Strip House

They had me at the lagniappe -- although the scallops didn't exactly hurt matters.

As you know, a lagniappe, or amuse-bouche, is a little something extra (a scoop, a little dish, a cupful) that some chefs present to all customers, usually just before the meal begins. It tends to be a microcosm of the chef's repertoire, something that's not on the menu but offers an interesting -- even whimsical or funky -- reflection of the man or woman in charge.

At Strip House on the evening of our visit, the lagniappe took the form of a small cup of soup. The whimsy: It was smoked-potato soup, definitely not something you'd find in most culinary lexicons and a most inspired treatment, with a sprinkling of minced herbs to keep the smokiness from getting ahead of itself. And with it the chef grabbed our attention right out of the gate.

Then it was time for our starter to arrive, a shared (and listed that way on the menu) plate billed as warm garlic bread with Gorgonzola fondue ($12). What it was in reality was a big pool of melted Gorgonzola topped with thick fingers of garlic bread, so basically you had to pick up these pieces of bread out of the cheese and dip them into more cheese and try to eat them without getting parts of it all over the place. And, yeah, that was just fine with me, because what I really wanted to do was stick my face right in there.

At about the same time, the plate of scallops arrived. We hadn't ordered scallops, we told the runner, who in return looked very confused. And then our waiter swooped in out of nowhere -- this guy was so good at multitasking, I think in a previous life he must have been a working mother -- to tell us that no, the scallops were ours; they were a bonus for locals. And let me point out that the only reason he knew we were locals wasn't because he resorted to the "So, where are you folks from?" that never fails to irritate those of us who live here, but because when he asked if we wanted bottled or house water, we said we'd take Lake Mead while we had a chance, and that led to a whole discussion about the state of things, so there we were.

But back to the scallops: They were wonderful, tender, gently seared and served with a very interesting edamame succotash. So, locals, remember that if you go in.

Strip House is, as you might guess from the name, primarily a steakhouse, but I'm going to tell you about the Maine lobster linguine ($33) first, because this was one heck of a Maine lobster linguine. There were lots of big chunks of lobster, and at $33 – this is on the Strip, remember -- we got our money's worth. The lobster itself was appropriately sea-breeze sweet, but one of the best things about the dish is that instead of being weighed down with a sauce heavy on the cream or the ubiquitous sherry, it had the sprightly, springlike and nicely acidic flavor of lemon, which tends to have quite an affinity for lobster.

Our waiter said the restaurant's most popular steak is the bone-in New York strip ($54), and that sounded about right. Not the price, of course -- I still think steak prices in our tourism-corridor restaurants bear no relationship to reality, especially our current economic reality -- but the size, plus the fact that we like the extra flavor that the bone contributes, even if it's subtle. It was perfectly medium-rare, nicely charred -- everything a high-end steakhouse should deliver.

We did the steakhouse-sides thing, too, with creamed spinach. Strip House bumps it up with black-truffle creamed spinach, and on the evening of our visit offered an extra-special bacon-and-black-truffle creamed spinach ($15). And while I'm not going to pretend we could detect the truffle with everything else that was going on, we loved it.

And we loved Strip House, and may make it our new special-occasion Strip restaurant. A large part of that was because of our waiter, Jason, who was knowledgeable and witty. A large part of it was because of the restaurant's decor, which is Vintage Bordello, but in a tasteful way -- if you can believe that -- the red flocked wallpaper covered with prints (many of them backlit) that were sexy in a more innocent time, before we were besieged by the Snookis of the world.

Ah, for the good old days.

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.