It`s easy to get hungry here. So many gambling opportunities beckon, people forget to eat.
The Las Vegas appetite comes on suddenly at any hour, and the big marquees that line the Strip and the downtown streets serve to whet it. They tout gargantuan prime rib dinners for as little as $2.95; two-for-one sandwich deals; cheap buffets; $1 hot dogs; 99-cent breakfasts; crab legs for $6.95.
Those bargains seldom come easily, and to someone on the verge of swooning from nutritional deprivation, the logistics involved in getting a quick meal at a bargain price smack of pure torture. Lines tend to be long, and the advertised rates often refer to discount coupons available in ”fun books” offered by casinos. The service desks that distribute those books draw crowds of their own.
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After clipping coupons, diners then discover that the restaurant stands on a far-away littoral across the Sea of Blackjack and that bargain hunters already have packed themselves into an apparently endless maze of velvet ropes.
One morning at the Excalibur, regiments of drowsy early risers and jacked-up insomniacs waited for their chance at the $2.99 ($3.20 with tax)
breakfast buffet in the Round Table, a room of staggering proportions with a decor hinting at what medieval dining halls might have been like if Formica and steam tables had existed in the Dark Ages.
Customers filed under iron chandeliers past trays and chafing dishes filled with canned pineapple and peach slices, blintzes, bagels, melons, orange juice, scrambled eggs, hash, sausage, waffles, pancakes, toast and cereal.
After reaching their tables at last, those people had every right to dawdle, but the subtle pressures of casino living hurried them anyway. They had so much yet to do. Waiting for breakfast already had consumed a good chunk of their day. And the people moving slowly past the buffet cast hungry eyes at the occupied seats, inducing guilt.
Waitresses brought the first coffee refill cheerfully, but the third arrived with a slight chill on it. A sign on the wall at Ed Debevic`s puts it more baldly, but in the Excalibur, the same message comes through just as succinctly: ”Eat and get out!”
In the Moon Rock Cafe at Vegas World early one evening, the feeding-frenzy atmosphere of this charmingly garish and frenetic hotel/casino carried over into the dining area. At the end of the food line, customers waited beneath life-size reproductions of a lunar module and a tethered astronaut, both of which float in a star-spangled sky over the slot machines. The meal costs $5.30, but almost everyone paid with some kind of voucher or discount coupon because owner Bob Stupak revels in promotional come-ons. The line crept almost imperceptibly, as the leader of each group riffled through an envelope to find the appropriate discount documents. Still, it took one customer almost as long to pay cash; the woman at the register wasn`t quite sure what to do with it.
Inside, the buffet tables offer filling but uninspired food with the featured prime rib sliced in dry, sparing portions (ask for as much as you want, if you don`t mind holding things up).
Dedicated coupon collectors with strong feet and infinite patience will find bargains and a surprising variety of quality buffets around town. Those who prefer a relaxing, unrushed repast in a refined atmosphere might choose to spend real money (prices are seldom outrageous) in the hotel dining rooms
(reservations recommended).
Several free-standing restaurants, even those approaching gourmet caliber, are tucked into shopping centers. Cognoscenti seek them out. To compete with the fire-sale prices of the casinos and lure the hotels` captive guests, independents must keep their standards high.
The Las Vegas Advisor, a free-thinking monthly newsletter, offers a Top 10 list of values. In April it went like this: $2.50 ham and eggs breakfast at the Horseshoe; crab and margaritas, $11.94, at Palace Station; the Horseshoe`s complete New York steak dinner for $2; 10-cent draft beers at Vacation Village; the $10.95 18-ounce porterhouse dinner at the California; 99-cent bacon and eggs at King 8; the free fun book at the Sands; the room-show-matchplay combination at Bally`s, $142; all beers and call brands at the Golden Nugget, $1.25; and the $4.95 pizza and pitcher of beer at Palace Station. Go forth and enjoy, but not if you have to be anywhere else anytime soon.