Hash House A Go Go, not to be confused with a considerably less elaborate, local breakfast joint called Hash House, serves mammoth portions of what it calls "twisted farm food" on platters that require the strength of a plow horse just to lift. It is, all at once, the perfect metaphor for Vegas itself: colorful, excessive and amusingly tawdry.
The restaurant comes to us from San Diego, where it has achieved both popular and critical success. The Vegas restaurant is essentially a red shack with an interior composed of corrugated metal; tables with shiny, stainless-steel surfaces; a deconstructed look where the overheard ducts are exposed and painted black; and a small-scale grain silo smack in the middle of the dining room, with the name Milford, Indiana, painted on it.
That's the hometown of the chef, a culinary-school grad named Andy Beardsley, who was written up by Bryan Miller of the New York Times as Craig Beardsley. (Andy is his middle name, or so I was informed by one of the waitresses.)
In any case, even if you aren't enamored with his concepts, you'll have to admit they are original. Picture the chef's big, ol', crispy, hand-hammered pork tenderloin sandwich, with the girth of a half-ton pickup truck tire, spilling out from between a Bunyanesque whole-wheat bun. I had to laugh when I saw the look on one woman's face as it was brought to her dining companion, a John Goodman-sized male. He ate it all. Ah, to be young again.
Or picture the look on my face when I received one of the daily specials, something called the Nappanee Indiana hash: crispy potatoes, flank steak, fresh asparagus and corn, and smoked mozzarella, all crowned with scrambled eggs and served with a fresh biscuit.
What the menu won't tell you is that the biscuit would wear a size- 8 hat if it were a human head, and that the dish, albeit tasty, is sort of anti-gestalt in that the sum is not equal to its parts. Sure, all the components are good quality and taste good individually. But when they are all glommed together into a giant cast-iron skillet, they lose their individual appeal.
Apparently, my opinion is in the minority. Everyone looks ecstatically happy with the food, and many of these dishes are, I must admit, delicious. One of my favorites are the crab cakes, served at dinner only. These are fat and tasty, drizzled with a perfect pink remoulade, and more's the pity they aren't served in sandwiches here as they would be on the East Coast, or better yet, in one of the restaurant's good biscuit Benedicts.
Anyone who likes eggs Benedict has come to the right place. Here they can be had with hardwood-smoked bacon, fresh tomato, red-pepper cream and spinach, with a bionic-sized piece of sage fried chicken, with house-smoked salmon and fresh asparagus, or even with the coup de grâce, that outlander-sized piece of breaded pork tenderloin.
That pork sandwich is listed under the Indiana Favorite portion of the menu, and that is where to find the famous, 1-pound, stuffed burgers, essentially two patties with a stuffing on a fresh bun, where the fillings could be fresh mushrooms and Swiss, crumbled blue cheese or other choice.
Chicken potpie comes under a pastry shell the size of a beach umbrella, concealing tasty ingredients such as roasted chicken, shaved sweet corn, red-skinned potatoes and good pan gravy. Griddled hot meat loaf is served on a split biscuit with a porcini mushroom-cream, a flurry of fried leeks and a clump of mashed potatoes, but it would be better without its cloak of smoked mozzarella masking its beefy flavor.
The star dish might just be the sage fried chicken, stacked with a bacon waffle drizzled with a sticky, sweet, hot, maple-caramel reduction and crowned with more fried leeks. Whew! One of the only sane diners on the day I lunched here was eating just a cup of chicken barley soup which is, for the record, bigger than what most restaurants call a bowl and excellent, with a homemade stock and lots of shredded chicken.
I really didn't have the steam for dessert but I managed a bite or two of the Snickers bread pudding (really good) and the fruit cobbler (more like a fruit crisp with a granola rather than a biscuit topping—a puzzlement since there is no biscuit shortage in this place). I should add that the drink menu is a real standout here, especially non-alcoholic fare such as a super-refreshing, fresh-pressed kiwi strawberry lemonade, and the lime ginger cooler, which I could drink any time at all.
Frankly, I'm baffled as to why people are so crazy about the giant portion thing, but if you look at places such as the Cheesecake Factory and Claim Jumper, it's apparent that this is what many want. If that shoe fits you, then run, don't walk, to Hash House A Go Go.
I plan to crawl.