Russell’s Restaurant

This charming restaurant is a practice restaurant in an actual setting. It has a great ambiance with subdued lighting and contemporary décor. It can host an intimate to a large group/​gathering tailored fit to your requirements.
We recently had our private event here with the Knights of Columbus’ Fourth Degree Anniversary celebration and had at least an attendance of 27 guests.
The food served was a three course gourmet meal– starting with a soup or salad.
A choice of one of three entrees– chicken, beef medallion, or a fish dish.
Dessert capped the last portion of the meal all created by the CSN culinary students.
Not only it was scrumptious and delicious but it was appealingly plated and served like an Iron Chef dish.
The service of the CSN team under —
Eileen Metcalfe the Dean/​instructress of Food and Beverage Management Department was unparalleled and more personalized.
We were served with our drinks and made sure our water cups were always filled up.
We were taken cared of every step of the way and even took our group photo.
This was by the way our second function in two years and we shall definitely come back and recommend this establishment to our friends and family!
We were impressed with the service oriented individuals who are the promising future of what hospitality service is meant to be!
Congratulations to the CSN Culinary and Hospitality Service Students and keep up the good work!
You guys rock!!!

Great atmosphere, delicious food, unbelievable price ($ 8.95) for 3 course meal (soup or salad, choice of 1 of 3 different entrées, choice of 1 of 3 different desserts, and bottomless nonalcoholic drinks)!
Staff is great and students are preparing and serving food.
Tips not accepted by students but you can still leave «tips» for students scholarship.
Great place to have lunch or dinner!
WARNING!
Check their schedule online because they are not open every day — just during class hours and every week menus are different (but always DELICIOUS)
Will be back for sure!

its hit and miss. but mostly hit. no matter what its the best deal in town for 9 bucks. it always has something good.

Russell’s Restaurant at the College of Southern Nevada is a secret gem that has been flying under the radar for years. Although I love singing its praises, I also am hesitant to write about it for fear that it might become so popular that it will be impossible to get a seat anymore.
Like the Westside Bistro, this is a «teaching» restaurant where all of the staff (cooks and servers) are students. For $ 7.95, you get a three-​course meal with a drink. Each day, a different cuisine is offered. Today’s meal, for the American Regional Cuisine class, focused on Cajun/​Creole. (I also visited last week for Eastern European Cuisines, and the menu for the French Cuisine class is always a standout.) I had lunch with my husband – whom, I might add, is a CSN grad who served his time at Russell’s years ago.
For our starters, my husband had the gumbo (sadly, not very good), and I had the Oysters Rockefeller (VERY good!). We both had the muffaletta sandwich for our entrée and Bananas Foster for dessert. I’ve had better muffalettas (including the one my husband makes), but the Bananas Foster was fantastic, from the awesome homemade ice cream to the perfectly balanced caramel sauce on the flambéed bananas.
As today’s meal proved, not every dish is successful, but the menus usually offer some surprisingly high-​end products that you can rarely get for under $ 10 per course, let alone per meal. You can check out each week’s menus online (
) before heading over to the college. Just make sure to get there well before the doors open at 11:45; once the tables are full, you’re out of luck.
As I said, this is a teaching restaurant, so you have to cut the staff some slack. But my one gripe with Russell’s is that they need to teach their students to speed it up a bit. Service is usually slow, but today it was SUPER slow. Not many of us can take a two-​hour lunch! (Although there was a large group of ladies from the Red Hat Society who were eating at a leisurely pace…)
If you’re not pressed for time and you want some fine dining at a reasonable price, head over to Russell’s for lunch. Just don’t expect five-​star service to go along with the five-​star menu items.

Definitely one of the best deals in town for fine dining. You receive a 3 course meal that is far superior to other dining establishments that charge far more. I enjoyed the fresh baked bread and butter initially brought out. Followed by a delicious caffe latte.
My first course consisted of a nice potato leek soup. It definitely had great flavor and a nice creamy consistency. My second course was a salmon filet in a tasty sauce with potatoes and mushrooms. The salmon was cooked well and and split like butter when eating. The mushrooms and potatoes were lightly salted a very nice contrast to the salmon that flowed together very well. The star of this show would have to be the desert. The Raspberry Bavarian desert consisted of a delicious cake with a raspberry mousse and rice crispy filling topped with chocolate accents and paired with a raspberry sorbet and fruits. All I can say is AMAZING experience!

CSN culinary ad hospitality school has the best kept secret in town. A school lab restaurant that provides students with much needed experience and you with a three course meal for under 10 bucks per.

Awesome fish tacos today! Loved the dessert too, great spiced ice cream. Service was good, very quick and polite server.

