David Clawson Restaurant definitely worth the trip

It seems that just about everybody’s doing small plates/tapas these days. But I can’t think of anybody doing them better than David Clawson Restaurant.

If you haven’t heard of Clawson — the restaurant or the chef — it’s not surprising. Clawson the restaurant is on Bicentennial Parkway in Henderson, which is pretty far off the beaten path for anybody who doesn’t live in Anthem. It’s a fairly unprepossessing strip-center spot, although the interior is streamlined, attractive and most of all comfortable, with a really cool 20-seat “chef’s counter” in the center (sort of a sushi bar without the sushi).

Clawson the chef has an impressive background, but not one that thrust him into the limelight, and he seems as low-key as his restaurant. But oh, the man can cook.

The restaurant’s menu, as I said, adheres to the small plates/tapas style, but in an unusual way. Instead of listing cold tapas and hot tapas or poultry tapas and meat tapas, it lists a food item, such as bread, vegetable or lamb, one dish for each signifier, with description and price. The plates, which are sized for two to share, come out as they’re ready, rather than in a set order of courses.

Still, it was fitting that our bread was first to arrive, so we could munch and talk as we waited on the rest of the dishes. It was a small loaf of milk-potato bread ($4) with a gentle crust and fine crumb, accompanied by luxurious plugra butter sprinkled with red Hawaiian salt.

And although we’re talking luxury I may as well go straight to the liver, which was foie gras atop sliced pear ($18), accompanied by shallot “jam.” The austerity of the pear was the perfect foil to the richness of the liver, and flavor and textural contrasts abounded.

Crab was a crabcake ($14) classic but not ordinary in large part because of the size of the crab lumps and the absolute dearth of anything that wasn’t crab, the paper-thin crisp crust yielding to a creamy interior.

Duck was, as we might have expected, leg confit ($11), but what we wouldn’t have expected was elements of blueberry, lemon and honey adding a graceful touch.

Beef was tenderloin ($16), perfectly medium rare, perfectly tender and buttery and all that good stuff, and rescued from predictability by the sambal chili sauce (which our server advised we could “flip right off” if we didn’t like spicy, but we do) atop it, the trumpet mushrooms alongside it and a drizzle of balsamic reduction.

And how could we resist the category of chocolate — especially since the patelike bar ($8) with crunchy base rested on a swirl of tangerine coulis, the distinctive flavor of which was perfect with the chocolate.

Service throughout was absolutely excellent, our server friendly and funny and informative.

And there’s another unique aspect of David Clawson Restaurant that I must not neglect to mention: The back of the menu lists the categories again, but with a wine suggestion for each instead of the dish description. Wines are available in 2-ounce or 5-ounce pours as well as in whole bottles, so if you wanted to, you could try a pairing with each dish.

As we headed back out into the darkness, the lights of the valley about the only signs of life, we reflected on the location of a Strip-quality restaurant so far from the Strip. For those in the area, it’s a marvelous find. For the rest of is, though, it’s definitely worth the trip.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Email Heidi Knapp Rinella at Hrinella@reviewjournal.com, or call 702-383-0474. Follow @HKRinella on Twitter.