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Wild Sage Cafe

By: The Lady of The Night Out

Why Should You Eat at the Wild Sage Café?

If you moved here from somewhere else, you’re hungry for the neighborhood café – the cool place around the corner run by a family who took personal pride in serving you a great meal. The place was small and intimate with nary a video poker machine in sight. The only clanging came from silverware not slot machines.

LVNV has two such places, which I dub “Les Herbs.” In addition to Rosemary’s, there is the Wild Sage Café on Warm Springs Road. The Wild Sage now has its own West Side story: its owners just opened a second location -- on West Sahara, not far from the other restaurant fauna.

Who Should Eat at the Wild Sage Café?

Discriminating Diners. The restaurant takes American classics like meat loaf and pork chops and propels them into the thin air of haute cuisine. At the Wild Sage Café, down home gourmet is not an oxymoron.
Al Fresco Eaters. Although the patio has a panoramic view of the parking lot, it’s lovely to savor sunny cuisine during our sensational spring weather.
Dog lovers. Dogs are welcome at the patio tables. How European.
Locals entertaining out-of-town guests. The restaurant is spittin’ distance from McCarran. Let your guests decompress after a frustrating flight with feel good food.
Anyone allergic to a coat and tie. The dress code is definitely casual, especially after sundown. The only requirement, quips one manager, is that patrons keep their underwear from showing above their pants.
The lunch crowd in a hurry. The restaurant, surrounded by office buildings, realizes the boss knows exactly when you left for lunch.
Diners that dawdle. The Wild Sage Café staff proudly points out it is not a “turn and burn” kind of place. If you want to savor your meal, take your time!
The Sunday brunch bunch. If you’re still eating French toast, this is the place to order it.
Anyone who thinks gaming is not part of a restaurant’s recipe for success. You’d never know this restaurant is in LVNV. No signs of gaming anywhere.

Who Shouldn’t Eat at the Wild Sage Café?

Those expecting a tete-a tete. The 22 tables are fairly close together so your neighbors can hear your business. Executives, this is not the place to discuss the layoff decision.
Families. There are no high chairs, kid’s meals or youthful distractions like a two-story slide or a screeching rain forest. This is baby sitter territory.
The Avante Garde. If you like your food to be au courant, the food here will be too familiar. Edgy establishments like Olives or Charlie Palmer Steak are better places to push the envelope.
The geographically challenged. First time visitors to the Warm Springs eatery usually drive by it three times. It’s hidden in the elbow of a shopping center. Park by the Starbucks at the intersection of Amigo and Warm Springs, then head inland.

OK, What’s the Food Like? My sage advice: order the seared salmon. The huge fillet’s close encounter with high heat created a thin layer of crackling skin that sealed in the delectable juices and oils that give salmon its distinctive flavor. It was brushed with butter infused with lemon and dill. A cap of curly watercress sat at the top of the fillet like a mountaintop flag. I’d say this salmon ties with Sazio’s for the best in the city.

A lunch time winner: the macaroni and cheese. Be warned: it doesn’t look, taste or smell like anything from a box. Chef Wes Kendrick uses whatever cheese is on hand: my rigatoni was plastered with blue cheese, brie, mozzarella, parmesan, provolone and white cheddar. The concoction is stop-your heart rich, but magical nonetheless. The mac and cheese is baked in a crock, so the exterior has a hard, au gratin shell while the interior remains slick.

The mac and cheese comes with a cold cucumber salad, marinated in vinegar and sugar to give it a tongue-curling tartness with a touch of sweetness. Fresh dill adds its own voice to this refreshing antidote to the heavy cheeses.

Don’t miss the split pea soup. It’s a light, spring time rendition that still captures the fresh green flavor of the peas. It’s spiked with shards of prosciutto ham – just enough to add a hammy current without overwhelming the soup with salt.

The rack of pork is becoming the de rigueur retro dish in LVNV. Here, two chops, with rib bones still attached, are branded by a fiery grill. The char on the bone adds another layer of flavor. They are coated with a hard cider glaze sweetened by molasses and spiked with whole peppercorns. The shimmering, mahogany-colored sauce is tart and sweet and sharp all at once – which gives “the other white meat” as many facets as a well cut diamond.

