Friday, May 16, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Time Warp

Lady Luck's Burgundy Room relies on throwback dishes, but mixes in a few surprises

The Burgundy Room at the Lady Luck is decorated, appropriately enough, in lots of burgundy -- including burgundy upholstery and linens. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

I'll have the Cherries Jubilee."

There's something deliciously '60s about that statement. Can't you just picture Samantha and Darrin Stephens or Carol and Mike Brady ordering Cherries Jubilee for an anniversary dinner before they return home to their twin beds?

Cherries Jubilee was one of those dishes that we thought was luxe, back when we thought words like luxe sounded sophisticated instead of just stupid -- and, more importantly, before we learned with the guidance of a line of ground-breaking chefs (to whom we owe a monumental debt of gratitude) that truly good food, even sophisticated food, doesn't usually come by way of a cart that delivers flames to the table.

Today, about the only places you'll find a throwback such as Cherries Jubilee in Las Vegas is in restaurants that are themselves throwbacks. But those throwbacks succeed, God bless 'em, because they're the brick-and-mortar equivalent of comfort food. In them we can sit and listen to Sinatra and Bennett and Martin on the sound system and watch while a guy in a tux prepares a dish such as Cherries Jubilee, and we can think about a time before people started doing things like combining scallops with white chocolate and mead (which I actually ate once, this restaurant-reviewing business having its occasional occupational hazards).

While we certainly thank God or Mother Nature or whoever we think rules the universe that the culinary arts have evolved in America as they have, sometimes we long for a dish such as Cherries Jubilee, which, if it's done right, possesses its own particular charms.

And it's done right at the Burgundy Room at the Lady Luck downtown (where the Cherries Jubilee is $6.95 per person, for two or more). Yeah, they don't use fresh cherries, fresh cherries being all but impossible to get most of the year. But they prepare these cherries exquisitely, simmering them gently with butter and brandy until the sugar caramelizes and the cherries are plumped, and then simmering them further with Grand Marnier for an orange note that complements the cherries quite nicely, at once sharpening and freshening the flavor. And then they serve them over a good-quality vanilla ice cream, in glass dishes straight out of Jane Jetson's cupboard.

Yes, the show is part of it, and even that's kind of extra cool at the Burgundy Room, where our waiter, who prepared our Cherries Jubilee, dipped into something -- sugar, maybe? -- and sprinkled it onto the flaming cherries, creating a fireworks-like shower that sparkled all the way to the ceiling. (And OK, I was thinking about the fireproofing of said ceiling, but things turned out just fine, thank you very much.)

The Burgundy Room fits into the throwback category like a foot in a sock. It's dark, for one thing, and everything's burgundy, true to the name, and there's the music and the tuxes. And its menu offers all that other luxe throwback stuff like lobster bisque and Beef Wellington and Chateaubriand and even, bless their hearts, Baked Alaska.

But true throwbacks, their charms notwithstanding, can offer too much of the same old same old, and here the Burgundy Room hangs a left. You want something new and fresh? How about Cajun fried lobster with caramel sauce ($32.95)?

At first blush, that may seem to belong in the same group as the chocolate-covered scallops (which actually weren't as bad as they sound). But while I'm generally not much of a fan of fried lobster, which tends to be an exercise in wretched excess, this was an interesting dish. The lobster chunks had been fried briefly at a high temperature so that the grease stayed away and the spicy coating was crisped nicely. The caramel sauce, which was relatively light, balanced those spices so that we ended up on the right spot on the sweet-hot continuum.

Even better was the Steak au Poivre Vert ($23.95). Steak au Poivre's another throwback, and it's been interpreted 127,328 ways through the decades. Some are too hot. Some are too tame. This one was just right. The "vert" is important here, because that indicates green peppercorns in use, and the chef managed to balance the green and black pepper perfectly before he prepared the steak rare, as ordered, and gussied it up with a middlin' Bordelaise and whisked in some cream. So we had texture, we had just a little bit of peppery heat, but most of all we had lots of flavor.

Accompanying both dishes: a mix of baby vegetables, sautéed lightly, and roasted potatoes. Rolls were accompanied by a self-respecting tapenade, for another shot of updated flavor. Soup or salad is included and we had one of each -- a cream of mushroom that had nice texture but was oversalted, and a salad that was a good crisp mix of lettuces but didn't have much of the touted seafood beyond a bit of crab meat. My advice to the kitchen would be to skip it rather than disappoint.

There was one more innovative note: Scampi de Crevettes ($8.95), a twist on the classic in that the crustaceans involved were prawns, which had been left in their shells and grilled. The prawns were rather more strongly flavored than they should have been -- which can be indicative of a lot of things -- but the grilling imparted a welcome textural variation.

There were a few flaws, to be sure. But the Burgundy Room's chef seems to understand well that when it comes to the nostalgia of the old days and the welcome freshness of today, sometimes, the twain can meet.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are unannounced and done anonymously at Review-Journal expense.