First look: Gas Lamp's cuisine to tour the world

(Credit: Alicia Santistevan)

The inspiration for the Gas Lamp Bar & Cafe comes from New Orleans, but, just like the former French port, this restaurant and bar has a cosmopolitan appeal. If you’re curious about trying foods from France, Morocco, Germany, Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, India or Jamaica (to name a few), this is going to be your new favorite place.

Tony Podorsek and Danny Augello jumped at the opportunity for a piece of commercial real estate close to Rapscallion, LuLou’s, and Sezmu. Now, four weeks out, they’re getting ready for the coming months when their kitchen will finally prepare its first weekly menu featuring entrees from somewhere — anywhere. Each week, the menu shifts focus to a new area's cuisine.

Podorsek plays the front of house, public relations, while Augello is the artistic, culinary and interior design element in a team that’s equally invested.

“It’s important to me that both the front and back have a stake,” Podorsek said as he popped the top off a bottle of Sac-Squatch Ale, a chocolaty dark beer brewed in Sacramento.

It’s true, I feel more comfortable knowing that the person preparing food in the kitchen is as perceptive as Podorsek to notice that I’m right-handed and my friend is left-handed based on the way we pour our beers.

This is a higher-end restaurant, without a doubt. Even so, they intend to keep prices low. No entrée over $20. Even the top-shelf liquor is likely the best deal in town. The look and feel of the inside is comfortable and inviting with a vaulted, open wood ceiling, slate rock lining the walls, and mellow, green-tinted, clay shutters. Augello intends to bring in permanent art from local and outside artists.

The dining room is suited to hold about 40 patrons, all of whom are welcome to one-step, two-step, and foxtrot on the dance floor in front of that night’s local Reno jazz musicians. Augello hopes to one day bring in a grand piano to really fill out the sound.

Podorsek, at 48, has been in the restaurant business off and on for 19 years, spending most of his time in Vegas. At one time he was the regional manager for eight restaurants, spread across three counties.

Augello, at 50, was influenced to cook by his Italian family in Oakland, trained French, and received his formal education at the College of Culinary Arts in San Francisco, which he calls the world’s food Mecca.