There’s something distinctly different about Reno these days.

Oh, the neon arch still proclaims this the biggest little city in the world, and you’ll still find weary gamblers plying the slots. But the city is suddenly alive with new distilleries and craft breweries, grain-to-glass bars, farm-to-fork restaurants and a buzzy arts scene.

And the newest downtown lodging is an eco-friendly, nonsmoking, nongambling boutique hotel. Instead of a casino, the Whitney Peak Hotel has a gigantic bouldering gym, and its edifice holds the world’s tallest climbing wall — so intrepid guests can gaze down at the “Biggest Little City” arch next door from 164 feet. We got dizzy just looking up.

In fact, that dazed, delighted feeling lasted all weekend as we suddenly realized — Reno has farms? And a buzzy arts scene? And a glitzy hotel sans slots and smokes? And that’s not all?

How awesome is it to arrive in a place you thought you knew and discover you were delightfully wrong? We ponder the question as we stroll the galleries of the Nevada Museum of Art, just a few blocks from the Truckee River, which bisects the city.

Built in 2003, the museum’s striking four-story building is a huge black mass with cantilevered edges and curves wrapped in crimped, charcoal-hued zinc, its lines echoing Nevada’s Black Rock formation. Inside, the exhibits are eclectic, fascinating and thought-provoking. We gaze at paintings and works from the museum’s permanent collections and check out a watershed sculpture exhibit, an amazingly bizarre taxidermied art exhibit and rooms filled with watercolors and sketches of coral reef destruction in the South Pacific.

There’s more art outside in Reno’s Riverwalk District or, as city leaders have dubbed it, “the new downtown.” Parks and benches woo passers-by, ducks quack happily and murals and sculptures gleam in the winter sunlight. There’s a wine walk on the third Saturday of each month — involving 28 restaurants, wine bars and boutiques. A Whitewater Park for kayakers, a fly-fishing zone, art festivals, blues festivals and restaurants everywhere.

Actually, they could have just named the new downtown Mark Estee Row. Reno’s celebrity chef has opened three new restaurants here in the last year alone: the rustic-chic Heritage at the Whitney Peak Hotel; arty-chic Chez Louie in the museum and cafeteria-chic Reno Provisions, his just-opened cafe, gourmet food shop, event space and commercial kitchen and bakery for all of the above. Campo, Estee’s 4-year-old Italian restaurant, is a block away.

The city’s casino focus is being slowly replaced by other, considerably more delicious things, Estee says: “We’re part restaurant culture, part startup culture, part art culture. There’s food, outdoor activities, music, art, breweries, distilleries — everything!”

We’re sitting in Reno Provisions on a recent Monday morning. It’s the end of a holiday weekend, and the city is only just beginning to stir. There may be a distinct lack of buzzy energy outdoors, but inside, the air fairly crackles with it. A boisterous chorus of hellos and high-fives greets Estee as the chef bounds down the stairs to the big Provisions basement kitchen. Bread, focaccia and housemade crackers cool on racks. Aromatic sauces burble in pots. Sides of beef await butchering in a very chilly, brightly lit locker. And everything came from farms and ranches nearby.

“The local food movement here is huge,” Estee says, “and the Co-op is the most amazing thing.”

He’s talking about the Great Basin Community Food Co-op, whose 2-year-old startup, DROPP (Distributors of Regional Organic Produce and Products), has given scores of small farms and ranches a way to connect with local chefs. The farmers and ranchers post their offerings online, the chefs shop on the site and the co-op and some of the larger restaurants facilitate delivery. “It’s a tight-knit, close community,” Estee says. “The Peppermill Hotel brings things back to the little restaurants. We’re bringing the outside in.”

It’s the fulfillment, he says, of a dream for everyone, including the governor of Nevada, who first voiced his vision of a Reno “food hub” two years ago and the University of Nevada’s High Desert Farm Initiative. And the bottom line, of course, is on the plate — at Reno Provisions, it’s atop gleaming metal cafeteria trays, their indentations filled with wedges of organic vegetable-filled frittata, house-made sausages and a brilliant pink “super salad” of beets and quinoa. At Heritage, it’s local heritage pork, grass-fed beef and craft beer from a brewery five miles away.

It’s all delicious. And there’s nary a slot in sight.

“We don’t need to keep reinventing ourselves,” Estee says. “We just need to tell the story.”