STYLE / RESTAURANTS : Betting on Fine Dining?

My friend Tyrone drives a big Cadillac with all the comforts. For years, he’s been pointing that car and its many predecessors up to Vegas to catch the big shows--Elvis, Sinatra, Streisand. Now he goes to chaperone his parents. He’s stayed in every one of the hotel-casinos and has become something of a connoisseur of their gargantuan buffets. “If you lose at 21 or the slots, you can still make out like a bandit at the buffets,” he says.

Tyrone is always trying to persuade me to join him. One day, I finally say yes, on one condition: We skip the all-you-can-eat bargain buffets and check out some of the desert city’s newer “fine dining” establishments. I want to try Charlie Trotter’s new place in the MGM Grand--built for the cerebral young Chicago chef at a cost of $3 million. I also want to check out Mortoni’s, the Italian restaurant at Peter Morton’s new Hard Rock Hotel. Then there’s Spago Las Vegas. And somewhere, I promise, we’d fit in lunch at the Coyote Cafe and maybe a high-end buffet or two. Tyrone agrees. I buy a giant pair of fuzzy dice for the car and bring along my lucky nickel. And four of us are off to Vegas.

Finding Charlie Trotter’s in the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, the world’s largest hotel, is not easy. (The 68-seat restaurant is meant to be exclusive, and about 25% of the guests are comped by the hotel.) Finally, after much wandering around, I find the entrance in the middle of a nondescript hallway.

Beyond the plain mahogany door is a lush, Biedermeier-inspired dining room where waiters in severe black suits move purposefully, serving from gorgeous black and gold side tables. Gone is the incessant clatter of the casino. The quiet is as soothing as a glass of cool water. Everything speaks of understated luxury. The linens are Pratesi, the flatware heavy Christofle, the wineglasses Riedel. And the menus have no prices.

There are just two choices: the seven-course grand degustation or the vegetable tasting menu. Sommelier Steven Geddes will discuss the wines, offering to match each course with a glass of wine if you like. Or you can browse through an impressive list of 600 wines (soon to reach 1,000) at very good prices.

Guillermo Tellez, chef de cuisine here and Trotter’s right-hand man at his Chicago restaurant, starts sending out the food: course after course of intricately constructed dishes, often with esoteric ingredients. “Peeky toe crab?” the woman at the next table titters. Yes, with Maine day boat lobster, wild watercress and ginger-lemon-grass broth, a truly wonderful complex of flavors. Technically, the food is a marvel. But each dish is more elaborate than the next and the full-tilt intensity becomes a little tiring.

The vegetable degustation is a revelation. There is a fabulous terrine of braised artichokes and goat cheese wrapped in pickled beets, a ragout of tiny vegetables and summer truffles wrapped in a filo purse, a delicate morel mushroom flan with black-eyed peas and baby fennel, and a startling delicious composition of quinoa and curried couscous with red bell pepper sauce.

If you can, reserve the best table in the house, which is in the kitchen, where as many as six guests can take in this show of shows. By reservation only.

The MGM Grand has another celebrity restaurant: a Coyote Cafe from Santa Fe’s Mark Miller. It includes both a casual cafe and a more serious dining room (open only at night). At lunch the cafe’s thick, color-rubbed walls and Mexican folk art are immediately appealing. We start off well. “La Ultima” margaritas are terrific, not too sweet and made with fine tequila. Delicious rough-textured guacamole packs some heat, but most of the menu’s really interesting-sounding dishes don’t live up to their descriptions. Slippery barbecued duck quesadilla smells funky. Yucatan pork tacos, nearly lost beneath an avalanche of greens, are ordinary. Blue corn enchiladas are cooked so long they’re falling apart. The best of the lot is the grilled tampiquen ~ o steak in a dusky chipotle salsa. I’m disappointed. But I’d sneak back later for another margarita, that irresistible guacamole and a bowl of chips.

The next day, we get off the Strip and head a mile over to the swell new Hard Rock Hotel, where a neon guitar is stuck through the roof. Saxophones have been fashioned into a chandelier. And the place throbs with hard-driving rock. Yes!

