Ice House Lounge Serves Cool Food, Prices
Rare Restaurant Worth Driving
Updated: 2:59 p.m. EDT September 1, 2003
LAS VEGAS -- Downtown Las Vegas has needed a place like the Ice House Lounge for a long time.
Heck, Las Vegas in general has needed a place like this for a long time, and I'm thrilled that someone finally had the good sense to create a fun restaurant and bar with a great atmosphere that manages to be hip and cool without being pretentious, a professional and friendly staff, and terrific food at bargain prices.
Just six short blocks from the Fremont Street Experience, the Ice House Lounge is a $5 million entertainment destination built on the site of the former icehouse that used to service the railroads and all of Las Vegas, providing ice to keep produce and meats cold and to cool iceboxes throughout the city.
The exterior is straight out of Miami Beach -- cool white stucco and glass walls with festive pink and blue highlights, lots of lush landscaping, and some sparkly neon thrown in just because this is Las Vegas.
Once you get inside, you're in the heart of retro-Vegas chic. This is the kind of place Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin would have made their home had it been around in their day. Dark wood floors, stylish light fixtures, and multihued casual furnishings create a true lounge feeling without feeling forced like so many of the other retro-Vegas lounges do. The decorators even threw in some true old-school touches, with beautiful black-and-white photography of historical Las Vegas casinos and street scenes throughout the building.
Downstairs is the main bar -- topped with ice to keep your drinks cold and packed with video poker machines to keep your pulse rate up. Flat panel TVs ring the bar and the main dining area -- they even line the stairwell leading to the second-floor lounge, where you'll find another ice-topped bar, lots of cozy seating, and an outdoor balcony.
Hurry up and get a table because you want to get to the menu as soon as possible. Executive Chef J. Matthew Tryba and his staff all worked with the late Jean Louis Paladin at Napa, a restaurant at the Rio Suites that was widely considered to be the best in Las Vegas. But don't be intimidated by his pedigree -- Tryba has created a menu that is accessible, fun, and extremely affordable.
The Ice House Lounge is open 24 hours a day, and the menu will change to reflect that, offering breakfast, lunch, dinner, late-night offerings, and everything that goes along with those meals. I had the honor of sampling almost 24 different items from the kitchen, and everything was terrific -- unique and interesting in presentation and flavor without pushing the boundaries to the breaking point.
Start with an appetizer, all of which run in the $6 to $10 range. The anitpasto roll of Italian meats, roasted pepper, and basil wrapped in provolone cheese in a light balsamic syrup was the hands-down favorite at my table, perfectly tangy and substantial, yet light enough to qualify in the appetizer category. The beef sliders are mini-filets on sweet rolls with caramelized onion and traditional condiments -- almost like baby steak sandwiches. You've also got options like calamari, chicken wings with a variety of dipping sauces, pot stickers, shrimp cocktail, nachos, and the lounge's very own mozzarella blocks, made on site. Or you could go whole hog and try the sampler plate of a little of everything. The couple at the next table had one, and it was big enough to act as a full meal.
The menu offers a variety of soups to help kick off the festivities. A zesty French onion is standard, but du jour offerings during my visit included rich vegetable and gulf turtle soups, the latter of which was about the only thing I wasn't wild about, but probably only because I've seen "Finding Nemo" too many times.
It'll be tough not to want to fill up on the salads, each a meal in and of itself in the $7 to $8 range. The Icehouse Salad is basically a turbo-charged Cobb with avocado, bacon, blue cheese, egg, tomato, romaine lettuce, and a ranchy-blue cheese house dressing, all presented in a tower of chopped perfection. I also loved their mozzarella tomato salad -- another stack of fresh, homemade cheese, thick heirloom tomatoes and basil.
If you're visiting at lunchtime, you should go early or a little late since this is a very popular place for the local business crowd, but when you do get there you could try one of the sandwiches, all of which are priced under $10, making this a very affordable alternative. Options include burgers, a club, Italian sausage, grilled meatloaf, prime rib, and much more, each with a choice of fries or a house salad.
You can create your own flatbread pizza from a laundry list of potential ingredients, or you can choose one of the specialties: a goat cheese, sweet onion, and arugala confection; a tomato, onion, and mozzarella traditional; pepperoni; or barbecue chicken and rock shrimp. All fall in the $7 to $10 range.
It'll be tempting to skip over the pasta section and head straight for the main course, but that would be a huge mistake. The three pastas I sampled were among the best of the best. The fettuccine carbonara came with pork loin, bacon, green peas, and tomatoes in a delicate cream sauce that came close to alfredo without being as boring as alfredo usually is. The tricolored fusilli is spun in a spicy tomato-cream sauce with shrimp and roasted garlic, offering a medley of highly complimentary flavors. And if it's all about the spicy in your mind, head directly for the jambalaya -- penne pasta with andouille sausage, chicken, shrimp, ham, peppers and onion in a kicky Creole sauce that I couldn't get enough of.
Under the heading of main courses, you'll find a wide variety of choices, most under $16 -- a bargain-basement price for food of this quantity and quality. Comfort foods are big here, so you could go with the meatloaf and mashed potatoes or the chicken breast in a shellfish cream sauce. Despite my desire to be greedy and take it all, I have to point you toward the slow-roasted prime rib. Yes, you can get prime rib anywhere in town, but you're going to have a hard time finding it as good as it was here -- cut-it-with-a-fork tender and expertly seasoned. The pork Wellington, served in a puff pastry with candied sweet potato and dried fruit sauce, was interesting in a British kind of way. I'm not exactly sure if that's a compliment, but I did enjoy it. They've also got pan-seared salmon; grilled filet mignon; a New York strip steak; catfish sauteed with crayfish, shrimp, crabmeat, and mushrooms in a Creole sauce; and a meal-size portion of the aforementioned filet mignon sliders.
The dessert menu also runs the gamut, but I especially enjoyed the warm rosemary-apple tart with vanilla ice cream and the cappuccino-chocolate ice cream in a white chocolate shell. Then again, I love all desserts, so you can never tell by me.
If you just can't face the thought of a breakfast buffet, you might want to consider coming here instead. With everything on the breakfast menu under $9, you get your choice of steak and eggs; eggs and bacon or sausage; Texas French toast stuffed with scrambled eggs, cheese, and sausage or bacon; croissant sandwiches; meatloaf; cheese, veggie, or "build-your-own" omelets; oatmeal; or granola.
I got the royal treatment, so the service for us was exceptional throughout the visit, but I took some time to note the way the staff was treating people who weren't there to review the restaurant and noted it was just as attentive and friendly.
Since there are so many restaurants of so many different varieties within walking distance of wherever you are in Las Vegas, I rarely suggest going out of your way for someplace to eat. The Ice House Lounge is an exception to that rule. Whether you're in the neighborhood or not, you should take the time to pay a visit.
The Ice House Lounge
650 S. Main Street
Las Vegas, NV 89101
(702) 315-2570
Open 24 hours
Vegas4Visitors Grade: A
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