North Italia - Henderson Happy Hour. Henderson

Pasta dough gets made fresh every morning here, and you can taste it in the way the noodles hold sauce. North Italia sits inside The District at Green Valley Ranch in Henderson at 2235 Village View Dr, a shopping-center spot that hides a kitchen doing real scratch work: pulled mozzarella, naturally leavened pizza crust, the whole deal.

Happy hour runs Monday through Friday, 3 to 6pm, closed weekends. Local beers are around $5.50, wine $8, and select cocktails $12 to $13, with food in the $10 to $18 range: meatballs and garlic bread at $14, pizzas at $18, sliders at $10. If you are deciding where the money goes, put it on the food. The crispy Brussels sprouts with calabrian chili and the prosciutto and burrata both punch above their price, and the wood-fired margherita pizza is the order when you want something more filling.

This pulls an after-work professional crowd, so the bar seats fill up fast once it hits 5. Get there closer to 3:30 if you want a stool without waiting. The open kitchen and blonde-wood room stay lively without tipping into loud, which makes it workable for a low-key date or a couple of coworkers decompressing.

Parking is the standard shopping-center lot out front, easy and free. The weekday-only window is the one catch, so plan a weeknight rather than a Saturday.