Friends With Benefits Paulo Duran

Guests come for the dynamite food, but they also come for Paulo Duran, director of operations for Brera Osteria and Matteo’s Ristorante Italiano, both at The Venetian. “I’ve gone from creating relationships with guests to creating friends,” says the Mexico native. “It’s like a family that keeps growing and it all starts with creating a memorable experience for guests that dine with us.”

In fact, Las Vegas visitors have followed Duran since he started in the city’s food and beverage industry nearly two decades ago, working at celebrity chefs’ restaurants including Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali. Duran—coined by his coworkers as Mr. Wonderful— joined the two Venetian restaurants a couple of years ago and is loving his new homes. “What makes our two restaurants special is the food, and we take a lot of pride in the hospitality that we provide,” he says. “We perfect the things that define good service.”

Brera is in the beautiful St. Mark’s Square and Matteo’s is downstairs in Restaurant Row, and you can find Duran running back and forth between

• Libation • Passion Me

New for the season, you can find the Passion Me cocktail on the menu at Matteo’s Ristorante Italiano. This perfect spring sip is a mix of Olmeca Altos Plata tequila, passionfruit purée and fresh lime and garnished with a candied kiwi. Both restaurants’ unique garnishes are made inhouse. –KM both, all day long. “I canceled my gym membership, ’cause I do plenty of cardio every day,” he jokes.

But Duran doesn’t mind the hard work because the rewards of running two successful restaurants and overseeing a staff of more than 200 is what drives him. “I try not to think about the stresses and go with the flow,” he says.

“But I enjoy my accomplishments. I’ve done it for some many years. If I was to quit tomorrow, where would I go? I don’t have a talent for any other industry. This is my passion.” –Kiko

Miyasato

Benefit Make sure to end your meal at Brera Osteria with the amaro flight—choose three different amaro flavors.

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Enjoy south-of-theborder classics at Diablo’s Cantina

By Ken Miller

Part of the fun of visiting Las Vegas is discovering all the places that allow for plenty of people-watching. When it comes to Luxor, Diablo’s Cantina is about the best place for that. It’s centrally located in the property so that plenty of visitors must walk past it to get to wherever they’re going. So snag a table and get ready for some serious fun. And what goes better with fun than a heaping plate of nachos and a margarita?

As you would expect, Diablo’s features a lengthy margarita menu, one featuring Bombay Sapphire gin. You may want to go traditional with the house margarita, which you can make spicy or make “golden” with Casamigos reposado. If you want something a bit di erent, opt for the mezcal Old-Fashioned, fea- turing El Silencio mezcal, muddled orange and cherry with Angostura bitters and simple syrup. Any of these will wake up your tastebuds for the enjoyment to come.

The nachos here are truly something special. To begin with, they’re served in a bowl, which helps ensure that almost any chip you grab will have cheese on it—and toppings like pickled jalapenos, pico de gallo, crema fresca and guacamole (add chicken, steak or shrimp for a bit extra). Also delicious and shareable is the aguachile shrimp ceviche, made with citrus-cured shrimp, cucumber, pickled onion, cilantro and red peppers.

Now you’re into the hard decision-making part of your experience: Tacos? Enchiladas?

Burrito? Fajitas? We get it; we’ve been there. The good news at Diablo’s is there are no wrong choices. And some of your options allow you to mix and match meats so that you can get little bit of everything without breaking your budget. You can get enchiladas in flavors like veggie and beef barbacoa, or go for the

Diablo’s Enchilada Platter—a trio of beef, chicken and shrimp. Ditto with fajitas; you can either get one meat or go for the Trio Fajitas—chicken, steak and shrimp.

As you’ll quickly discover, whatever you order, Diablo’s does not skimp on portion size. The tacos, which are served in threes and range from al pastor shrimp and pork carnitas to Baja-style cod, steak filet and peppers and mushrooms, are mouthfuls in the best sense of the word. You’ll hear absolutely no one at your table complaining that they’re still hungry after these mini-beasts.

For those brave souls, reaper salsa is available upon request to accompany any of these entrees. We recommend starting with small dabs and see how that goes. It’s hot, but the flavor it adds is immense and well worth the e ort.

The three classic Mexican desserts are all here, and you may want to order all of them to avoid missing out. Mexican flan is a smooth and creamy vanilla-and-caramel-flavored delight, while the churros are served with vanilla or chocolate ice cream (it’s kinda like eating an ice cream cake). Speaking of ice cream, fans of the cold treat will want to order buñuelos, a combo of vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.

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blazes new trails in country music with hip-hop beats and respect for tradition

in country music like Sam Hunt’s. The Georgia-born ex-quarterback seemed to come out of nowhere in the mid2010s and changed the game, first and segueing into a narrative about unrequited love.

Executing songs like successful gridiron plays is Hunt’s forte, but his inner circle includes writers and pro- penning songs for other singers after ducers such as Zach Crowell, Shane arriving in Nashville, then taking center stage as a recording artist with groundbreaking 2014 album Montevallo. By 2017 he had broken the record for most weeks (34) at the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with hit single “Body Like a Back Road.”

Hunt’s lyrical flow, wordsmithing talent and abilities to both express from a personal place and see things through the eyes of others are primary factors in his rise to the top. He also has a vision for his own brand of country music that drew on R&B and hip-hop beats as well as an appreciation for tradition.

The latter is best exemplified on “Hard to Forget” from 2020’s Southside, which samples the first line from honky-tonk star Webb Pierce’s 1953 hit “There Stands the Glass” without e ects before aligning it with an electronic rhythm

McAnally and Josh Osborne. He has a muse in wife Hannah Lee Fowler, who he met while playing football for University of Alabama at Birmingham. Hunt had bought a guitar before he left Cedartown, Ga. for college, where he studied philosophy and business. He became proficient and began writing free-verse lyrics, developing his own style in the process.

Two months after trying out for the NFL he was in Nashville, quickly becoming immersed in the culture and networking himself into the industry. He co-wrote “Come Over” for Kenny Chesney with McAnally and Osborne, then Keith Urban’s single “Cop Car” with Crowell, and Billy Currington’s “We Are Tonight” with Osborne. Hunt recorded the latter two songs for Montevallo, but his first No. 1 would be a cowrite with McAnally and Osborne, “Leave the Night On.”

The album is named for Fowler’s hometown. Although Hunt may have dreamed of being a star, he may not have considered the impact the Montevallo songs on would have on

Fowler’s privacy, which he would address in the lyrics of “Drinkin’ Too Southside relationship would become tabloid fodder as Fowler appeared with Hunt at awards shows. They were married in 2017, but alleged infidelities led Fowler to file for divorce in Febru-

However, Fowler, the inspiration for “Body Like a Back Road,” changed her mind by May, and the following month she gave birth to a daughter. Now Hunt has a whole new set of circumstances to turn into compositions and a shot at personal redemption as he undertakes his this summer. The tour takes its name from his latest single, which precedes a third studio album that could be out by the end of the year. Expect a theme of returning to small-town roots in much of the new material, and more hip-hop beats blended with country tradition.

By Matt Kelemen