Herbs & Rye too good to leave only to the cocktail and appetizers crowd

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Casting about the wonderful World Wide Web while doing a bit of advance research on Herbs & Rye, I was positively flummoxed by a description of the decor as "goth."

Goth? Are we talking black-lipstick-and-studded-faces goth? Or pointed-arches-and-flying-buttresses gothic?

It was, to my relief, neither. Actually, I’d call the red-flocked wallpaper, black-leather, dark-wood, exposed-brick and candlelit decor classic Old Vegas. That’s in keeping with the building’s legacy as the longtime location of the Venetian, a landmark restaurant operated for more than 40 years by Lou and Angie Ruvo (and if you don’t remember the restaurant, the late Lou Ruvo’s name may be familiar from the recently opened Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health).

Anyway. Since the Ruvos sold it in the mid-’90s, the restaurant has gone through a number of reincarnations. It remained the Venetian for a while, in other hands. It was a seafood place and a Mexican restaurant, none of which seemed to be able to go the distance. And as Herbs & Rye, it has pretty much flown under the radar, without much advertising or word of mouth. It wasn’t until after I was driving one day and, stopped by the light at Valley View Boulevard, saw the sign and became curious, that I started looking into it. What I discovered was a somewhat limited food menu and a very interesting cocktail menu, the latter of which appears to be popular with the late-night crowd, who no doubt find the spacious, Old Vegas bar area quite appealing (and which explains the "goth" label).

While we rarely do cocktails with dinner, this menu was intriguing because it’s grouped by era, and the old-time stuff gets more than its due. A Moscow Mule sounded refreshing, and it was, the classic combination of vodka, ginger beer and lime served over crushed ice in a copper cup.

The food menu is split between steaks and Italian dishes, which include flatbreads. An entree of pork and figs was interesting enough to pull me into the restaurant, but alas, they were out of figs. So it would be gnocchi ($13), along with a bone-in Kansas City strip.

And here I need to inject a note about pricing. Herbs & Rye’s website and menu announce happy-hour pricing until 8 p.m. on a number of starred dishes — a particularly good deal since it applies to a few entrees as well as some appetizers, and since the hours are much later than most happy hours around town. So that 12-ounce Kansas City strip that would be $29 after 8 p.m. was $14.50 earlier. And it was a good steak, flavorful and prepared exactly as ordered. For our included side we chose the sweet-potato tater tots, which were fairly standard from a flavor standpoint but more interesting than we expected from a textural one as they had been shredded, like conventional tots.

The gnocchi was by definition an also-ran, and the texture was a little more doughy than we expect from good homemade gnocchi. But the sauce was very good, a Bolognese that benefitted from the chewy texture of pancetta.

Our starters were excellent. Carpaccio ($11) was a plate of thinly sliced beef drizzled with a light balsamic glaze and topped with a big pile of lightly dressed arugula, the bitter astringency of which was an effective, if classic, counterpoint to the rich beef.

A caprese salad ($8) also was a classic but prepared with great care, the ripe tomatoes and creamy mozzarella neatly stacked and arranged atop basil leaves of Brobdingnagian proportions.

As we perused the check, it occurred to me that while some of Herbs & Rye’s food is discounted during happy hour, the cocktails are not — the opposite of the usual arrangement. And while the $11 tab for the Moscow Mule would be a veritable bargain on the Strip, that’s not the case at Sahara Avenue and Valley View.

Yes, Herbs & Rye seems to fly under the radar — except, it appears, for the cocktail-and-appetizers trade who have discovered it as a late-night destination.

But it’s too good for the rest of us to miss.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com.