Up until 13 years ago — and since 1990 — what happened at Carmine’s in New York stayed at Carmine’s New York. But its ownership, particularly CEO Jeffrey Bank, knew Carmine’s had what it took to expand off the island, confident that its scratch kitchen approach to old-fashioned, family-style Italian cuisine that, as the New York Times said in founder Artie Cutler’s obituary, serves “huge platters of spaghetti and meatballs, rivers of marinara sauce and mountains of garlic” would work in any city that hosted high volumes of people.

They were right. Carmine’s hasn’t just succeeded in Atlantic City, it has thrived, setting a model that led to the addition of four more locations in Washington, D.C., the Atlantis in the Bahamas and its latest and biggest yet, a 28,000-square-feet, 800-seat monstrosity in The Forum Shops at Caesars Las Vegas, the biggest restaurant in Vegas that is not also a nightclub.