The Hard Rock is an entirely new take on the Las Vegas casino. You can actually see across the room, and hey, there’s daylight coming in the doors, eliminating the twilight zone effect. Like his successful Hard Rock Cafes, Peter Morton’s hotel is a mini-museum of rock memorabilia and includes a bustier from Madonna and a set of elaborately embroidered orange satin suits once worn by the Four Tops.

When you get hungry, there’s Mr. Lucky’s 24/7, which features fairly decent diner fare 24 hours a day seven days a week. The other option is Mortoni’s, a happy surprise with its wall of windows and sleekly handsome decor of curvy red leather chairs and booths. It’s extremely noisy, though, and the heat of the wood-burning pizza oven wafts over nearby tables.

Here, once you order, you wait. And wait. It’s easy to see why: the open kitchen is too small and the three cooks are overwhelmed. The Caesar is dull. Pasta is drowned in sauce, flattened chicken is dried out, and fiorentina, aged T-bone, doesn’t have much flavor. It sounds like Italian food. It even looks like Italian food. But the cooks don’t have a clue.

Wolfgang Puck was the first celebrity chef to open a serious restaurant on the Strip with Spago Las Vegas in 1992. Set in The Forum, a 70-shop mall in Caesars Palace, the jazzy two-story Spago Las Vegas has a real buzz to it, with copper pillars, a block-long mural and flying metal “carpets” suspended overhead. It’s Las Vegas hip. And the crowd is as eclectic as they come, everyone from older gentlemen with pinkie rings and pompadours to foodies.

Spago Las Vegas is a big operation. The kitchen, under the direction of Chef David Robins, formerly of Stars in San Francisco, turns out 1,200 meals a day, including those for the adjacent, less-expensive cafe. Delicious, rustic breads are baked on the premises. And the menu reads like state-of-the-art Puck.

Appetizers such as chopped vegetable salad studded with peas, shrimp spring rolls and Dungeness crab cakes topped with mango salsa are just OK. Main courses leave a lot to be desired. Plates are overwrought with ingredients and garnishes: Thick, rubbery wild mushroom ravioli are buried beneath croutons drenched in truffle oil, fresh black-eyed peas and frizzled fried leeks. At these prices, I’m not inclined to be forgiving. But a wonderful warm peach pie is a well-deserved compensation.

Just before heading back, we hit Caesar’s Palace Champagne brunch. It does a good job. The food all looks fresh and appealing. In one corner, two chefs create custom omelets. Another carves roast beef and turkey to order. There are lots of healthy choices, too, such as plain boiled shrimp, unadorned greens from the salad bar. The best dessert? Bananas Foster. All in all, a good bargain at $15 per person. Maybe I would have been better off letting Tyrone pick the places.

Except for Charlie Trotter’s, I won’t be hurrying back to any of these restaurants. Vegas as a fine dining destination? Not quite yet. But it could be. Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg unveiled their Las Vegas DIVE! last month. Nicky Blair’s--late of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip--and Fog City Diner of San Francisco are slated to open at year’s end. Nobu Matsuhisa is pursuing the idea of a second Nobu there. Le Cirque is in negotiations, and Manhattan’s landmark ‘21’ Club is exploring the opportunities in Las Vegas. Small wonder. Twenty-nine million visitors are expected this year. And they’ve all got to eat.

* CHARLIE TROTTER’S, MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (702) 891-7337. Closed Tuesdays and at lunch. Seven-course vegetable menu, $65 per person; Seven-course grand degustation, $85 per person. Reservations suggested.

* COYOTE CAFE, MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. South,; (702) 891-7349. Cafe open daily; grill closed at lunch. , Reservations suggested. Dinner for two, food only, $35 to $60 in the cafe; $60 to $91 in the Grill.

* MR. LUCKY’S 7/24 and MORTONI’S, Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, 4455 Paradise Road; (702) 693-5000 and (702) 693-5047. Mr. Lucky’s is open daily all day; Mortoni’s is closed at lunch. Dinner for two, food only, $23 to $50 at Mr. Lucky’s; $43 to $86 at Mortoni’s.

* SPAGO LAS VEGAS, the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, 3500 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (702) 369-6300. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Dinner for two, food only, $68 to $102 in the dining room; $41 to $68 in the cafe.