Vegas Just Got a Bottomless Italian Riviera Brunch, and We Have Thoughts

Balla Italian Soul at SAHARA Las Vegas debuted its Ciao Bella Brunch this summer, a $55 endless Saturday spread inspired by the Italian Riviera. It has us talking about what makes an Italian brunch actually Italian, and not just eggs with a spritz on the side.

What Actually Showed Up on the Strip This Summer

Balla Italian Soul, the Italian restaurant from James Beard Award winning chef Shawn McClain tucked inside SAHARA Las Vegas, rolled out its Ciao Bella Brunch this July. It is exclusively a Saturday thing, running from 10:30am to 2pm, priced at $55 per person, and built around the kind of relaxed, sun soaked eating you would expect on the Italian Riviera rather than a heavy Sunday feast.

The format is endless rather than a set plate. Family style starters like whipped ricotta, melon and burrata, and tomato arancini come out first, followed by a choice of mains that includes ricotta pancakes, a prosciutto omelette with stracciatella and cherry tomatoes, fusilli carbonara, calamari, wood fired pizza, a ham and cheese croissant panini, chicken Milanese and steak frites. A roaming dolce cart closes the meal with tiramisu, cannoli, buttermilk panna cotta, Italian cookies, a dark chocolate tart and gelato. Table service is capped at two hours, and bottomless spritz and mimosa packages are offered alongside a full Italian cafe program of cappuccino, flat white and espresso.

Why an Italian Brunch Is a Different Animal

Brunch itself is not an Italian invention, and that is exactly what makes an Italian take on it interesting. Traditional Italian mornings lean toward something simple, an espresso and a cornetto, not a table groaning under eggs and pancakes. So when a restaurant builds a brunch around Italian ingredients, the fun is in watching familiar brunch shapes get reworked with Italian technique, a carbonara instead of a cream sauce pasta bake, ricotta folded into pancake batter instead of just piled on toast, arancini standing in for a breakfast potato.

It also fits a broader shift happening in Italian dining right now. Restaurants are leaning into lighter, produce forward plates and format flexibility, mixing classic technique with more casual, shareable service styles rather than a rigid multi course sit down. A bottomless Riviera brunch is really just that instinct dressed up for a Saturday late morning, built for a table of friends who want to graze for two hours rather than rush through four courses.

None of that is a knock on the classic Italian dinner table either. It just means there is more than one right way to gather people around Italian food, and a sunny brunch cart with a bottomless spritz is as legitimate an entry point as a slow simmered Sunday sugo.

What We Would Actually Order

If we were sitting down for something like this ourselves, we would start with the burrata and melon for its sheer summer simplicity, then split a fusilli carbonara and a pizza so the table gets both a fork dish and something to tear by hand. The dolce cart is the real test of a brunch like this, since a rolling dessert cart lives or dies on variety, and a lineup that spans tiramisu, cannoli, panna cotta and gelato covers enough ground that everyone at the table finds something.

The two hour limit is also worth planning around. An endless format works best when you pace it, a starter, a short breather, then the main, rather than piling everything onto the table at once. That is true whether you are at a Strip brunch or working through a table of antipasti at home on a Sunday afternoon.

6 Reasons an Italian Riviera Brunch Works

Here is what makes this kind of endless Italian brunch click, whether you are catching it on the Strip or building your own version at home.

1. Family style starters: Small shared plates like burrata and arancini get the table talking before anyone commits to a main.
2. A pasta on the brunch menu: Fusilli carbonara at 11am proves pasta does not have to wait for dinner to earn its spot.
3. Sweet and savory mains side by side: Ricotta pancakes next to chicken Milanese means nobody has to choose between breakfast and lunch.
4. A roaming dessert cart: Rolling the cannoli and tiramisu tableside turns dessert into its own little event.
5. A built in pace limiter: A two hour cap keeps an endless format from turning into an all day sprawl.
6. Bottomless spritz done right: Pairing an endless food spread with an endless spritz package matches the pace of the meal instead of overwhelming it.

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