I think there are so few reviews about this place because it would be too crowded and you’d never get in if everyone knew about it. Seating takes place over the course of an hour, but if it’s a full house I don’t think you’d be able to get in at all since the meals will take the whole hour or more for everyone there.
Since there were so many people, we ended up waiting and eating over the course of two hours.
That being said, the price is worth the great food. The bread was cold, which was surprising, and at one point only one piece of bread was warm but the others were cold in the same basket. Not sure what was going on there, but the bread itself is fine as far as flavor and texture.
The soup was pretty good, too, but the salads are just regular to my tastes, even with the fancy passion fruit dressing. The main course and dessert wowed me. Best crème brûlée I’ve ever had, though the custard was a bit thin. Not sure if it was supposed to be like that. The cakes are good, too.
Beverages come with the meal but you can only choose from the soda, and you get free refills on those. Coffee and other fancier drinks are extra.

After eating here tonight, I’m convinced this has to be one of the best values in town! Seating was a little hectic and I ended up being asked if I mind sitting with a table of ladies who had an open seat at their table for six. All of the waitstaff here are super friendly, if not the most efficient, but cut them some slack, they’re culinary students who may never have waited a table before in their lives.
Just so you know in advance: Don’t come hungry; the wait between courses can be quite lengthy as the restaurant usually fills up. Also, don’t come when you’re pressed on time. I’d say the dining experience here can take around two hours. so take someone you enjoy being with! An awkward dinner could seem like forever here.
All meals are a three course affair from a prix fixe menu for $ 7.95 p/​p and all tips (cash only for tips) go towards a scholarship fund.
I went for the dinner that is available on Thursday nights featuring their aromatic menu. I believe the menus change according to semesters.
For my appetizer tonight I had the crabmeat soup with soy bean curd. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting as it came with a clear broth that seemed to be flavored with doenjang, a Korean fermented bean paste. While the crab was fresh, the broth itself was much too salty. I love salty. but this was an overload! Especially since my water didn’t get a refill throughout dinner since our waitress was so busy. Most of the other diners at the table opted for the cream of mushroom soup which they said was delicious, and the salads that I did see looked crisp with some endive leaves thrown into the mix.
For the main course I opted for the grilled beef tenderloin with potatoes au gratin and zucchini. The various steaks that were deposited around the table were very inconsistent as far as how they were done, but somehow it ended up that everybody got their preference. I myself prefer a rare steak, and my piece was a medium, but it was still the rarest on the table. The beef itself was flavorful and so so tender! The potatoes could have gotten a lot of help from some salt, and the zucchini was julienned beautifully. Other options were a scallop and shrimp scampi (jumbo scallops. I had some regret over my steak when I saw these) with an asiago polenta cake and asparagus spears, and baked herbed chicken with pan gravy and morels.
For dessert there were three options as well: a chocolate mousse dome, lemongrass spongecake and a pear tart with vanilla ice cream. I went for the lemongrass spongecake as that sounded a little different from the norm and I’m so glad I did! I didn’t get much lemongrass coming through, so it was very subtle, but the cake itself was moist and delicious! And this coming from someone who doesn’t care for dessert! All options were ordered, and all around the table were oohs and aahs.
Three courses, great quality, $ 8. They take credit cards too!

This is College of Southern Nevada’s Hospitality/​Culinary Dept’s restaurant. The front of the house staff are students in the school’s Restaurant Management class. The food are prepared by Culinary Arts students in one of the Culinary Department’s restaurant classes (e.g., Aromatics, French, International), with menu changing daily during the weeks that the instructional restaurant is open.
This is a sample menu prepared by students in the Aromatics class from 10-​14-​2008:
Choice of Soups or Salads
Butternut Squash Soup with Garam Masala or Wild Rice Soup with Fresh Marjoram, Seasonal Mixed Greens with choice of Maytag Blue Cheese Dressing, Apple-​Walnut Vinaigrette, or Asian-​Orange Vinaigrette.
Choice of Entrées:
Grilled Marinated Ahi Tuna served with Fried Wasabi Potato Cakes and Hot and Spicy Eggplant with toasted Sesame Seeds.
Linguine tossed in White Clam Sauce with Littleneck Clams and Fresh Oregano.
Curried Lamb and Vegetable Stew served over Cous-​Cous with Mint Chiffonade.
One of 3 Dessert selections prepared by Pastry Students in the program.
All meals include Homemade Bread or Rolls prepared by CSN Culinary Arts Students under the direction of Master Pastry Chef/​Professor Rudi Eichler and Pastry Chef/​Instructor Ms. Jody Lee.
Price $ 7.95 (tax included, tips goes toward CSN Scholarship fund)
North Las Vegas is far for most ppl, especially with the freeway and road constructions currently causing havoc on Las Vegas roads, but if you are in the area it is well worth the drive. The dessert that is served alone can cost $ 7+ in a typical restaurant with its own Pastry Chef. This is literally the best deal in town when the school is in session.