McCormick & Schmick’s
There’s something fishy going on at M and S’s and it’s not the chicken. Oh yeah, you can get chicken there, as well as steak. . .but that’s hardly the point at this up-scale grill that’s about as seafoody as you can get 250 miles from any water that has anything in it you’d like to eat. And when I say up-scale I mean it. . .we’re not talking Red Lobster here, meaning that lunch for two is a $40 backstroke, with dinner double that. No, M and S’s is not for the freezer-burn lover in you. Nor will its motto ever be—as Landry’s is—please bring us your poor, your tired and your unsophisticated, because we’re slightly better than Red Lobster. Both of these freeze-dried franchises do nothing but give me a haddock, so instead of seeing a sturgeon, I ate one at McCormick and suddenly I wasn’t floundering. Don’t worry, I’ll clam up in a minute but not before I tell you all the great things I’ve been herring about this place. No one in town does a better happy hour, with huge platters of top shelf crab, quesidillas, fish tacos and bar food that are shrimply delicious.
But seriously folks, this place is serious about seafood in a way that Las Vegas has never seen. If you don’t believe me, just try the daily selection of oysters, so fresh and briny that I have nothing to carp about, geez, I can’t help myself, and speaking of those muscular mollusks, just remember the calamari rule of oyster eating, never, never eat oysters in any month that doesn’t have a paycheck in it. And always, always remember that you can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.
McCormick & Schmick's is located at 3763 Howard Hughes Pkwy., Las Vegas, NV 836-9000.
This is John Curtas wishing all of you and especially my good friend Jennifer, salmon enchanted evening.