At Mingo, simplicity meets complexity

The decor of Mingo Kitchen & Lounge is simple. It’s in an older building in the downtown Arts District, and the owners took a sort of minimalist approach, cloaking what I assume are old walls, pipes and ventilation shafts with black fabric and paint. They added black upholstered banquettes and striking accents such as silver-painted, oversized, ornate picture frames and dozens of glass objects shaped like vastly oversized raindrops, which form a sort of high curtain wall between restaurant and bar. There’s also an L-shaped bar that’s open to the outdoors, which we assume is particularly popular during First Fridays in the pleasant weather such as that we’ve been having lately.

But the simplicity doesn’t extend to the menu, and in this case, that’s a good thing.

Consider the open-faced sandwich of fontina, Gruyere, bacon, avocado, arugula and sauteed onions, piled on brioche and topped with a fried egg ($9). It was an elaborate construction, and a little difficult to sample all at once, but when we could, we appreciated the contrasting flavors and textures — the mellow fontina, sharper Gruyere, smoky bacon, earthy avocado, pleasantly bitter arugula and the sweet onions, all of it chewy, crunchy and creamy — and the brioche that was up to the task of supporting it all.

Arugula was a surprising star in another dish, the garlic fries ($8). We were attracted to this one by the promise of fresh-cut fries drizzled with garlic butter and minced garlic, and indeed that was all there in abundance, but the bed of arugula on which the fries rested absorbed the excess garlic and butter and provided a lovely second course of sorts. Arugula has never been so sinfully appealing.

The skirt steak salad ($16) was tempting because the menu promised that the meat would be curry-crusted, and indeed it was; as curry has such an affinity with beef, it was a well-considered choice, and the medium-rare steak (as ordered) was exceptionally tender. It also played quite nicely off the rest of the dish, a big tangle mostly of fresh spinach with some arugula mixed in, plus blue cheese crumbles, candied pecans, a balsamic reduction and a couple of cherry tomatoes, with a cup of horseradish cream on the side. One flaw: the three smallish onion rings were greasy and limp and brought nothing to the party.

With that exception, though, our meal at Mingo was spot on. Simplicity contrasts with complexity, and in this case, it works.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Email Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories at reviewjournal.com and bestoflasvegas.com, and follow @HKRinella on Twitter.