Modest but satisfying

Last week I dined in two modestly located restaurants and found both satisfying and easy on the budget. Potato Valley Café is the first Vegas representative of a small Eastern-seaboard franchise, while Island Style is resolutely Pacific, specializing in, of all things, Hawaiian-Korean fusion.

Potato Valley Café belongs to an enterprising African-American woman who gets lots of help from her family members. It’s a bright, boxy dining room filled with paintings by local artists, all for sale. It’s also close to Downtown, so the customer mix runs to lawyers and security guards on their lunch breaks, not to mention various clerical types.

This is a no-frills operation, with a simple design that relies on a cement floor and straight-backed wooden chairs. You order at the front register, and pick up from a kitchen counter when your name is called. Plan on a short wait. These cooks are lightning fast.

What makes this place special is the baked potato, brushed with oil and cooked in tinfoil at 30-minute intervals in a special convection oven, until the bottom is crusty and golden brown. The “meat” of the potato inside is fluffy and light, as opposed to mealy, a problem at many steak houses where you’d pay three times as much. The idea is that you order one of several house-made toppings and eat the entire shebang as a meal.

There is much more than just potatoes here, though. Owner Ty Weinert has killer soups of the day she makes on the premises, such as Wednesday’s Jamaican black bean, redolent of cumin and onion, and Friday’s creamy lobster bisque. She also makes her own desserts, like a Swedish almond pound cake, or the tasty marble loaf cake I tried on a recent visit.

I tried the vegetarian combo potato, a delicious mélange of 15 different vegetables and cheese; the classic bacon-and-cheddar potato; and the chicken curry mix, which was bland. My friends and I agreed that the potato was the star of each variation.

All potatoes come with something the restaurant calls Danish-roasted onions, which look like sawdust but taste terrific, and you have the option to order toppings like bacon, ham, sour cream, grilled chicken and several other things on the side. If you’re not in the mood for a potato, the restaurant also serves a number of sandwiches and salads. Best are the Cuban—pork, ham and Swiss on a grilled roll—and a traditional Greek salad.

The Downtown lunch scene is better off for having a place like this.

Island Style

Gina Matsushita moved to Honolulu from her native Korea, and later to Las Vegas in the early ’90s, where she opened Island Style with her husband, Ivan. Like her, Island Style is a fusion of her two worlds. Now in its 16th year, it’s one of those places that I have let slip through the cracks during my tenure at this periodical. Now, the secret is out—because this little Sahara Avenue hole in the wall serves some of the homiest Korean and Hawaiian dishes in town, in a small space filled with wooden tables and island-themed wallpaper. Naturally there are Hawaiian locavore dishes such as fried-rice omelet or loco moco, a breakfast dish made with steamed rice, egg, a hamburger patty and brown gravy.

You can even get Spam and eggs, a dish only a kama’aina could love.

But what I like to eat here are the Korean dishes—mandu, fried dumplings here stuffed with a fatty, garlicky minced pork; jun, battered fish or steak; and even bibim kook soo, a noodle dish laced with kim chee, the notorious fermented stinky Korean cabbage.

Island Style is one of the few local Korean restaurants that actually makes its own kim chee, and what a sight it is. Picture a half cabbage head stained red from chili and garlic. One of the servers will come to your table with garden shears and cut it into chunks. The pickled radishes, cut into symmetrical cubes, will also accompany your entrée. It’s a win-win situation for any Korean-food devotee.

One of the best choices would be the combo: kalbi, grilled short ribs, sizzling hot and redolent of sesame oil; meat jun, like a piece of flank steak in an egg wrapper; and a piece of pounded white-meat chicken, barbecued Korean-style until it’s black around the edges. Try Gina’s oxtail soup, a giant bowl of rich broth stocked with meat and clear noodle, or even Korean cold noodle, also in broth, accompanied by sliced cucumber.

While slurping your noodles or cutting your meat here, try the house tea, an interesting herbal brew made from a root imported from Korea. If you insist, Gina will even make you a teriyaki burger, with a pile of macaroni salad on the side. The brown gravy is $1.25 extra.

Potato Valley Café

801 Las Vegas Blvd. S. 363-7821.

Island Style

3909 W. Sahara Ave. 871-1911.

Suggested dishes: combo, $9.90; oxtail soup, $11.90; bibim kook soo, $8.25; fried-rice omelet, $8.95.