Roast Duck Rice
Eureka. That’s what Archimedes said when he successfully calculated a theorem for determining the volume of an object by submerging it in water. It’s also the name of a rather unheralded local’s casino, notable for its proximity to the Commercial Center, the home of a handful of our best Asian restaurants, including Lotus of Siam.
Buffalo Wings
Well, surprise! Now the Eureka Casino has an excellent Asian restaurant to call its own. We’re talking about Fat Choy, a simple looking room off the main casino floor, run by an excellent Chinese-American chef named Sheridan Su.
Short Rib Grilled Cheese
A sign over the door tells us we are in for Asian-American fare, which initially has been slightly confusing to the penny slot players, who come to a casino coffee shop looking to eat steak and eggs, or a grilled cheese. These dishes are also available here, but not in the form the masses expect. There is steak and eggs, but it’s an Asian take on the dish, with thinly sliced, Korean style kalbi short ribs, standing in for the usual top sirloin. And a grilled cheese here comes with minced short rib, making it impossibly rich.
Chef Sheridan Su
Eureka denizens, according to Su’s wife, Jennie, may find Su’s delicacies such as shrimp toast and roast duck rice an acquired taste, but during my two visits, a down-at-the-heels crowd seemed to be enjoying a fusion menu that includes Peking duck buns, pork belly buns and burgers. As for me, I’d come back anytime to eat the shrimp toast, a dish that one-ups any I’ve had in a Cantonese dim sum parlor.
Shrimp Toast
Su adds some diced lob cheung, flavorful Chinese sausage, to the shrimp forcemeat, and drizzles what I’m guessing is a Sriracha mayo on top of them. The roast duck rice, meanwhile, is a triumph. Oddly, the duck leg and thigh smacks of confit, not a surprise, really, since Su did a turn as a sous-chef at Comme Ca, David Myers’ French outpost in the Cosmo.
Still, this manages to be a Chinese bowl of food. The rice has a nice soy based sauce, and there are chopped green onions and other condiments on top. And the quality of his rice is impeccable. At under ten bucks, this ranks with Le Thai’s pad Thai and Eat’s pork based posole in the pantheon of great dishes inside the Downtown perimeter.
Pork Sauce Noodle
Su does authentic, accomplished cooking in his modest space. Pork sauce noodle is really the Northern Chinese dish jia jiang min, a tangle of chewy noodles with diced pork and fermented soy beans, laced with chopped green onion. Think Chinese Bolognese.
Wonton Soup
And I applaud his take on the Cantonese classic wonton soup, delicious broth with fat, meaty wontons made in Su’s kitchen. The soup, a real meal, also comes with broccoli, fresh mushrooms and mysterious green herbs that bob to the surface. I’d put this soup up against any in Vegas. But then, that goes for almost everything Su is cooking here.
Fat Choy, Inside Eureka Casino, 595 E. Sahara Ave. 794-3464.
