They say the best way to the heart is through the stomach. I’d propose that it’s a promising path to the mind, too. Food as a way to foster tolerance and respect for diversity? Given recent nightmare headlines and a political season that seems less an election campaign than a shouty mosh pit of fear and anger, hey, I’m willing to consider anything. Diversity is one of the hallmarks of this year’s summer food issue (p. 52), dedicated to restaurants, chefs and dishes that champion a decided evocative oomph, a commitment to authenticity — in other words, a sense of place. It’s apt timing for such a theme: With a choir of economic experts singing a song of a resurgent Las Vegas, it’s safe to say the valley’s going to get a bit more crowded in the coming years. So, maybe we should all make a pledge to take our new neighbors to dinner. And whatever your taste, you’re sure to find a great new favorite spot in our seventh annual compendium of the best eats in town, whether it’s an adventurous find in Chinatown, an uber-fresh enlightened hipster breakfast in Henderson, or an old-school Vegas steakhouse with a classic vibe as thick as the prime rib. At the risk of rousing the slumbering cacodaemon that is the runaway Las Vegas growth machine, I’m looking forward to what new restaurants our economic recovery brings.
And maybe — just maybe! — our restart won’t be completely based on, oh, an unsustainable stucco supernova fueled by sketchy loans and a bubblicious feeding frenzy. Of course, our region’s true economic potential won’t be completely unlocked until we take advantage of one huge asset: all this copious sunshine sitting on our doorstep. Notwithstanding the schoolyard stiff-arming of NV Energy and the Public Utilities Commission, I’m convinced that the prospect of Nevada as a serious contender in the renewable-energy arena is more than a sun-hugger’s naive daydream. T.R. Witcher’s richly reported story on p. 34 articulates just what it would take to make Nevada 100 percent renewable — a question that, happily, perhaps we should reframe for ourselves not so much as an “if” but as a “when.” To be sure, the myriad challenges are technical (how do you store mass sunshine?), economic (how can we lower the costs of producing renewable energy?) and political (who’s going carrot-and-stick industry and government into making this happen?), but they’re not insurmountable. For California-based nonprofit The Solutions Project to say Nevada could be producing 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050 (!) is not a zany moonshot proposition. It’s well within reach. As its Executive Director Sarah Shanely Hope says, “It’s not even an economic problem. It’s political.” Which means that fundamentally changing the way we produce energy is really about changing people’s minds.
Such optimistic notes — a city on the rebound, a willingness to imagine a better way, crazy delicious food — strike me as a fine introduction to a summer that promises to be superlative not just in terms of the temperature, but also, let’s hope, for Southern Nevada’s comeback in a big, big way.