Carla Pellegrino Chef/owner, Bratalian and Bacio restaurants Best place for lunch: Spago at the Forum Shops — I love the Symphony Tuna. Best late-night snack: Holsteins at The Cosmopolitan for burgers or Pellegrino’s Pizza & Deli in the Tropicana (obviously for the pizza).

If art can sleep, there’s a lot of it snoozing peacefully in the secure storage room at the former Las Vegas Art Museum space in the Sahara West Library. The museum has been in hibernation since it closed in February 2009 after chronically low membership and dwindling donations gradually shut the contemporary art space’s doors.

[Destination known] A sweet dose of rural kitsch (and some ostriches, too) Rev up romance with a road trip to dateland. The Indio Date Festival — a combination of hometown county fair, “I Dream of Jeannie” kitsch, and food made out of dates — is the third weekend in February.

Welcome to Desert Companion’s second annual Best of the City. We daresay it’s even better than last year’s.

In this tough economy, when it’s broke, don’t nix it — fix it. Here’s where If there’s one thing the recession taught us, it’s the evils of unbridled consumerism.

They added a new word to the Atomic Testing Museum. Now it’s the National Atomic Testing Museum.

Chris Avila was a walking advertisement at the Latin Grammy Awards in November at Mandalay Bay — literally. He was sporting a pair of shoes he designed and made himself.

Market For finest service, the employees of our four Whole Foods Markets make the top of my list. Their policy of escorting a customer to help find an elusive item feels deliciously like an old-time throwback.

Would it be too grand a flourish to wave my hand over the year ahead and declare 2012 The Year of the Museum in Nevada? I don’t want to jinx anything, but it says something when we’ve got to crack open a fresh box of bullet points to cover cultural news. Consider: • The openings of the Mob Museum in February and the Neon Museum this summer will illuminate and celebrate two facets — one dark, one light — of Las Vegas history.

This year, Valentine’s Day means the Mob Museum’s opening and memories of a Chicago mob massacre. But it also means hearts and love.