Telling Tails

You don't have to be a fishing aficionado to know that a "fish story" is all about exaggeration. "An exaggeration or incredible story," according to my Random House Dictionary. In other words, a lie. I've told my own fish stories over the years — none of them having to do with any aquatic creatures — but I've used a fishing pole only a couple of times in my life. Oh, I did actually own one as a teenager, but it was merely a convenient prop so that my parents would think I was going fishing. I would actually hide the rod behind the bushes and run off to hang out with my juvenile-delinquent friends. If my folks thought something seemed fishy about my charade (I never came home with any "catch," after all), they didn't say a word. It was a fish story in reverse.

As an adult, the most outrageous fish stories I hear are from friends who frequent the casinos. They all have big stories that usually start out with "I was down to my last dollar" and end with flashing lights, ringing bells and winnings that are never less than a couple thousand bucks. The part of the story that gets left out from most of these lucky-dog tales are the sums they lost before hitting the jackpot. Or the drama of the slot-crazed fool who won a big payout and greedily put it all back into the machines, hoping to score bigger but ultimately losing every cent. When he brags about his hot streak at the slots, he doesn't include those little details. Why ruin a good story?

Even if brazen hyperbole isn't your thing, all kinds of tales — and tails — can be shared at the six-week-old Moby's Fish Tales, the new seafood venue at Harrah's Casino. The restaurant was created as part of the expensive (reportedly $126 million, without exaggeration) makeover plan that Las Vegas-based Harrah's Entertainment Inc. shelled out to spiff up the 11-year-old casino on Kansas City's northeast side.

Moby's is named for the big whale in Herman Melville's 19th-century novel Moby Dick, not the diminutive recording artist Moby (né Richard Melville Hall). The musical Moby does own a sort of restaurant in New York City, a vegan teahouse called Teany Café, but that's not the kind of culinary concept that would float at a Midwestern casino. Moby's Fish Tales is a better fit because it's aimed at a less finicky audience. The 174-seat dining room isn't fancy, and the menu isn't complicated. The fish fare here is maybe a shade more sophisticated than a Red Lobster and not quite up to the standards of a McCormick & Schmick's. The lures, as it were, are its reasonable prices and generous portions.

On my first visit to the restaurant, I was the guest of a Harrah's high roller who used her comp credit to pay for dinner, encouraging me to order whatever I wanted. My head was swimming at the more indulgent possibilities, but frankly, the 2-pound steamed live Maine lobster sounded too rich, so I settled on the "Colossal Shrimp Cocktail" and the country-fried lobster.

Now, I wouldn't use the word colossalto describe three chilled shrimp attractively presented as a "cocktail" unless I were really going overboard in exaggerating their visual impact. But these crustaceans were pretty damned big, like steroid-pumped versions of a traditional jumbo shrimp: heftier than a prawn but smaller than a chicken leg. It took three bites to finish one. The country-fried lobster, which sounded like the ultimate Midwestern spin on a coastal classic, was a winner. A meaty lobster tail is steamed, chopped, dipped in a light, tempura-style batter, then flash-fried and smothered with lobster cream sauce. I ordered it with garlic "smashed" potatoes, but a pile of french fries would have been a better choice, taking lobster to a new level of trashy decadence.

We were seated in a dark, remote corner of the dining room, so I didn't really get a fish-eye view of Moby's décor until my second visit, when I pretended to be a high roller and brought along Jimmy, Patrick, Taylor and Carol Ann. The casino was a madhouse that night, but Moby's wasn't so busy. "They're having a cookware giveaway in one of the meeting rooms," explained the adorable hostess as she led us past the illuminated room divider, which was adorned with oversized frosted-Lucite fish tails. "It can't be plastic. It looks like art glass," Taylor said. It wasn't, but we all learned that night that looks can be deceiving. Taylor, for example, claims to be older than he looks, so we all insisted on seeing his driver's license as proof.

On the other hand, our server that night, the handsome James Brown, seemed a lot younger than his age, probably because of his inexperience. But we all loved him, in spite of his bad fish jokes, his corny nickname ("the Codfather of Soul"), the fact that he forgot to bring a nutcracker to open the rock-hard stone crab claws or cocktail forks to pry out the crabmeat, and his lack of snap when it came to clearing away plates. He was charming and mostly attentive, though, so we didn't get too crabby with him.