisdom borrowed from 35-year-old recipes. In addition to its brick-and-mortar location, A Taste of New York operates a gourmet food truck that shuttles tasty cuisine around the streets of Reno.