Buddy V bringing TWO new concepts to The LINQ

Chef and baker Buddy Valastro, who already operates three Las Vegas businesses and multiple cake vending machines on The Strip, has two more concepts coming to The LINQ Hotel and Linq Promenade. And he’ll be channeling his home state of New Jersey at both.

Speaking to the Food and Loathing podcast at his Grand Canal Shoppes Italian eatery Buddy V’s, Valastro shared some details on the previously announced Boss Café, and spilled the beans on another upcoming outpost that will be called Buddy’s Jersey Eats.

Valastro says The Boss Café will be focused on a pair of items: pizza, and fresh mozzarella (which will be made on site and incorporated into signature sandwiches).

“I have a new pizza that I’m going to be launching,” he explains. “I’m coining (the name for) it, bakery pizza.”

“It’s kind of like a pan pizza. It’s a cross between, let’s call it a Sicilian and a focaccia. And I’m doing it kinda upside down. So I’m going to top it with mozzarella and provolone, so you get that nice sharpness. And then I’m going to top it with this like zesty tomato sauce – a lot more zesty than what we would do at Pizza Cake.”

The other “star of the show” at The Boss Café, he teases, will be “the most mouth-watering fresh mozz – Jersey mozz.”

He spells out the word so there’s no confusion: M-O-Z-Z. Yet his pronunciation is pure Hoboken, sounding more like “mutz” (it rhymes with “puts”).

“Mozz is mozzarella, but in Jersey we call it mozz,” says Valastro. “And it is creamy, dreamy. You put that on a roast beef sandwich with spicy peppers, and I’m gonna be using that same bakery style pizza – I’m cutting it in half and making a sandwich out of it.”

The second new concept is called Buddy’s Jersey Eats, and Valastro says it will be “like a food truck right outside the promenade at The Linq,” serving “Jersey street food, or carnival food.”

“So we’re gonna have like zeppole,” he says excitedly. “We’re gonna have like the Jersey ripper, which is a deep-fried hot dog. We’re gonna have a sausage sandwich. And we’re gonna do .. deep-fried rainbow cake, and deep-fried rainbow cookies, like the seven-layer, the red white and green cookies.”

Look for both The Boss Café and Buddy’s Jersey Eats to debut at The LINQ in early spring.

You can hear the entire interview with Valastro, including discussions of all of his local restaurants, his hand injury and the birthday cake his wife recently made for him, on Episode 42 of the Food and Loathing podcast, which will be released through all major podcast platforms on Friday, March 25.