Question of the Day - 07 July 2020

The El Rancho Vegas was the first casino to open (1941) on what is now known as the Las Vegas Strip, on the southwest corner of Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Blvd. (then called Highway 91). 

The El Rancho Vegas launched the first buffet in Las Vegas. In an effort to keep patrons in the casino after the late headliner show, in 1946 owner Beldon Katleman inaugurated the "chuck wagon," calling it the Buckaroo Buffet. It featured a simple array of cold cuts, plus a few hot dishes, as the flyer advertised, "to appease the howling coyote in your innards." The rock-bottom loss-leader price? One dollar.

When the fixed-price all-you-can-eat midnight feast proved to be a roaring success, it was quickly adopted by operators all over town, keen to keep hungry patrons gambling on the graveyard shift without having to cover the expense of a full-service restaurant.

From its late-night origins, the next development was a conversion to daytime hours. The Last Frontier and the Dunes are credited, in the mid-1950s, for serving the first "hunt breakfasts," the forerunners of the Sunday champagne brunch. 

By the late 1960s, the chuck wagon was served at most of the major casinos for all three meals. Well into the '70s, inflation was still unknown on the buffet scene. The most opulent spreads at Caesars Palace and the Dunes cost $2.75 and $4, respectively. The vaunted Silver Slipper dinner smorgasbord charged just $1.98. The ultra-low prices finally began to be phased out in the '80s following the success of higher priced and higher-quality offerings at the Sands and Golden Nugget; also in the '80s, the last of the old-time chuck wagons were modernized into buffets. 

In the early '90s, modern Las Vegas was in full swing, launched by the Mirage and the Rio. The Rio introduced several innovations, including the all-suite hotel, the dazzlingly colorful signage, eye-popping cocktail-waitress uniforms, and the superbuffet. The Rio's Carnival World Buffet was a giant leap from the normal steam-table fare, featuring serving "islands" dishing up specific cuisines: American, Mexican, Italian, pizza, Chinese, steak, and Las Vegas' first Mongolian grill.

Like the original chuck wagon, the superbuffet took the town by storm and soon, buffets up and down the Strip (and downtown at Main Street Station) were expanding and serving multiple cuisines.

Then, in the late '90s, superbuffets separated into two camps when Bellagio introduced the gourmet superbuffet, spreading noticeably better fare at noticeably higher prices. Planet Hollywood, Paris, the Wynn, and Aria followed suit, until Caesars hit the pinnacle of the breed with its Bacchanal Buffet.     

Today, two buffets are open, the Wynn and Cosmopolitan, but they're both quite different than they've ever been before: The Wynn is more like a sit-down restaurant where you order off a menu and servers bring you your food; at Cosmo, you can approach the food, but the servers dish it out for you.

It remains to be seen when, or if, Las Vegas -- and the rest of the world -- recovers enough from the pandemic to return to the traditional buffet format that started with the Buckaroo Buffet at the El Rancho Vegas in 1946, nearly 75 years ago.