Critics’ choice: Casino dining for every kind of visitor

Kelly English Steakhouse St. Louis

The name Kelly English might tell you that this steakhouse isn’t all about steaks, said Dave Lowry in St. Louis magazine. English, a Louisiana native and one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs back in 2009, has given gamblers at this St. Louis–area casino one more decision-making challenge by countering the beef lineup at his namesake enterprise with some “serious” Creole alternatives. Diners can watch the traffic on the casino’s promenade, but this is a classy room, a long, narrow space “outfitted with plush upholstered booths and tables, all draped with crisp linen.” Redfish is the kitchen’s most popular dish, the quick-seared fish “firm and moist” and served with smashed potatoes and a buttery sauce studded with crawfish tails. Should you opt for a steak, go with a side of the creamy spinach Madeline to learn why Louisiana loves it so. Or avoid choosing altogether by ordering English’s special surf and turf: a New York strip stuffed with oysters and blue cheese, served over a bacon-and-potato hash and “smothered” in bordelaise and hollandaise sauces. “It’s lavish—like Cirque du Soleil meets Liberace lavish.” Harrah’s St. Louis, 777 Casino Center, Maryland Heights, Mo., (314) 770-8248

Genting Palace New York

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The gambling industry sure makes strange bedfellows, said Robert Sietsema in The Village Voice. Soon after Malaysia’s Genting Group opened New York City’s first casino last year out at the old Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, the casino also became home to one of the best upscale Cantonese restaurants in the city. Genting Palace is “clearly aimed at Asian gamblers”: Come dinnertime, “you might have trouble gaining admission” if you can’t convince the greeter that you have a taste for the bitter soup made with black-skin chicken and ginseng (“we loved it”) or the liquor-marinated pork knuckles. But less confident diners can warm up to those challenges with an afternoon visit for “some of the city’s best dim sum.” Highlights of the 33-item menu include dried-fluke congee, “supremely tender” soy-braised chicken feet, and cheong fun, small rice-noodle rolls stuffed with shrimp, filet mignon, or barbecued pork with enoki mushrooms. “The decor might be described as very Vegas,” with “sumptuous” furniture and ugly carpets. But at least the room offers views of the galloping ponies. Resorts World Casino Aqueduct Racetrack, 110-00 Rockaway Blvd., (718) 215-2828

RuYi Milwaukee

At this pan-Asian casino restaurant, “authenticity isn’t so much the byword as deliciousness,” said Carol Deptolla in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. As chef Tony Ho proves with his seafood dishes, “so much of great cooking comes down to procuring the best ingredients, then having the sense not to mess with them too much.” His fried walleye in tempura batter, a Friday special, is “the best walleye I’ve ever had,” and “just as beguiling” is his steamed branzino in a ginger-soy-white-wine sauce. Yet RuYi is “as adept with duck as it is with fish,” the broth in one of its generous noodle soups seeming to capture “the very essence” of the bird. The slot machines at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino don’t do anything for me, but “some of those dishes were on my mind for days afterward.” Potawatomi Bingo Casino, 1721 W. Canal St., (414) 847-7335