Rounding a corner at Jones and Robindale, I spy Sporting Life Bar for the first time. With colorful signage incorporating a football, baseball, hockey puck, etc., it strikes me as, eh, semi-interesting looking. But, really, it could be any of a dozen other locals-oriented Las Vegas sports-themed watering holes at this point. Entering Sporting Life, however, I soon get the notion that this might be a step up in the world of sports bars. The bartops and tables boast abundant, rich wood tones. There’s a minimum of cheesy flashing beer logo lights. The walls showcase classy vintage poster reproductions.
Then I order the most prosaic, stereotypical sports bar menu item in history: chicken wings. My plate arrives — complete with obligatory celery and carrot sticks — and I can tell these substantial wings did not plop out of some frozen bag willy-nilly into a deep fryer. They’re whole wings, not separated, and they’ve been cured with green salt (that is, salt mixed with fresh herbs), cooked confit-style to succulent tenderness and accompanied by a house-made Asian chili glaze. I bite in.
Goooaaal! My taste buds get sacked by a full-court press courtesy of Chef Daniel Dalton, the head coach behind Sporting Life’s impressive and adventurous culinary game plan. Mixed metaphors aside, Sporting Life’s menu is almost like a trick play. It follows the basic playbook of your standard mid-level sports bar, but then comes out of left field with gourmet spins on standards from appetizers and sandwiches to flatbreads and entrées.
You can thank Dalton’s culinary conditioning for that. A New Jersey boy whose parents owned a tavern, he went on to study at New York City’s French Culinary Institute (now the International Culinary Center). Like a free agent, he ventured through fine dining kitchens from Manhattan to Jamaica to Aspen, Colorado, and Grand Teton National Park. A few years back, he landed here in Southern Nevada as a sous chef at Bouchon, where he was suffused in the Thomas Keller méthode. Now he’s transferred the intensity and passion of Bouchon to a more casual kitchen setting.
“I’m keeping that awesome standard,” Dalton says, using the example of an everyday kitchen staple to show the care he brings to the kitchen. “This isn’t just a head of lettuce, it’s a beautiful, living piece of lettuce that someone cared for. … Everything I’m doing is from scratch. We’re doing the right thing at all times.” Even the décor follows that principle: The large, U-shaped central bar is fashioned from recycled Honduran mahogany that once was the basketball court of the downtown Los Angeles YMCA. Various tables in the tavern are constructed of reclaimed lumber from sources including a century-old Pennsylvania barn and a Northern California water tower.
Devilishly good
In the appetizers department, Dalton delivers standards like nachos, but these hearty dippers are topped with proteins such as beef asada or pork chile verde. The tongue-in-cheek “Skins and Balls” are rich chicken croquettes riddled with smoked gouda, bacon and green onion. Other fried items include pork skins and pig ears with cayenne honey and pickle chips with roasted red pepper sauce. And even though deviled eggs might cynically be seen as the new truffle fries — a trendy thing served way too many times too at way too many places — Dalton’s version deserve all the raves they get. They come in the classic form of egg white cradles filled elegantly with celery and cornichon-laced yolk farce. For a topping, Dalton goes beyond a mere dash or two of traditional paprika.
“I’m using fried capers for texture and seasoning,” Dalton says of the crispy, salty garnish that brings the snacks together.
The small plates menu starts with pork belly, as well it should. Dalton’s take on this midriff cut is a meaty, fatty baton of cider-bathed pig over creamy polenta. Again, polenta … sports bar. This place stands out in the saloon league. Other choices include a big bowl of saffron-scented mussels, crab cakes with piquillo purée and mac ’n’ cheese with Tenaya Creek brown ale (a local brewery that Dalton features in numerous recipes).
Salads are in the sweet spot at Sporting Life. The house dressing is a piquant toasted cumin-sherry invention of Dalton’s, which lends a slight Spanish/Mexican flavor to the vinaigrette. The kale salad is not hip, it’s just plain good. Multi-hued flowering Brassica oleracea comes with poached egg and bacon lardons in a warm bacon vinaigrette. Curiously, this double-pig dish is not overly porky, with the lemony dressing and egg yolk toning down the meaty quotient.
The main event
The flatbread board, in keeping with the rest of the menu, ups ordinary tavern pizza’s game. Dalton’s grilled, crispy dough planks keep things in the Italian-American zone with a Margherita (fresh mozzarella, basil, garlic confit, roma tomatoes and marinara sauce). And then there’s the duck confit flatbread (this place is confit crazy), which offers sumptuous shredded meat with sweet Medjool dates, creamy but tart goat cheese and mostarda, a savory dried fruit condiment with origins in medieval Italy.
In the sandwich corner, a sure contender is the bistro steak sandwich. But this is no scraggly 19th-hole clubhouse version of beef on bread. Dalton’s take involves sliced teres major, a tender section of the shoulder region, with tangy bearnaise-aioli, fragrant fresh arugula and crunchy fried shallots on fresh ciabatta. A short rib Philly is stacked with peppers and onion, and the Reuben’s pastrami is corned and smoked in-house.
Main event entrées reintroduce Sporting Life’s all stars: beef bistro filet, beef short ribs and duck breast. Fresh off the bench are roasted Idaho trout and a welcome take on gnocchi. Instead of potato bombs, Dalton’s dumplings are pâte à choux morsels that are like resilient pan-browned soufflés. As far as daily specials, Dalton’s chalkboard can display zingers like Peking duck, roast lamb or head cheese. It’s unpredictable in the best sense.
The bar program is respectable, with nearly three dozen craft beers on tap, including Tenaya Creek, Henderson’s Joseph James, San Diego’s Green Flash and a number of European entries. Of note is Czechvar, one of the ur-beers from the Czech Republic, which some call the “original Budweiser.” (And of course, there’s Bud Light.) This is a sports bar, after all. And the $5 Dark & Stormy (Gosling’s dark rum and ginger beer) has got to be one of Vegas’ best non-happy hour deals.
As a slight caveat for walk-ins: Note that it is a bar, and this is Nevada. So it’s a 21-and-up establishment, with gaming and ashtrays. On the ashtray subject, though, the bar is outfitted with a robust ventilation system, and it’s not a smoky dive at all. And as a bonus, Sporting Life is an all-comers, all-sports, all-teams kind of place. It’s not dedicated to one city, as so many dicier, more insular sports bars can be. Game on, indeed.
May we Recommend ...
Deviled eggs
Are you over deviled eggs yet? Oh no you’re not. The Sporting Life’s version are rich with a bonus kick, as the cornichon-rich yolk filling is spiked with a generous dose of paprika. Great as an appetizer, they also do double duty as a light lunch.
“Skins and balls”
Limp mozzarella sticks may be a time-honored game-time finger food, but graduate to The Sporting Life’s “Skins and balls” and you won’t look back. These crispy, savory chicken croquettes stuffed with gouda, bacon and green onion present a new standard for bar food — like so many of the menu items at The Sporting Life. GT
Sporting Life Bar
7770 S. Jones Blvd.
702-331-4647
sportinglifebar.com
Open 24 hours