I love the mashed potatoes that came with both dishes. They are creamy, yet rugged. They are not pureed to a satiny fluff, retaining more of their true texture. And the toothy fresh asparagi were awesome.

Dessert in the Desert: All the desserts are spiced with whimsy. The rim of each huge blue plate -- which makes the special desserts blue plate specials --is covered with a snowfall of white powdered sugar. At the top of the plate is the silhouette of a dessert fork.

I could smell the cinnamon in the strawberry bread pudding from across the table. Lots of vanilla and a hint of lemon made this typically ponderous dessert seem as frothy as the sea. It was served steaming; the bread simply surrenders and melts in your mouth.

Equally successful was the huge wedge of lemon curd cheesecake. The filling was so light it felt like chiffon, a distinct departure from the typical formidable filling. A thick, fort-like wall of graham crackers anchored the filling to the plate. Three oversized blackberries kept the cheesecake company.

History: The Wild Sage Café is a family affair. Stan Carol and his wife Laurie Kendrick moved to LVNV in 1992 to work at Spago at the Forum Shoppes. The Puck disciples had enough pluck to open their own eatery in 1990. A year later it had already garnered an Epicurean Award for the best new restaurant off the Strip.

Stan and Wes Kendrick, Laurie’s brother, prepare the food. Laurie has been banished to the front of the house after she started a small fire in her kitchen preparing for her baby shower.

The owners owned their second location on West Sahara two weeks ago.

Summing Up: When I ask chefs where they eat, one out of four mentions the Wild Sage Café. How can you argue with the professionals? The chefs take Donna Reed-style dishes and add a gourmet touch – the familiar with just enough unfamiliar to make it fun. The prices are reasonable, given the size of the portions and the quality of the food. And save room for dessert – they are great sweets dressed up by a silhouette of the fork.

Where Is It? The original Wild Sage Café is located at 600 East Warm Springs Road, just east of Bermuda. The phone is 702.944.SAGE. The new location is at 8991 West Sahara between Durango and Fort Apache. The phone there is 702.304.9453.

By: The Culinary Curmudgeon Lady of the Night Out

The restaurant business has one of the highest failure rates of any commercial enterprise. Here in Clark County, more than 50 percent of the new restaurants are gone five years later. So, I understand why the owners of the Wild Sage Café rented a cozy cubicle for their maiden venture.

The restrictive square footage means all the tables are squished together. This floor plan dictates your dining behavior. Here is my sage advice: First, glue your elbows to your sides, a biceps curl style. That will keep errant elbows from striking a decisive blow against the unsuspecting folks next door. For the same reason, don’t invite friends who use their hands to gesticulate unless you are on a first name basis with your insurance agent.

For the same reason, the Wild Sage Café is not the place for secret discourse, since the tables encircling yours can easily ease drop. This is an advantage if your dining companion is a poor conversationalist. The table talk around you will certainly be more entertaining. Of course, not participating in their conversations requires great personal restraint. When the woman sitting behind me was dead wrong, I had to gnaw the bones on my plate to prevent myself from setting her straight.

I realize the twenty-somethings are the hot new market in LVNV. The Wild Sage Café must be trying to woo these Young Turks away from the Hard Rock judging from the lettering on the menu. We fossils need magnifying glasses – not just reading glasses – to read the small print. I recommend the restaurant use a 16 point font if it wants to extract greenbacks from the grey hairs.

As for the food, I knew it would be spectacular before I set foot in the dining room. My first clue: the healthy, thriving hergerberia vines snaking up the metal banisters of the patio. I’ve been trying to keep my floundering vine alive for years. Anyone who can coax thick sprays of blooms from such a temperamental plant clearly has the patience to follow every step required to sprout wonderful dishes. So what’s the recipe? Cottonseed meal and Epsom salts?

What a wild idea to silhouette a dessert fork on the cheesecake plate. It took me five minutes to figure out the fork wasn’t there. That told me I’d better let the Hausfrau drive home.

Aired 21 March 2003

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