In Las Vegas, you can’t avoid the casinos. These entertainment metropolises are where everyone goes to shop, gamble, dine, watch a live show, gamble and do the things that happen in Vegas and stay in Vegas.
What happens in Milwaukee stays at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino, or so I hear. That newly expanded complex – to the tune of a $240 million addition, completed last summer – is an entertainment facility, to be sure, but its raison d’tre is obvious. Until recently, the casino’s dining options were limited to a buffet, sports bar and high-end restaurant (Dream Dance), whose location next to the smoky bingo hall was its shortfall. But the addition created new digs for Dream Dance (with valet parking, no less) and, more importantly, increased the number of casual dining choices.
One of these casual newcomers is Wild Earth. Here, the tables are unclothed and match the color of the wood displayed in abundance. The servers are dressed in unassuming uniforms – to match their unaffected attitudes – pinned with name tags that denote their hometowns (“very Vegas,” a friend tells me). Along with metal baskets of steaming-hot fry bread, the waitstaff delivers gin and tonics and bottles of Shiraz from the bar. A shiny open kitchen provides a level of structured visual entertainment. I’ve heard this restaurant described as a scaled-down Dream Dance. But it’s hard to compare the two. Wild Earth is to Dream Dance what a flat-iron steak is to Chäteaubriand. This new addition shows creative flair and an awareness that not everyone can plunk down 30 bucks for an entree. (Most entrees are in the $15 range.)
For destination diners who aren’t coming for the slots, the changes have made the whole casino park-and-trudge less of an ordeal. The new six-story adjacent parking structure has helped to a degree, but you’ll still have to schlep, and inhale nicotine, to get to the escalator and ride to the second-floor Wild Earth.
Will new, affordable restaurants make more people visit just to eat and not gamble? That’s the million-dollar question. But if Wild Earth keeps the quality up and the prices down, it – along with the casino’s lively new Asian-noodle bar, RuYi – could be as much of a draw as anything in the evolving Sixth Street area (think Harley-Davidson and the new Iron Horse Hotel).
Wild Earth’s menu works the broad appeal angle with a trace of style – flash-fried calamari to cornbread-crusted whitefish to Strauss veal and wild mushroom meatloaf. This place isnÕt big on foreign terminology and unfamiliar couplings.
While chef Audrey Vandenburgh didn’t work on the original menu, the former Lake Park Bistro sous chef will make tweaks as she goes. She’s got good stuff to work with. Earthy, homespun, but tame dishes – not quite what the name implies.
Maybe some people would think of Native American fry bread as wild. It’s not the typical breadbasket occupant. Understand that these blazing-hot bites are hunks of oily, deep-fried pastry – like plain, unsweetened beignets, only greasier. Apply soft maple butter for a true overkill experience.
The appetizers don’t have a bigger presence on the menu than anything else here, but they make a strong impression. The tender-but-firm, perfectly flash-fried calamari comes with a salsa-like, charred tomato and sweet chile sauce ($8). The delicate, shredded crab cakes generate some heat on your tongue, coaxed by the mustard-butter sauce ($12). And meaty hunks of grilled salmon served on skewers go beautifully with a light, summery asparagus-cherry tomato-frisee coleslaw with effervescent lemon-lime dressing ($9).
The flatbread pizzas are swell as an appetizer or a light standalone ($9-$10), but they’re too small! The crisp, barely-there crust is sprinkled in inventive ways, one of the best being taut rock shrimp with provolone and chewy pancetta.
“Water,” “Land” and “Fire” headline the three entree categories: fish/seafood; pasta, pork chops, meatloaf; and steaks, respectively. The modern steak is so often defined in the $35 sense. But at this place, modern means keeping the bill down so you’ve got some extra dough for the new poker room. The flat-iron steak ($18), petite filet ($21) and New York strip ($24) come with dense chive mashed potatoes and a bulb of roasted garlic your partner will curse you for eating. Although it was cooked longer than asked for, the New York strip ($24) was still juicy and flavorful. Still, I wouldn’t eat it without a sauce – the best of the three provided was a chimichurri (an Argentinean condiment, with a dominant parsley flavor).
Long, slow cooking is what makes short ribs a tender experience. Braised in Chianti, these rich beef ribs come with a suitably starchy side of cheddar grits. A pile of rosemary-scented sauteed greens gives the dish a Southern drawl ($16).
Eight inches of Lake Superior whitefish is nothing to sneeze at. This Lake Superior filet, dipped in cornbread crumbs and pan-fried, demands your full attention, like some high-stakes hustler at a poker table ($16). It’s only after really digging under the moist, mellow flesh and the layer of skin that you find something hidden below. The fish canopy covers a layer of corn-okra succotash, and the fish’s oils and a pat of barbecue-honey butter seep into its slick, soupy sweetness.
Showing more restraint and balance, the grilled sea scallops hold onto summer in the market-fresh flavor of the grilled tomato salsa and the pungent pop of goat cheese ($17). The one snag was that this juicy combination turned a bed of black bean cakes – which had so much potential – into mush.
I don’t remember the last time I had so tender a pork chop. The bone-in chop, with its infusion of maple and chipotle pepper, reminds me of a German smoked chop. And I was intrigued by the warm/cool slaw of shredded fried potato, carrot and green apple served alongside, but the haystack of long, skinny shreds was too hard to scoop up with a fork ($16).
I’d place bets on the success of this new casino restaurant, but geez, losing five bucks on the slots is traumatic for me. So I’ll say this: Wild Earth may not draw hordes of diners just to eat, but it might help keep casino regulars in the halls, moving from the slot machines to the blackjack tables and into the dining room.
Wild Earth: Potawatomi Bingo Casino, 1721 W. Canal St., 414-847-7626. Hours: L daily 11 a.m.-3 p.m. D daily 5-10 p.m. Prices: appetizers, flatbreads $5-$12; salads $8-$12; entrees $15-$24; desserts $4-$6. Service: friendly, down-to-earth. Dress: Anything goes. Handicap access: yes. Credit cards: M V A DS. Nonsmoking: yes. Reservations: accepted, but not necessary.
