Dad’s Grilled Cheese

If Dad is kitchen-challenged and can cook only one dish for the family when Mom's not around, odds are pretty good, for some reason known only to the ages, that it'll be grilled cheese. So a restaurant called Dad's Grilled Cheese -- specializing in, yes, grilled cheese, and decorated with framed photos of legendary dads from Ben Cartwright to Homer Simpson -- sounds like genius.

But if your dad is/was a master of the grilled cheese -- as opposed to, say, an accomplished culinarian -- you know only too well the limits of his repertoire. He butters the bread, puts the cheese in the middle, cooks it in a skillet or sandwich grill or panini press, and that's it. He might alter the cheese or use a different bread, but Dad's grilled cheese doesn't really offer much in the way of variety.

Dad's Grilled Cheese tries to overcome that obstacle. While there's your dad's standard offering -- called The Apprentice ($3.69) and available with your choice from among 10 cheeses plus soy, and nine different breads -- there also are numerous variations and options to build your own grilled cheese with ingredients such as jalapenos, sauerkraut and chorizo. Although, hopefully, not together.

On a recent lunchtime visit, we immediately fell into the Dad's-grilled-cheese-is-boring trap and, looking for variety, ended up with The DJ ($6.99) and The Boxer ($8.99), with mixed results.

The DJ is served on grilled rye bread and contains corned beef or pastrami (we chose the latter), sauerkraut and Swiss and Gruyere cheeses, and it was very good. The bread wasn't overly greasy, the pastrami was flavorful and reasonably lean, and everything melded together (and melted together) quite nicely.

The Boxer is served on a french-bread hoagie-sized roll. Here we had beef, provolone cheese, onions and peppers and garlic-peppercorn mayonnaise. But there were a few snags: The roll wasn't grilled and compressed on a sandwich press, which we'd expect in the case of a grilled cheese. The garlic-peppercorn mayonnaise didn't have enough garlic or peppercorn to stand out. And the beef tasted of the refrigerator.

And you might have noticed that what we had here was a Reuben and a Philly cheesesteak. Yes, those were the choices we made, but we expected more creativity from the menu. There's a tuna melt, a quesadilla, a cheeseburger, a Monte Cristo, something that's tantamount to a pimento-cheese sandwich with corn chips for crunch, and something else that's tantamount to huevos rancheros, but on bread instead of tortillas. There are a couple of offbeat selections, including one with salami and pepperoncinis with mozzarella and provolone on grilled Italian bread, but we expected more creativity.

As is shown by the desserts, for example. We never made it that far -- this was lunch, after all -- but a choice of vanilla, peanut butter, coconut or mint cream-cheese filling spread between slices of chocolate pound cake, grilled in butter and topped with chocolate is pretty darn creative.

We also indulged in a couple of side dishes, the french fries ($1.49) and onion rings ($2.49), and again found a mixed bag. The french fries were crisp, hot and very good, and the onion rings were crisp and good when they were hot, but as they cooled, the coating revealed itself to be oil-soaked.

Service was fine. This is a counter-service restaurant -- which apparently was news to a couple who started to angrily storm out because nobody was waiting on them -- but the food arrived promptly and baskets were cleared as soon as they were emptied.

I basically liked Dad's Grilled Cheese, as far as it goes. But with Dad dedicating an entire restaurant to his oeuvre, I think it could go so much farther.

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.