Low Brow Vegas

You think every time I go to Vegas I'm tossing down for expensive Robuchon and Fleur de Lys, but that ain't the case.



This behemoth comes courtesy of Nathan's, the hot dog stand. I really had no idea Nathan's offered anything but large dogs, but they had a wide variety of food -boardwalk food- that turned out to be awesome. At first, I thought the $7.95 was the Vegas jacked up price, but I barely made it through a half of this sandwich, easily benchmarking its deleterious effects on heath on the same level of a Bennigan's Monte Cristo.



The chili cheese fries had a great taste. Cheese as a condiment can be tasteless and neon orange, but the taste lived up to the intense color. They even give you a little devil pitchfork to stab and retrieve the fries.

Luxor. Like a big, inverted case of vertigo. They placed us up where air is thin and air conditioning was weaker than I paid for. It was a cool room, and even though the last third was sheared off on the bias, I'm short, so the room actually appeared larger.



This is a dizzying angle you would see if you were actually there, and had what I had to drink. Which is some.

Now, over to Rio. Buffets are the cultural landmark of Vegas. There is admittedly two strata of dining: buffets and restaurants. Depending on where you are and what you are doing, either one is appropriate and enjoyable.



The only thing that attracts me to Rio is the seafood buffet. Not the Pan-World Buffet of gluttonous consumption, but the Fisherman's Village seafood buffet.

I've always been a bit ambivalent about the quality of the food here, but this time it was very good. The sushi was edible (think, Todai, which can be completely inedible). Poor quality salmon has the tendency to morph the buttery fat into tough tendrils, but this almost melted in my mouth. I'm not going overboard, it's not the best sushi in the world, but for a seafood buffet specializing in crab legs and fried everything, it's not a bad effort.



Your eyes are not deciving you. These are lobster tails. Sure, they're slipper tails which don't have the sweet quality of a Maine lobster, and they're a bit smaller, but I haven't ever been to another seafood buffet that even offered them.



Of course, they had the standard non-seafood offerings (filler material). Unexciting and pedestrian, most were deep fried, bread stuffed, oversauced, boiled or lackadaisically steamed. The ribs were an exception. Falling off the bone and perfectly coated and colored, they reminded me of the most competent Korean short ribs I've had.

So, lowbrow Vegas has some merit. Can't always blow a ton of money on dinner, since I have that earmarked for table games.