Cabo Mexican Restaurant’s chips-and-salsa bar a fantastic complement to tasty entrees

I'm sympathetic to people who can't cook no matter how hard they try, but I've never understood why anybody couldn't cook rice.

It's just not that difficult, and it doesn't require any special equipment.

Many of my friends insist that you have to have a rice cooker, but I've never had a problem with a saucepan and a lid. You get it hot enough, you lower the temperature and cover and cook and voila -- whether it's regular long-grain, Arborio, Basmati, jasmine or even wild rice (which isn't actually rice at all), it's nice and kind of fluffy, the grains tender, without a starchy core.

Why, then, was the rice at Cabo overly soft, soggy -- even mushy? Beats me, because everything else served to us was top-notch.

Take, for example, an entree of spicy rock-shrimp tacos ($11.99). If you're not familiar with rock shrimp, they're a broader, firmer creature than a tiger shrimp, with a mild flavor that many people consider closer to lobster. In this case they had been battered lightly in a slightly spicy mixture, then fried quickly and scattered in pretty impressive profusion across three little flour tortillas that were thick and pliable, likely housemade. A few shreds of cabbage, a nice-sized wedge of avocado and a drizzle of fairly kickin' lime-cilantro sauce completed things in style.

Black beans on the side (refried was the other option) were tame but satisfying. The rice was soggy.

Steak fajitas ($12.99) were exceptionally good, thanks to a marinade that left the strips of beef not only tender but also very flavorful, with a clear burst of lime. The sizzle platter was accompanied by larger flour tortillas (corn also were available) than those with our tacos, plus a very presentable guacamole, sour cream and a well-executed pico de gallo. The refried beans we chose with this one were slightly better than average. The rice was, yup, still soggy.

But the pico de gallo brings us to the chips-and-salsa bar, and the reason we ended up not ordering an appetizer. Told there was a bit of a wait when we stopped at the hostess station, we proceeded to the bar, where the affable barkeep told us to help ourselves at the adjacent counter. There we found 10 -- count 'em -- 10 salsas, plus a warm bean dip and a warm "mata" salsa that appeared to be based on chipotles.

The chips were decent enough, but most of the salsas we sampled were absolutely fantastic, and clearly not just token efforts (and since we sampled so many, as it turned out, the reason we skipped a starter).

The avocado-tomatillo was perfect, as was one that contained strips of nopales, and a couple of variations on a pico theme. The only clinker, we thought, was the fruit salsa. While we tend to look at fruit salsas as a welcome change, this one contained lots of melon, which was weird, somehow, with the chips and the faint bit of fire. But we did have nine -- make that 11 -- other choices.

Service throughout was fine, the hostess and bartender particularly pleasant. We reveled in the atmosphere of Cabo, which is one of a set of Mexican restaurants Station Casinos has recently opened at all of their "Station" properties. It's appropriately Mexican-American, almost Disneyesque in its patented stucco-and-saltillo design, and easy on the eyes.

The Cabos are fairly new additions, and they seem to be catching on; while we were dining, two large birthday celebrations were going on around us.

And no wonder. With the exception of the soggy rice, Cabo gave them much to celebrate.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or email her at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com.