Las Vegas over the past few years has received a number of accolades for its restaurants, even to the extent that Michelin gave star ratings to restaurants in 2009, a move that has since been “temporarily” discontinued.  There are some great restaurants in Las Vegas, many of which are run by star chefs that have built their reputations in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New Orleans.   If you go to the strip, you can’t help but notice Emeril Lagasse’s shameless self-promotion of his restaurants.  Dig further and you’ll find impressive reviews given to restaurants like Chicago’s Shawn McClain restaurant Sage.

Some of these restaurants haven’t survived the recession, among them being Charlie Trotter’s Charlie, a victim of not only the recession but perhaps also an oversaturation of pricey eating establishments and a lack of a local market that can sustain them.  Traveling gamblers, some of whom have had the benefit of an expense account, can only provide so much in a metropolitan area of only 2.2 million, less than twenty-five percent of Chicago’s metropolitan area.   Additionally, the foodie scene in this desert city is not exactly mature compared with more cosmopolitan cities such as Chicago and New York.    According to the Center for Business and Economic Research at University of Nevada-Las Vegas, spending in 2009 was down 14 percent from 2007.  Perhaps even more significantly, convention attendance was down 27 percent in that same time period.

I tend to find Strip restaurants don’t offer a good value proposition, and despite the burgeoning food scene many places continue to serve mediocre food at inflated prices.  The off-Strip casinos tend to offer more affordable food, albeit at the expense of quality.

What I do think Las Vegas does well is offer good Filipino food.  Despite being the second largest Asian group in the United States, a lot of cities, including Chicago, have a dearth of Filipino restaurants.   The place I’ve enjoyed visiting is Salo-Salo, a restaurant known for it’s delicious crispy pata (fried pork legs).   If Korean fried chicken may be Josh Brusin’s go-to food, I could devour the delicious crispy skin off the pork legs.   The pata is chateau gonflable served fresh, something worth pointing out as many Filipino restaurants (called turo-turo) have steam tables and the food can sometimes get stale.

Salo-Salo also had fantastic fresh lumpia, and it’s worth pointing out that fresh is part of a compound noun, although it was indeed fresh.  Lumpia is the Filipino word for egg rolls, and the fresh part basically means it is not fried and it covered either with rice paper, or in this case, a very thin savory pancake-like roll.   The outside had a soy-sugar sauce, and inside were bamboo shoots.  We also had the more common fried lumpia, similar to Chinese egg rolls but thinner and filled with ground pork, also fresh and much better than what is served at the steam table places.

For the main course I ordered a callos, a Filipino tripe stew with what tasted like roasted tomatoes.  Also good was the laing, which was sauteed spinach in coconut milk.

I haven’t tried enough Filipino restaurants to judge, but if there was a go-to place I would pick it would definitely be Salo-Salo the next time I was in Las Vegas.   Now for those overpriced restaurants on the Strip…

Salo-Salo
3650 S. Jones
Las Vegas
(702) 878-7256

–Brian Ziegler