The Buffet

Notes

All day, add $16.99 for unlimited Mimosas, Bloody Marys, sangria, Champagne, premium beer on tap and wine. 

All Day Pass: Mon-Fri, $60.

LVA Review

This buffet was re-reviewed in the February, 2011 LVA; some of the information contained in this review may no longer be accurate.

After eating the breakfast at Cosmopolitan (reviewed last month), we couldn’t shake the feeling that the morning buffet at Aria is just better. Since each is the obvious alternative to the other, we decided to try Aria again, but this time for brunch. At $15.95, Aria’s breakfast is 95¢ more than Cosmo’s. The weekend brunch is $23.95, due to the addition of cracked snow-crab legs, jumbo shrimp, and Domaine St. Michelle champagne, so we tried to ignore those differences. Everything else was as we remembered it from our review last year (LVA 2/10) and sorry Cosmo, but there’s just no comparison. Cosmo, for example, offered orange juice only; Aria was serving orange, grapefruit, apple, cranberry, and tomato. All three melons were ripe and sweet (and this was in December). With two eggs-to-order stations, as opposed to Cosmo’s one, the lines were shorter. And the difference in quality was immediately apparent: lox with bagels (no bagels at Cosmo) and five kinds of cream cheese; creamed herring, kimchee, and delicious hash brown balls; carved roast beef and turkey, glazed ham, and chicken sausage; crepes and blintzes, cold cuts and cheeses, Chinese and Mexican, several salads; pizza; six different kinds of coffee cakes; even the coffee was better. Plus, unlike Cosmo’s early attempt to create an “interactive” food experience by not labeling its dishes (we hear “half” the food is now named), everything at Aria has a sign on it, so you know exactly what you’re getting and you don’t have to talk to nobody ’bout nothin’.

This buffet was re-reviewed in the April, 2010 LVA; some of the information contained in this review may no longer be accurate.

We don’t often do this, but after reviewing the Aria dinner buffet in February, we went right back to try breakfast. If you like fish for breakfast, you’ve got it made here. Along with lox (with bagels and all the fixins), you’ll find ceviche, two types of herring, anchovies, and more smoked fish. You could get all you need from this section alone, but then you’d miss out on the fresh fruit, cereals, crepes, blintzes, muffins, burritos, and pizza; don’t miss the biscuits (overheard: “My wife’s from South Carolina and these are damned good biscuits”). There’s an excellent eggs Benedict, a cooked-to-order egg station, and various scrambles. Meats include ham, lamb, turkey, a half-dozen different sausages, and thick freshly sliced bacon. We rate this one of the two best breakfast buffets in town, along with Wynn Las Vegas. However, at $14.95, Aria’s is $4 less expensive. On top of it all, this is one of the easiest “changeover” plays in town. Breakfast begins at 7 am and ends at 11, but there’s no dead period preceding lunch. So if you get there between 10:30 and 11, you can pay the breakfast price to get the best of breakfast and lunch.

This buffet was reviewed in the February 2010 LVA; some of the information contained in the review may no longer be accurate.

Located on the second floor near the Elvis theater, “The Buffet” at Aria is a good one. This is another gourmet buffet, along the lines of Bellagio or Wynn, though with fewer selections. The stand-outs for dinner are cold seafood, with king crab legs, oysters, shrimp, and a good grade of nigiri sushi; salads, including exotic Asian mixes, an asparagus-bacon combo, and a fantastic potato salad; and carved meats, with New York strip, prime rib, lamb, ham, and turkey. Almost everything is high quality. On the night we ate, the supporting cast included two types of curry at a small Indian station, linguini with white clam sauce at the Italian station, a delicate egg flower soup at the Asian station, plus beef ribs, kim chee, steamed clams and mussels, and plenty of steamed vegetables. The dessert line-up was also good, with chocolate-covered whole strawberries, chocolate nutella, and bread pudding with raspberry sauce among many selections. Another plus is the fact that this one is still undiscovered, so lines are still light. Dinner is $27.95 from 4 to 10 pm, Sun.-Thurs.; there’s a gourmet dinner for $39.99 on weekends.

We ate dinner, but the real value may be in breakfast. We only walked through the breakfast buffet, but came away with feasted eyes and watering mouths. If six kinds of yogurt, seven hot and cold cereals, or a dozen different cooked-to-order omelets don’t float your boat, perhaps the assorted cream cheeses, olives, capers, anchovies, and horseradish at the lox station, the Kielbasa, Portuguese, Montega, Salonika, Casablanca, and Bombay varieties of sausage, or the peppers and eggs, salmon and eggs, silverfish and eggs, and Benedict will. There were also lamb chops, apple crepes, cheese blintzes, chilaquiles, fat breakfast burritos, fried plantains, ham and pork loin at the carving stations, deli meats, stir-fried veggies, fruit, coffee cakes and muffins, and even pizza. Given that it’s $8 for a bowl of oatmeal, $11 for waffles, and $13 for bacon & eggs at the Aria coffee shop, Café Vettro, at $14.95 this has to be one of the top dining plays in the whole of CityCenter.