But none has been repeated as often as this one: there is a plan in place to rebuild The Moulin Rouge.

The Moulin Rouge opened in 1955 as the city’s only racially integrated casino/hotel. Although it stayed in business less than a year, it looms large in Las Vegas history as a spot where The Rat Pack hung out after-hours with Sammy and lured some of the biggest names in African-American entertainment. It was also the site where the agreement was signed a few years later to integrate all of the casinos in town.

It remained closed for years as the neighborhood around it declined and eventually reopened as a residential motel. The main building that housed the casino burned a few years ago and all that is really left is the front wall and an iconic sign.

Many owners and big ideas have come and gone over the years to rebuild or reinvent the hotel. I swear to you I have written some variation on this story about once a year for the last decade.

But now there is, yes, yet another plan to resurrect the Moulin Rouge. The owners of the property have struck a deal with a Washington DC based real estate developer to build a $700 million, 1,700 room hotel and casino and will be going in front of the Las Vegas Planning Commission at the end of the month to pitch their project.

If approved – and constructed – it would feature a 41-story hotel tower atop a 72,000-square-foot casino plus restaurants, entertainment facilities, meeting rooms, and more.

The DC company behind the investment is probably the most likely candidate to actually get the project built, with a history of developing big-ticket projects. But their biggest challenge has never been with the building but with the neighborhood that surrounds it. Riddled with crime, prostitution, and homelessness the area just west of Downtown is one of the worst in the city. Why anyone would want to put a nearly three-quarters of a billion dollar hotel in that neighborhood and why anyone would want to go visit it, are mysteries to me.

I’ll see you in a year when I write this story again.

return to the top

Two restaurants under Osteen’s stewardship have now opened at Town Square, a massive shopping complex located a mile or so south ofMandalay Bay.

One is the casual Fish Camp, but we visited the more upscale namesake restaurant for lunch recently and came away very impressed.

Low-country cuisine, for those (like me) who were unfamiliar, is a regional specialty of the Southeast United States, with heavy use of the abundance of seafood available off the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia and spiced up with more traditional deep south flavors.

The restaurant itself starts that regional dialogue, with heavy use of light, rough-hewn woods and natural fibers conspiring to evoke a seaside shanty, albeit a really nice one. Located on the second floor, there’s a beautiful outdoor dining patio that overlooks the literal town square of the Town Square shopping facility.

Since we were dining at lunch, the menu was a simple one page affair that consisted of: appetizers and soups including a Charleston crab soup with aged sherry and a bed of creamed fall mushrooms on a corn bread crostini among others; several salads, the most original of which was a “bouquet” of southern specialties such as chicken walnut, Greek shrimp, and pineapple raisin coleslaw; a few sandwiches including a burger option; and entrees ranging from flounder with crabmeat to tournedos of beef with a detour to an oyster BLT – oysters, bacon, and lettuce sandwiches between fried green tomatoes.

The dinner menu adds much more of the low-country flair with items like bourbon cured and smoked duck or a grits soufflé with country ham in the appetizers area; and scallops, duck, steak, and lamb entrée offerings, all with fun touches that vary between Carolina peanut sauce, poundcake potatoes, sweetbreads, dirty rice, and more.

Two of us at the table started with the sweet onion soup gratinee, a bubbling hot confection of melted cheese, soaked bread, and delicately seasoned sweet onions. It was a perfect way to kick things off, and only partially because of the blustery cold day going on outside.

I had the “proper” club with poached chicken breast, bacon, lettuce, and tomato on crunchy toast accompanied by a side of tenderly spiced fries. As club sandwiches go, this one was quite good with the deeply crispy bacon providing the right amount of crunch.

My only disappointment with my selection is that I didn’t order what one of my table mates did – a freshly ground and griddled chopped sirloin burger with hickory smoked bacon and Vermont extra-sharp cheddar cheese. Calling it a “burger” may be an insult to this creation and may cause actual burgers to cower in fear – it was that good; smoky wood fired, tender beef and that crispy bacon fighting with the tangy cheese for domination and finally agreeing to just work together to be delicious.

The pan-fried grouper sandwich was declared very good by the person that ordered it but to me it’s always going to be fish on a bun, something I’m never going to like no matter how much you try to force me to.

Desserts – oh, desserts, you know my favorite part of the meal. There’s Mississippi caramel cake with buttermilk ice cream, a bourbon brown butter pecan tart, peaches and cream beignets spiked with Southern Comfort, and more but being in a chocolate mood (which is most of the time) we went for the warm chocolate cake and couldn’t have been more pleased. Accompanying the selection were marble-sized fried chocolate truffles, a delicious surprise that starts out crispy and ends up with molten chocolate. That’s just genius as far as I’m concerned.

The service was as good as you’d expect a restaurant of this caliber to be – attentive without being cloying and quick on the draw.

This is not a cheap place to eat. Lunchtime starters range from $7-20, salads all around $16, sandwiches $11-18, and entrees mostly above $20. Add $10-15 for the dinner entrees and the bill starts to add up. Our lunch for three people with tax and tip came out to a flat $100, certainly more than you’ll be paying at the buffet up the street.

But Louis’s offers up a menu that can’t be found anywhere else in Las Vegas, and that alone should make it worth your notice. The fact that the food lives up to the promise should put it on your short list of restaurants to visit the next time you’re in town.

Louis’s Las Vegas
Town Square Shopping Center
6599 Las Vegas Blvd. S.
702-202-2400
website