I've been strolling through The District, Green Valley's attractive, new walk-through mall, and I like what I see: an REI, a Brighton Collectibles, the snazzy cooking store Williams-Sonoma, and a bunch of cool, new restaurants such as Kennedy, partly owned by Andre Agassi, and a California barbecue chain called Lucille's Smokehouse Bar-B-Cue.
I'm a fan of Lucille's, in particular. It belongs to Craig Hoffman, an affable, big brotherly fellow who I remember from when I lived in Long Beach. Hoffman owns several restaurants called Hof's Hut in that area, upscale coffee shops famous for muffins the size of birdbaths. He also started this, his newest concept, in that area. The Green Valley Lucille's is his first Nevada venture.
Portions are enormous at Lucille's as well, in the not-very-old tradition of places like Claim Jumper (also a California import), and crowds are getting to be the same size, too. I applaud a spotless, comfortable, nicely designed neighborhood 'cue joint like this as much as anybody, but there are some kinks to iron out.
For one thing, the kitchen can be tortoise-like, and for another, the young, fresh-faced staff isn't the best organized. As Hoffman says, the challenge is finding a reliable staff, since most of this food is no problem, tried and tested recipes that work almost to a fault. Getting dishes to the table is a different issue.
Here's the good news. Lucille's has already, it seems, filled a niche, both as a lunch joint and as one of the city's best barbecue restaurants. Meats are slowly smoked in a huge Southern Pride smoking box, big enough to house a Mini-Cooper. Hoffman uses real hickory, expensive but worth it, so the meats are perfumed with sweet smoke.
Barbecue, I should mention, is the opposite of grilling. Barbecue is slow. Grilling is fast. Slow cooking results in fall-apart-tender meats like tri-tip sirloin, baby back ribs, surprisingly flavorful ham, and bionic-sized chickens that sacrifice a degree of taste for their size. I'm already fantasizing about my next meal there.
The restaurant's look, though mildly generic and somewhat sterile, is pleasant. The best room to dine in is a porch-like enclosure, complete with twirling overhead fans and a retro green-and-cream linoleum floor. The main dining room is nice, too, all high, red vinyl booths and even taller metal coatracks alongside them.
On all tables are a pair of bottled barbecue sauces, one regular, the other hot and spicy. You probably won't need them. Most meats come to the table heavily sauced, a gambit that practically all chain barbecue restaurants exercise. Purists like myself would prefer the meat without sauce. When the meat is good—and these are—with pink smoke rings for the slow cooking, I don't like to mask them.
Things get off to a bang-up start with a basket of hot, buttery baking-powder biscuits, served with a ramekin of apple butter. Old-fashioned lemonade and iced tea are served in open mason jars.
Since the portions are so big, order appetizers to share. My two favorites are a flame-roasted artichoke served with a delicious roasted garlic mayonnaise, and a fried green tomato dish with thick, crunchy breading and red pepper cream. The giant salads can be shared, too, if meats are to follow. Fried-chicken salad has the added bonus of pecans, and a cool ranch dressing. Blackened shrimp salad gets a pile of roasted sweet corn and diced avocado, to go with the usual other suspects.
As to these meats, the baby backs and tri-tip are sheer poetry. The tri-tip has a crunchy outer crust and a tender, pink middle. The ribs are totally penetrated by the sweet scent of hickory. The chicken needs to be smokier, though, and the beef rib I ate, while tasty, was a bit gristly and tough.
Side dishes are superb, especially an oversized cob of blackened sweet corn, baked beans redolent of chunked ham and served in a small crock, peanut slaw with just the right amount of crushed peanut, and crunchy shoestring fries with a light batter adding extra crunch and not too much salt.
At lunch, try a near-perfect fried catfish sandwich, but pass on the generic hot-link sandwich, a no-soul hot dog I'd guess is Farmer John. But for dinner, a jambalaya that would make a Louisiana grandmother proud has the proper spicing, and Southern fried chicken with pan gravy and garlic mashed potatoes is unimpeachably fine.
If there is room for dessert, I cannot resist the old-fashioned banana pudding, laced with 'Nilla Wafers and topped with gobs of thick whipped cream. It took me three tries to experience the sweet, cloying bread pudding, though. On a first visit, the waitress didn't bring it at all, and on the second, a different server brought me the peach cobbler, instead.
Maybe they were just trying to vector me in a different direction, but I suspect the staff is just wet behind the ears. Oh, well. You won't leave hungry, as long as you don't have to rush off.