Question of the Day - 27 December 2016

We answered this question once before, way back in 2007, but our response remains the same.

The fact is, we don’t keep track of the bad ones.

Our mothers always taught us that if you don’t have something nice to say about someone or something, it’s better not to say anything at all. It’s true. And it’s the way we tend to view our responsibility to our Las Vegas Advisor members, who get our dining reports every month.

We try dining option after dining option after dining option after dining option, tons and tons of meal deals, loss-leader specials, buffets, breakfasts, steaks, prime ribs, hot dogs and hamburgers, shrimp cocktails, ceviche, crab cakes, crab specials, ethnic cuisine, fancy food, and on and on and on. And there’s only so much space in the newsletter and only so much time to write dining reviews.

So we focus entirely on the places we recommend. Thus, when we eat a meal that isn’t recommendable, it absolves us from writing about it and we dismiss it from our memories almost immediately. Forgettable meals, by their very nature, are quickly forgotten.

Some might think that we should warn our readers about our really bad dining experiences, and occasionally something is so egregious that we do. However, if a meal or a restaurant is that bad, it usually doesn’t last long, so in general, we don’t say anything and just wait for the place to go away. It usually does.

In addition, a dining experience that’s utterly and completely ugly is rare around here. And even if a restaurant is uneven, usually something is recommendable about it.

Finally, we often give a place the benefit of the doubt, figuring it had an off-night, then go back and try it again.

Bottom line: We provide reviews of so many Las Vegas meals that our members know to stick to the ones that we vouch for.

"Readers can find plenty of bad reviews by reading through the Forums, particularly Trip Reports, Restaurants/Dining, Hotels, the various hotel/casino companies, and even FFA. Posters are pretty eager to 'tattle' about a disappointing meal or portion of a meal or the service. Additionally, I think the LVA staff does a good job 'typing between the lines' when a meal (or drink or entrée) doesn't quite make the grade without overtly slamming the eatery. And that requires more care and discernment than heaping praise on a good experience." "My mother taught me the same thing as your mother but even my mother would rip to pieces the Buffet at Circus Circus. My first time in Vegas as a 21-year-old, my friend (who wasn't quite 21 but in the early 80s that wasn't as stringently enforced as now) stayed at CC and one morning decided to eat the buffet there. We were college students and it was cheap so we went there. To say the food was awful would be complimenting it. Dying of hunger would have been far better than trying to eat that "garbage." My friend and I laugh about it now - but back then our main concern was trying not to vomit after seeing and eating what we saw. If that isn't the worst meal in Nevada I don't know what is - and even my mother would be OK with me ripping it for it is well deserved."