Canal Street

It’s a trend I’ve seen stampeding from the Strip to the suburbs in the past couple of years: Steakhouses claim to serve USDA Prime steaks, and to dry-age them for three weeks or so, and in that way justify (or rationalize) charging for a steak-no-potato-no-salad-no-nothin’ what to an awful lot of people is still a half-day’s pay.

The flies in the ointment are many but start with the fact that many of these steaks don’t taste like they’re Prime, or like they’ve been aged long at all. (And when you consider that only about 3 percent of beef sold in the United States is graded Prime, I have to wonder where all of these steaks are coming from; it brings to mind the old outdoors writer who once told me that since grouper had become more scarce, a lot of restaurants were taking red snapper off the menu). Most of these prime palaces don’t have imaginative cuisine that would require a big-bucks chef, or the type of food that’s particularly labor-intensive to prepare. But despite the emperor’s lack of garb, they still charge (and get) in the range of the hautest of our temples of haute cuisine. It’s starting to get irritating.

Which brings me to Canal Street at The Orleans. Canal Street doesn’t claim to serve Prime beef — breath of fresh air there — but to be honest, there wasn’t much difference between the steak I had there and many of those I’ve had at places that do, except maybe that the service at Canal Street wasn’t as snobby.

My chosen steak was the smaller of the filet mignon cuts (6 ounces, $21), and maybe it helped that I eat this lean and therefore not-so-flavorful cut rare, which means it’s at its best with all of the juices and the fat that hasn’t drained away. The entree included a vegetable du jour that turned out to be sauteed string beans and wax beans and a couple of strips of sweet red pepper. For a potato, I chose the boursin mashed, which were rather too light on the boursin (couldn’t detect any herbs in this herbed cheese at all) but at least had a really great texture, a little chunky here and there.

The Parmesan-crusted veal cutlet Tuscan was also, we thought, rather reasonably priced ($29). When it was served, we discovered that we were getting an even better deal than we’d suspected. Yes, these were cutlets — veal pounded thin — but note the use of the plural; the serving was of two rather large pieces. They’d been carefully sauteed in a breading lightly flavored with Parmesan to a truly gratifying crispness that contrasted nicely with the delicate tenderness of the meat. The dish was finished with a few roasted tomatoes and a light garlic-tinged sauce flecked with capers and olives. We also were served the aforementioned beans, and for our potato choice went with a traditional baked, for which we could choose any combination of butter, sour cream and chives.

But meat isn’t the only thing Canal Street can do well, it seems. An appetizer of oysters Rockefeller ($13) wasn’t prepared in the classic style; it seems nobody uses Pernod anymore, and everyone tops the spinach with a dollop of bechamel, which tends to brown nicely under the broiler and adds a satisfying creamy aspect. And so they were quite nice, the oysters cooked only long enough that they remained tender, the spinach very springlike in its flavor.

Spring flavors abounded as well in the salad of mozzarella and peppers ($9). This wasn’t technically bocconcini, as the dish was advertised, because that refers to smallish balls of cheese and this dish entailed a larger ball of fresh buffalo mozzarella that had been cut up, but we liked it by any name. Lots of crisp field greens provided a rather austere foundation for the creamy/nutty chunks of cheese and the soft but pungent roasted peppers.

With it all we had a bottle of Franciscan Cabernet Sauvignon ($38), which was a 2004, though the wine list offered no vintages. Wine service was fine. Actually, service from our waiter and his assistant was pretty good throughout our dinner, although communication at times was a bit of an issue; I think bilingual workers need to be lingual on both sides of the bi. But the kitchen was another matter. Things were relatively slow that evening, but each of our courses took way too long to arrive.

So we had lots of time to look around and take in Canal Street’s deftly designed interior with its black-and-gold theme carried out in mixed prints. It’s a fairly elegant room, and so it was a little jarring that many of our dishes — including the rich-and-oozy-but-otherwise-average chocolate lava cake ($6.95) we had for dessert — arrived on dishware that was downright Jetsonian in design. There’s a disconnect there.

There’s a disconnect, as well, between Canal Street and many of the steakhouses across the valley that charge $100 more for a comparable dinner for two. But in this case, that was a very good thing.

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.