If Las Vegas is little more than a theme park to the average tourist, Planet Hollywood in the Forum Shops at Caesars may be the ideal theme-park restaurant.
When it comes to pure kitsch, no one can compete with a place that offers cardboard cutouts of Carmen Miranda, Arnold, Sly and Frankenstein on the walls, not to mention faux palm trees and a zebra-pattern carpet. If that weren't enough, the restaurant, where screens flash cartoons and glass cases display lifelike replicas of famous movie characters, has been tricked up for Christmas, with mistletoe set next to the palms, and servers clad in stocking caps, straight off the set of A Christmas Carol.
But a theme-park restaurant, even one dedicated to pleasing as large a cross-section of the population as this one, isn't locked into giving its customers theme-park food, and the surprise is that this one doesn't. With all the new competition just down the hall (the newly opened wing of the Forum Shops has Sushi Roku, Joe's Stone Crab, Il Mulino and Boa Steakhouse), a restaurant like this one has to have chops to compete.
With a few exceptions, I liked much of what I ate here, far more than I did when the chain was first starting up in Southern California. The menu has gotten more eclectic, even sophisticated, over the years, as have we, the dining public.
Before getting into the appetizers, the server will probably try to sell you a specialty cocktail like the Terminator, Cool Runnings or the Blue Lagoon, all silly, tropical and cloyingly sweet. Then dig into crispy calamari, really as good a version as I've had in this town: perfectly crunchy, light and fresh tasting, served in a makeshift cheese-crisp bowl with tangy marinara sauce. Blackened shrimp, six to an order, are great, nicely spiced with Cajun stuff and flanked by a Creole mustard remoulade.
Chicken potstickers, also six to an order, are just fine, although I liked them even more without the ginger-mustard dressing. And I was downright blown away by how good the pizzas were: thin, crisp crusted pies with an intelligent amount of cheese and toppings, in the standard incarnations of margherita, pepperoni, Italiano (topped with prosciutto, just as in Italy), and the now inevitable BBQ chicken pizza, a concept lifted from a different star, Wolfgang Puck.
If you order pasta or a grilled item, throw in a garden or Caesar salad for only $3.95, especially the Caesar, crowned with a creamy, pungent dressing and good croutons. Thai shrimp pasta is delicious, albeit a tad on the sweet side, because of a spicy sweet sauce that gets topped with peanuts, green onions and julienned vegetables.
Penne, chicken and broccoli, a portion big enough for King Kong, comes swathed in a basil cream sauce, an altogether pleasant dish. Only a mushy spaghetti pomodoro failed to hit its mark, despite the good house marinara sauce, blended from roma tomatoes.
When I asked my server for a recommendation, he didn't hesitate to push the burgers, which are fairly classic, oversized and tasty. One of my guests asked for the classic half-pounder, specifying medium and getting it medium-rare. I'd go for the mushroom, onion and Swiss burger myself, but whatever the choice, a mountain of french fries will be included.
The two main dishes I tried were fine. The roasted half-chicken was properly bronzed with juicy meat and crisp skin, plus a pile of green beans and scoop of dry mashed potatoes that could use more butter. The New York steak wasn't especially tender, but full-flavored. A price tag of $22.95, while fair by today's market prices, seems on the high side here.
For dessert, you can't improve on the hand-dipped milk shakes—especially since the other desserts tend to be overly sweet. The white-chocolate bread pudding is practically inedible, sitting in a Jim Beam bourbon sauce that is virtually simple syrup. Better is the strawberry shortcake, a pound cake served with whipped cream, berries and gooey strawberry syrup best applied with moderation. But moderation, it must be said, isn't what sells tickets to spaceship Planet Hollywood.