For Sin City, the antidote

THE only prayer most people associate with the Las Vegas Strip is the kind offered by gamblers hoping the Lord will send a certain card. Yet in its own quirky way, Las Vegas Boulevard accommodates and even markets to the spiritual needs of guests.

Most people who turn off the Strip onto Cathedral Way have literally made a wrong turn or they’re simply hoping to make a U-turn. But if they kept going a few more yards they’d find the Roman Catholic Guardian Angel Cathedral, whose welcoming newsletter attempts to “encourage you to consider our Guardian Angel Cathedral your church away from home.” Your “church away from home” is across from the Stardust and next to the massive Wynn. Its stained glass windows augment the usual religious themes with a nod to the secular iconography of Las Vegas, including images of the Las Vegas Hilton and the Stardust.

Guardian Angel is a very modest building on one very expensive bit of Strip real estate (it was probably a lot cheaper when the church opened in 1963). Aside from the looming shadow cast by Wynn, Guardian Angel really does appear to be a community church. On a recent Saturday morning, about 15 people, mostly locals, gathered in an administrative building behind the church to sing Handel’s “Messiah.”

The listing for the event was a contrast to the rest of the Strip’s activities: “No audition, no cost, no commitment, no experience necessary. No music score? No problem!” The only hint that just beneath this spectacle-free presentation lies a massive turnover congregation of tourists, is watching box after box thick with copies of its single-sheet monthly newsletter being unpacked.

Dennis Grant did not expect to sing along and praise Jesus during his vacation. But on Sunday morning the tourist from Australia’s Gold Coast, along with his wife, Terre, and their daughter Nicca, not only sing along but also wave their hands and napkins at the House of Blues in Mandalay Bay enjoying the gospel brunch.

“I was surprised to find gospel here,” Dennis Grant says. At first, he was suspicious that the music would be a kitschy Vegas take on gospel. But after witnessing the Gastons, a local group that includes three generations of the Gaston family and that has been performing a mix of contemporary and traditional gospel for almost three decades, Grant is thrilled. “We don’t have anything like this in Australia.”

The experience of authentic church music within a Vegas resort is an odd one and perhaps came about only because the House of Blues offered a gospel brunch at all of its locations. L.A.-based gospel singer Sylvia St. James books the acts for the gospel brunch in Las Vegas. “People don’t come to Las Vegas to meet Jesus,” she says. “There was a question as to how well it would be received.” But the event was successful from the start. “The other brunches around the country took time to grow, but Las Vegas worked right away.”

According to St. James, the gospel brunch in Vegas averages about 250 people a show, with two shows every Sunday. Of course, gospel performers used to being in a church have to adjust slightly. “There are certain things I do tell them,” St. James says. “We don’t force the prayer of salvation on the audience. We don’t do an altar call. I try to discourage a lot of personal testimony because not everybody is ready for that. Rather, I want them to keep the music uplifting, inspiring, enlightening, enriching and empowering.”

As for the ironies of seeing church music in the belly of a secular behemoth, Nicca Grant says, “The gimmick isn’t lost on us, but we aren’t going to see Celine Dion.”

On the subject of gimmicks, the Grants are in Vegas for the one religious ceremony the city is actually known for. “We are renewing our vows sometime next week. We’ve been married 24 years.”

As with most things here, even in spiritual matters, the wealthy get the most opportunities. So for example, the Four Seasons at Mandalay Bay is where the Strip’s only kosher kitchen is to be found. “We get a lot of requests for kosher,” says Michael Goodman, executive chef. In particular, the Four Seasons’ kosher kitchen is a popular draw for banquet events such as weddings and bar mitzvahs. According to Goodman, about a dozen of his employees are kosher qualified.

“We train all our employees before they go into the kosher kitchen,” he notes. “We have guidelines set up, we have kosher purveyors where we get our foods from, and we have supervision when we use the kosher kitchen so that if something goes wrong, a rabbi is there to correct the problem.”

Indeed, so seriously does the Four Seasons take the integrity of its kosher kitchen that it sacrifices the most sacred of hospitality principles: When it comes to kosher, the customer is not always right. “The rabbi wins. Kosher is kosher, and if the rabbi says, ‘No,’ we can’t use it,” says Goodman. This can frustrate Goodman, as in his long-term quest to find a good balsamic vinegar that will pass rabbinical muster.

The choices are further limited when you consider the Strip is in the middle of a desert and so, Goodman says, everything kosher must be brought in from either New York or Los Angeles. In all, Goodman estimates that the kitchen serves 5,000 kosher meals a year.

Then there are the California kosher folks who have even more specialized tastes and can drive a man batty. “We have customers, primarily from California, looking for organic kosher -- that can be a tremendous challenge.”

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For more on what’s happening on and off the Strip, see latimes.com/movablebuffet.