Or a review of my eating experiences on my last trip to Las Vegas
I took a couple of weeks off to go to the Vision Expo show in Las Vegas for my day job. I also had to catch up on some projects around the house.
While in Las Vegas my dining experiences ran the gamut from a barely digestible breakfast burrito the size of my head to a very satisfying dinner at one of the best buffets I have ever had on the strip.
I’ll start with the Ugly. There were two meals that stuck in my mind, or should I say gut, as really bad food. When we first arrived in Las Vegas my boss stopped by a Del Taco. We ordered a couple of burritos that were huge. It reminded me of the fare at a Taco Bell, big and mushy and not a lot of flavor. I managed to get it down and we went to back to the house. The next morning I had a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge, if you know what I mean.
The next meal that stands out in my head as particularly ugly was a breakfast burrito that we got at a place called Roberto’s. It too was as big as my head and had the flavor of potatoes and bacon that had been setting around in a steam table too long. I think that my traveling companion has a thing for quantity above quality. I couldn’t even finish this thing, no matter how many packets of hot sauce I slathered on it.
Next we have the bad which compared to the ugly really wasn’t too bad. The bad was a place with a bad name, Terrible’s Casino buffet for breakfast. I’m not sure how they do it but everything kind of tasted the same, salty. They do make made to order omelets that wasn’t too bad but everything had an overall salty taste. The cranberry juice was good and I did get some Yoplait yogurt.
In the good category was the buffet at South Point casino. The food here actually had different flavors. There was also prime rib that was a perfect rare to medium rare. Everything here was of good to great quality. I made a bit of an ass of myself here. I had dropped my napkin on the floor and I saw a gentleman coming towards me with black pants and a white shirt with a napkin folded over his arm. I asked him if he could get me a new napkin. He looked at me as if I was nuts and said “I don’t work here” with a disgusted tone in his voice. I really felt stupid, but he looked just like one of the servers.
Now for the great, this was The Buffet at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. This by far was the best meal of the whole trip. They had great piles of shrimp and king crab legs. I stared with a very large plate of these two. They also had sautéed bay scallops which I was able to load on the plate with the shrimp and crab legs. For my second round it was to the meat table for a slice of prime rib. My boss had some lamb on his plate so I thought I’d try it, did not care for it. Hit the line for some potatoes and some veggies. It was amazing everything had its own distinct flavor. It was at this point that I realized that places like Terrible’s and the taco joint where really bad because everything tasted the same.
What should you take from this? Well one thing for sure, there is no recipe or spice that can replace quality. It reminds me of a saying from my computer work, “Garbage In, Garbage Out” It is better to settle for a little quality than a whole lot of crap..
