If the general restaurant-going public ever attends a restaurant convention, fancy food show or any similar type of food industry gathering, they'd get a better idea about what comes to the table in commercial restaurants.
At these shows, there are countless booths displaying wares for sampling, the latest and greatest in pizza crusts, packaged soups, frozen hors d'oeuvres, heat-and-serve items, new types of flavoring agents, sauces, salad dressing, drinks and desserts.
I'm not saying there isn't real cooking going on in most restaurants. Indeed, as you go up the price ladder, the actual in-house preparation and cooking increases to the point where there are many high-end restaurants that do not use any of these products at all.
But in the case of the PT's Gold, the upscale arm of a chain of local pubs where the grub is better than one really has a right to expect, you get a combination of clever cooking and the use of products obtained from outside—salad dressings and frozen appetizers being a few.
The chain recently acquired the services of the talented Chef Joe Romano, once exec chef at Charlie Palmer's Aureole, and just before signing on here, chef at the short-lived JW's in the Rio. There is no doubt Romano is gifted, and no one would question that he is working under speed here. So the question becomes, has he made an impact? Briefly, he has.
It's not quite that simple, though, unless you know exactly what he's done and what to order when you eat here. In practice, I visited the location on Sunset Road, just across from the runways of McCarran Airport. It's quite cool to sit here, look at the TVs over the bar, and occasionally shoot a glance at planes taking off and landing.
The décor is quite straightforward. There is an aviation theme: a bunch of black-and-white photographs depicting something to do with airplanes hanging on the walls and high, lacquered tables to sit at while you dangle your legs from matching stools. (I'm the feet-on-the-floor type, so excuse me if I don't gush about the seating arrangements.)
A team of young, attractive women perform service and they are, by and large, friendly, charming and efficient. Overall, the place is generic and pleasant, and the sound system plays lots of music from the '70s and '80s, nice for codgers like me.
Romano's additions are the best things to eat on the extensive menu. He's one-upped places like Buffalo Wild Wings and Wing Stop with his eight types of chicken wings, all delicious. My favorite is Gold Fever, which has a tangy mustardy crust. Baked Italian, redolent of seasoned bread crumbs, and Spicy Chili Lime are two more not to be missed, perfect with a draught of ice-cold beer.
Popcorn chicken—a pile of boneless, breaded nuggets served on top of shoestring fries in a paper cone—tastes a bit like Gold Fever, which is to say I like it. Another great thing to accompany beer are sliders: four bite-sized cheeseburgers topped with grilled onions, a pickle and cheddar cheese. For $6.99, you can't beat them.
Romano's been busy with other items, as well. He does a nice crab- cake sandwich—composed of what appears to be mostly back-fin crabmeat on a hoagie roll—and a nice Caesar chicken wrap. Thin-crust pizzas are about the best pub pizzas in town, made with honey wheat dough and an excellent whole-milk mozzarella cheese, although the sauce is only so-so.
There are salads, such as a chopped Cobb, a Cajun-style ahi tuna salad with spicy ginger dressing, and a New York steak salad that suffers from the fact that cut steak quickly loses its heat unless concealed beneath the greens, which in this case it is not.
Now that you know what to order, here's what to pass on:
Frozen egg rolls. Unappealingly bland, clearly commercial chili served in a bread bowl. Lifeless barbecued ribs cooked in advance and finished on a grill, slathered with cloying, sticky, sweet red sauce. Omelets, unless you like your eggs extra well-done.
For a very non-pub-like dessert, try the PT-Zookie, either a chocolate-chip or white chocolate-and-macadamia cookie baked in an individual cast-iron pan and topped with ice cream and one of my personal bête noires, aerosol whipped cream, which disintegrates on contact with anything hot.
Look, I'm not knocking PT's Gold because it isn't a gourmet restaurant. One has to consider the price point, and here it is more than reasonable. Besides, the type of clientele normally in residence at PT's—young males wearing their baseball caps backward and the usual component of after-work pub-crawlers—could care less if chili comes from a plastic pouch, or whipped cream is beaten to order.
Overlooking my curmudgeonly objections, what we have here is, well, the real deal.