Primarily Prime Rib

An open memo to Michael Gaughan, if I may be so bold:

Dear Sir: Please do yourself and your customers a favor and invest in a water-filtration system. Or, hey, maybe spring for a Britta.

Because the water at Primarily Prime Rib at South Point tastes as though it came from a lab where a mad scientist was mixing chemicals. Lots of chemicals.

I'm pretty much a tap-water kind of person, but only in a manner of speaking. My refrigerator has a built-in filtration system, and most of the restaurants I frequent filter their water. The bottled water I buy by the case at Trader Joe's is simply for convenience, and since I'm beginning to feel guilty about my carbon footprint and the state of our landfills, I'm working to wean myself, like a lot of other people in the country.

It turned out that I fit in quite well at Primarily Prime Rib, which is a tap-water kind of place. Prices are what even Old Vegans would consider reasonable, and the menu's straightforward enough to make them comfortable. Before he poured our water, the assistant server didn't even ask about bottled.

But man, that water was bad, even with a squeeze of lemon. And it wasn't just us. The woman in the next booth was positively apoplectic about it and ended up ordering a couple of bottles because she couldn't drink the stuff in her glass. And when she pressed him, the assistant waiter admitted that yes, he did frequently get complaints.

Geez. This would be such a simple fix.

Because otherwise, Primarily Prime Rib is a pretty respectable restaurant, especially at these prices. When was the last time you saw a $6 martini in a casino restaurant? Or a $3 whiskey sour? Or a drink menu that features both a classic martini and a cosmopolitan, a Manhattan and a green-apple martini?

Then there was the $8.95 shrimp cocktail with five large, succulent shrimp -- off-the-boat fresh, just firm enough and quite enjoyable, our only quibble being that the cocktail sauce in the bottom of the glass was too timid.

For entrees we stuck with the prime rib because it's obviously the specialty of the house. A South Point cut ($13.95) was a sufficiently large slab (my guess would be around 7 or 8 ounces) of decently flavored meat. No, it didn't have a wealth of deep, well-aged flavor, but then again, it was $13.95 and perfectly acceptable. And the entree included soup or salad (salad with this one, a pretty good bowl of mixed greens with some other vegetables tossed in) and baked potato or rice pilaf (the rice, with this one; it was about average).

And if the regular prime rib isn't flavorful enough for you, there's always the version that's sold "blackened Cajun style" ($15.95). Because we ordered it rare the blackening wasn't as thorough as it might have been, but the appropriate Cajun spices added lots of heat, which we ameliorated with a bit of creamy horseradish. (And particularly useful was that the creamy horseradish sauce and straight horseradish were served in the same bowl, so we could mix it to our taste.) We chose soup with this one -- a decent if slightly salty cream of chicken as an alternative to the standing split pea -- split pea? -- and a baked potato, which was flaky and creamy and quite satisfying with the sour cream, butter and chives we chose on it.

We skipped dessert, mainly because a big basket of onion rings ($5.95) rounded out our meal, and they were crisp-crusted, just assertive enough and served with a respectable remoulade.

Service throughout was fine, and at times much better. We were impressed, for example, that our waitress, upon overhearing one of us saying, as she walked away, that the red-pepper salad dressing seemed interesting, brought a portion of it in addition to the olive oil and balsamic vinegar we'd ordered.

We also liked the interior, which was sort of steakhouse-y but a little lighter. Some of the booths had backlighting, there was leaded glass across the front wall and a tall architectural feature in the middle of the room -- which may, upon closer inspection, have turned out to be a water feature.

Considering the stuff in our glasses, we didn't want to know.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@reviewjournal.com.