At Harrah’s, ’37 Steak tries to lure high rollers

In 1937 — the year of Disney’s Snow White, the Hindenburg, and Kansas native Amelia Earhart’s disappearance — the first Harrah’s Casino opened in Reno, Nevada. It was a bingo parlor and didn’t last two months, but young entrepreneur Bill Harrah started a place called the Heart Tango the next year, beginning his gambling empire.

Empires aren’t really built on casino restaurants, though. I’ve seen life savings gambled away on short-lived ventures crippled by bad managers, bad locations, bad concepts or all three. It helps if ownership has deep pockets, but even the serious resources of the Caesar’s Entertainment Corp., parent company of the Harrah’s gaming properties, couldn’t make a hit out of Mike & Charlie’s Italian Restaurant. Yes, that place lasted six years (and I always liked it), but people might still be eating there today if it hadn’t been so drab and humorless.

Not long after the Kansas City Harrah’s closed Mike & Charlie’s, it also pulled the plug on the Range, a moderately priced beef emporium that had the dubious distinction of being among the few places left in the metro where one could still order a filet mignon and fill up at a salad bar. There are still would-be customers who wander into the three-month-old restaurant that has taken its place — the upscale ’37 Steak, the name of which pays homage to Bill Harrah’s first casino — looking for the salad bar. It’s gone, baby — and good riddance. It was a sad affair, even by casino standards (where the bar on buffets is already set low, low, low), made even worse by poor lighting and sometimes invisible service.

Besides, the crouton crowd is all but priced out of ’37 Steak, where management clearly took a long look at the Capital Grille and Plaza III menus when tailoring prices. Much of the food here is pitched at high rollers, with the Seafood Trio (a lobster tail, a king crab leg and three jumbo prawns) costing a fat $74 and a double-cut lamb chop going for $44.

So it’s a good place to get comped by the house, but bad news for the penny-slot set. And despite the special-occasion prices, it’s not really for those seeking an intimate meal. If the unlamented Range looked as if it had been designed by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the steakhouse now in its place has all the warmth of a soullessly sleek new airport terminal. It also sounds a little like you’re waiting to board a flight — the music piped in is all Top 40 all the time, with the volume set to a level appropriate for a public pool.

That’s the problem with ’37 Steak: It’s completely out of touch with its core demographic, the kind of patron with the dough to lay out for a beautifully presented plate of sautéed sea scallops, dripping with chive cream, and, perhaps, a $150 bottle of Cakebread Cabernet Sauvignon. This is no place for Taylor Swift.

There’s also a yawning disconnect between the staid and the experimental. The menu is classic steakhouse, and the service is exquisitely formal, but bartender Michael Strohm — who is talented and creative, to be sure — imposes his boundless flair for the theatrical on a clientele that would probably prefer to be left alone. He appeared at my table one night with a scorched plank of applewood, a blow torch and a cart arrayed with liquor bottles. In a performance aimed at the young woman with me, who had ordered a cocktail — but also for the benefit of the rest of the room — he proceeded to char the wood with the torch to “smoke” the highball glass. Tableside, he then mixed a concoction of Lillet, Apple Jack, Maison Surrenne cognac, Amaro Nonino liqueur and grenadine.

“It tastes like autumn,” Strohm said, handing the glass to my dining companion.

It did, she agreed. But she had ordered a different cocktail — one with gin. Strohm wasn’t mistaken; he had simply overruled her.

That kind of brass makes me like ’37 Steak, but it won’t rub everyone right. And I could say the same about chef Nick Estel’s kitchen, which isn’t flashy but emphasizes invention at the occasional expense of the flavors likely preferred by the Harrah’s base. That juicy lamb chop, for example, is given a chai-tea-honey rub before being expertly grilled. The combined flavors are dazzling but not something I’d want every night. The center-cut filet I tried was soft as butter — butter, dressed up, in this case, with black truffles and a splash of Robert Mondavi Fumé.

All of the beef at ’37 Steak is certified Angus, but no cut really shows off this kitchen’s grilling acumen better than the 27-ounce, bone-in rib-eye. It’s nearly a work of art (as are most of the steaks here, visually; the presentation is impeccable), with both flavor and texture impressively sumptuous. I had mine with a fine cognac-and-peppercorn cream sauce, one of a handful of rich glazes you can choose. And even it wasn’t as synapse-threatening as the blue-crab-and-garlic cream that makes the scampi here — centered on parmesan-dusted prawns — impossibly decadent. Not for the fainthearted.

I retreated to something simple: tater tots. Yes, they can be had here, though they arrive in a silvery bowl, with a fondue of molten Vermont cheddar to class them up. How were they? Crunchy. They were crunchy. They were tater tots. For the more refined palate, there are superb sautéed Brussels sprouts and understated but delicious garlic mashed potatoes.

A couple of the desserts are nearly as lowbrow as the tater tots. Fried “bread pudding bites,” for instance, come with espresso ice cream, and there are tiny doughnuts, for those who feel the need to keep indulging one of my least favorite trends. I recommend instead the delightfully eggy, satiny crème brûlée, richly flavored with espresso.

It didn’t taste like autumn, just coffee, but it — and most of the food I sampled at ’37 Steak — tasted like a winner. If I can get a lucky streak going on a slot machine at Harrah’s some night, I’ll be back.