Remembering Carmine Vento, who brought New York slices to Las Vegas with Villa Pizza in 1976
Carmine Vento opened Villa Pizza in Commercial Center on East Sahara in 1976, selling pizza by the slice when nobody in town did that, and the RJ says his fellow cabdrivers told him it would never work. It did, and Villa Pizzas spread across the valley and fed a generation of Las Vegans. He sold the Villa name in 2002, went back to making pizza in 2014 with a shop on West Horizon Ridge in Henderson, and grew that into four Carmine's Pizza Kitchens. The RJ and 8 News Now report he died on Oct 30, according to a post from the restaurant, and his children Frank, John and Connie run the shops and say they'll keep his recipes going. The family says he built it all on "hard work, quality food and hospitality," and if you grew up on Villa slices, Carmine's is still where you'll find them.
