So you emerged from the casinos unscathed, and now you're hungry and willing to spend roughly the equivalent of a date-night dinner out at home. Mid-level dining anywhere, including Vegas, can be thorny: The line between a memorable meal and a mediocre one is often tenuous.

These three restaurants, including one on the high end of mid-priced dining and one on the lower end, definitely skew toward memorable.

The Venetian Resort,

3355 Las Vegas Blvd. South; 702-266-9977; www.mariobatali.com/restaurants_bb.cfm

Chef Mario Batali, he of the orange clogs and Food Network fame, and his partner Joseph Bastianich have recently opened a swaggering new steakhouse in the Palazzo hotel called Carnevino. But Dallasites have plenty of local chophouses for the choosing. What we don't have is a surplus of great Italian restaurants.

B&B Ristorante

Remember your decent luck and enjoy the linguine with clams at B&B Ristorante.

Which makes B&B Ristorante a double treat. The look is tony, mid-20th century New York: masculine with brunette woods and thick, buttery lighting. And the menu clearly illustrates that Mr. Batali is one television chef whose real-world restaurants deliver the goods.

B&B rewards the adventurous eater with supple tripe in spicy tomato sauce, warm lamb's tongue with chanterelles and egg, and (my favorite) squid ink pasta tangled with sea urchin. Of course, there are dishes such as linguine with clams, pancetta and hot chiles for more conservative palates.

The restaurant's seven-course pasta-tasting menu is the culinary version of "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." All those carbs? I won't tell if you won't.

Service was smooth. The sommeliers helped us find a spot-on bottle of Italian vino in our price bracket, and our server petitioned the kitchen on our behalf for a serving of blood orange sorbet off the traditional tasting menu. Simple and vivid with citrus, the sorbet ranked uppermost among our desserts.

6599 Las Vegas Blvd.;

702-202-2400; www.louislasvegas.com

Vegas witnessed an influx of French, Italian, New American, Chinese and Japanese restaurants over the last decade. What was still missing? Southern food.

Louis' Fish Camp

Camp out over shrimp and grits at Louis' Fish Camp and weigh your wins and losses.

Enter Louis Osteen, a legendary Low Country cook with a compound of two restaurants and a take-out store on Pawley's Island in South Carolina. Mr. Osteen and his wife, Maureen, have duplicated their Southern outposts with two adjacent restaurants in Vegas' newly constructed Town Square shopping center.

You can go higher-end at the stylish Louis' Las Vegas, but a meal at the more casual Fish Camp indoctrinates you nicely into the piquant pleasures of Mr. Osteen's food. Start with a splash of Kentucky's finest at the restaurant's Bourbon Bar, then settle in at a table for cornmeal-fried oysters, empanadas stuffed with pulled pork and she-crab soup or shrimp and okra gumbo.

Next, indulge in Mr. Osteen's definitive version of shrimp and grits: gloppy yet sophisticated, dairy-rich but balanced with a hit of tomato. For something only slightly lighter, wrap your mitts around a shrimp po'boy.

And here's a tip: The Sunday-only lunch special is a $15 plate of skillet-fried chicken with slow-cooked green beans, chunky squash casserole and rice doused with gravy.

953 E. Sahara Ave.;

702-735-3033; www.saipinchutima.com

This modest spot, off the Strip in a strip mall, rose to national prominence in October 2000 when Pulitzer-winning food writer Jonathan Gold, then working as a restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine, declared it "the single best Thai restaurant in North America."

An open mind is a requisite for dining here. If you order ubiquitous pad Thai, then you'll wonder what inspired all the fuss.

Start, perhaps, with thum-ka-noon, a salad of young jackfruit, ground pork, tomato and lots of feisty spices. Jackfruit has the texture of shredded artichoke heart but is sweet and contrasts intriguingly with the pork. Go crazy and try sai oua (spicy, freshly made pork sausage) or nua dad deaw (Thai beef jerky). Ask the kindly servers for a curry recommendation, and order a side of sticky rice.

Though many of the entrees cost under $10, I put Lotus of Siam in the break-even category for two reasons: One, to try the gamut of delicious, unfamiliar dishes, you'll want to request a feast's worth of food. And, more to the point, the fairly priced wine list includes an impressive variety of don't-miss rieslings to complement the food.