Bourbon Grill at El Gancho

Set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance

Walking in from the street, the first aroma to hit you is, of course, chlorine. Yes, this is a restaurant attached to a fitness center, but the pool smell is a little disorienting for diners coming in from the street and not from aquarobics. Passing the bar and walking into the white stucco and dark vigas of the dining room feels oddly like, “Welcome to the Lido Deck!” Witness: Silver-haired couples in high-backed wooden booths happily finishing up dinner at 5:45 pm. Waiters singing “Happy Birthday” to a foursome of Golden Girls. The simple surf-and-turf menu, which could have been swiped from the Pacific Princess circa 1983. My dude is the one who said it: It feels like we’re on a cruise!

We've never been on a cruise, but we watched a lot of Love Boat episodes in the '70s. Since then, cruise ships seem to have gotten a lot fancier. They have restaurants designed by Jacques Pépin and other food TV stars, serving farm-to-table ingredients, champagne tasting menus and sushi lollipops.

But this is not what the Bourbon Grill (104 Old Las Vegas Hwy.) is about. If a fat slice of juicy prime rib and a baked potato sounds like your idea of heaven, you could be a very happy (and cheap) date at the Bourbon Grill, the restaurant replacing Steaksmith at El Gancho Fitness Swim and Racquet Club. If you think food is an adventure and you like new flavors, you may be disappointed to find there are no uncharted waters here.

I'm an adventure eater, so I generally find steakhouses overpriced and underwhelming. I can buy more marbled beef than most steakhouses offer (Kaune's sells USDA Prime New York strips and ribeyes; Costco in Albuquerque has whole tenderloins, whole rib roasts and often other prime cuts), and all I have to do is add salt and pepper and cook over a hot grill.

The exception is prime rib (which doesn't actually mean USDA Prime meat). An order of prime rib is a slice from a whole rib roast. Outside of major holidays, this is not an undertaking most people are willing to tackle at home, so it's worth going out for.

My dude loves prime rib, and he loved his dinner at the Bourbon Grill. He was thrilled with the iceberg wedge salad, drenched in thick but mild blue cheese dressing and generously garnished with crisp bacon. He practically giggled when the waiter said they could load his baked potato with sour cream, green onions, bacon bits and cheese. He couldn't even finish the thick slabs of medium-rare meat heaped on his plate.

And we were there on a Monday, when the special is a 12-ounce prime rib for $15. That is a steal. The regular menu includes a 14-ounce cut ($20) and a 20-ounce "Bill's cut" ($29).

I was disappointed by the bland pot roast ($13), a big bowl of big hunks of tender beef, skin-on potato and carrots in a light sauce, sprinkled with fresh rosemary. It was very filling. But it lacked the depth of flavor that a piece of beef takes on after slowly braising for hours with vegetables and seasonings. This pot roast tasted like its ingredients only met each other recently but hadn't yet become close friends. The pale sauce was thin and not beefy enough, so the rosemary easily overpowered it. The potatoes were overcooked, while the carrots were too firm to yield to a spoon.

There's a good amount of seafood on this menu, but there was nothing that tempted us for the price: jumbo shrimp cocktail ($17), oysters Rockefeller ($17), seafood stuffed mushroom cap ($14).

As at most steakhouses, the meats are expensive. The 16-ounce ribeye is $50, the 8-ounce filet mignon $29, Colorado lamb chops $35, the 14-ounce pork chop $22. Each comes with a green salad, potato and choice of Bourbon cream, red chile Hollandaise, cherry demi-glace or green chile sauce. Surf and turf is $50. Chateaubriand for two, carved tableside, is $100.

Happy hour (4-6 pm) seems like a good time to try out the Bourbon Grill. The drink specials are attractive, and appetizers from the dinner menu are marked down to $6.

The bar menu offers well-priced snacks that are simple (steak nachos, burgers, quesadillas) but would do a great job of soaking up booze. (To answer your question, yes, there are more than two dozen bourbons on offer, but nothing bourbon drinkers haven't heard of: Bulleit, Makers Mark, Knob Creek, Bookers, Basil Hayden, Wild Turkey.)

The bar menu is also available in the dining room, which has an amazing view looking back at the city lights. You can imagine they are the streetlights of a recent port of call, twinkling as the Pacific Princess slowly glides out to sea.

AT A GLANCE
Open:
4-9 pm Sunday-Wednesday;
4-10 pm Thursday-Saturday
Best Bet: Monday night prime rib special
Don't Miss:
Happy hour and the view

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