Circus Circus – Circus Buffet: This week’s buffet schedule is: Weekend Brunch is Friday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. for $24.95. Weekend Dinner is Friday-Sunday, 4:30 p.m.-10 p.m. for $24.95.
Luxor – The Buffet at Luxor: Brunch buffet prices went up $1. Weekday Brunch is Wed & Thurs, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. for $31.99. Weekend Brunch is Fri-Sun, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. for $37.99.
Palms – A.Y.C.E. Buffet: New times and prices expected by early August.
The validation at Club Serrano took five minutes. The wait to get into the weekday brunch buffet (served 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., 1 p.m. on Wed. and Thurs.) also took five minutes — plus an hour.
The line wasn’t especially long, but it moved in fits and starts, stalling when people waiting for a table backed up to the cashier. Yes, it was a drudge, especially looking into the room and seeing half the tables empty, but dirty. Eventually, however, you pay (more on that below), get seated, fill your plate and then your face, and all is forgiven and forgotten — unless you have to write a review.
Filling your plate is easy. The good stuff: steamed snow crab (worth the wait alone), six-ounce steak (grilled to perfection), carved bone-in ham, pork loin, and chicken breast, dill salmon, medium peeled shrimp, bagels and lox, cooked-to-order eggs, and two types of Benedicts. You’ll also be tempted by Middle Eastern choices (baba ghanoush, Fattoush salad, falafel/tzatziki), scrambled eggs and Tex-Mex scramble, bacon, sausage, several potato dishes, hot and cold cereal, parfait bar, melons, salads, lobster roll, fajitas, tamales, several pizzas, and chicken and waffles.
For dessert, there’s scooped sorbet, soft-serve, and assorted pastries cakes, and pies.
As you eat, you’re secure in the knowledge that with our MRO coupon, you’re getting the best buffet deal in town, without a doubt, and one of the best deals in town overall. With the 50%-for-one option, you pay $21.50, for two $42.99. (The brunch buffet price was raised $10 on August 12; dinner Sat.-Tues. is $46.99, an increase of $10. Snow crab and prime rib on Fridays is now $52.99, up $10 and the all-you-can-eat lobster dinner on Wed. and Thurs. is $79.99, up from $64.99.) With a $5 toke, a couple is out of there for $50.
As we say, this deal is so strong, it erases the memory of standing around for an hour.
Wow. How is it that we never even heard of this place until Yelp named it the number-one brunch restaurant in the entire country? Talk about under the radar.
In May, Yelp compiled its annual list of the 100 top brunch restaurants in the U.S. based on reviews on the site. Though California had the most brunches at 15, followed by Florida (11) and Texas (9), Las Vegas had the number-one-ranked restaurant. Toasted Gastrobrunch moved into the top spot after being ranked #22 last year.
It’s been in business in Las Vegas for five years and has two locations, both out in the western valley near the Beltway (9516 W. Flamingo right at the Beltway and 7345 Arroyo Crossing Parkway just south of the Beltway a bit west of Buffalo), plus three in San Diego.
With that kind of recommendation, we ran out to the one on Flamingo to see what all the fuss was about. We saw!
To start with, it’s an Interesting place, full of farm-animal decor.
The brander/decorator also has a distinct sense of humor.
It also has a seven-seat counter, outdoor patios on two sides, and plenty of tables inside, but the word is out. When we arrived at 11:30 on a Monday morning, Toasted was less than half full, but by the time we left at 12:15, every inside table was taken (the counter had availability).
The menu is extensive and creative to the point of innovative, no mean feat for breakfast/brunch.
Eggs start with the Plain Jane — two eggs, bacon or Portuguese sausage, truffle potatoes, and a roasted half-tomato ($17) — then go off on flights of fancy all the way to Eggs in Purgatory, a sunnyside egg in a sourdough bowl with shakshuka sauce, scallions, and mint ($18). They also come with smoked brisket, veggie, or ABC (avocado, pork belly, and cheddar) hash, steak ($28), just the whites, omelet, and scrambles. Benedict fans (like us) choose from short ribs, fried chicken, regular bacon, and veggie with nut-free pesto hollandaise ($17-$19.50). Then there are four French toasts ($12-$18), four south-of-the-border breakfasts, three toasts including salmon and lobster ($17-$18), plus sandwiches, burgers, and desserts.
The drink menu features eight mimosas, including a four-drink flight ($22), three Bellinis ($11), cocktails, wine, beer, flaming coffees, and all the lattes, capuccinos, and espressos you’d expect.
We went for the regular bacon Benny. The bacon was thick (good), the asparagus was thin (better), the eggs runny (perfect), the English muffins crisp (they barely got soggy throughout the meal), the hollandaise creamy (beautiful), and the roasted half-tomato with parmesan juicy (excellent). It also came with a big bowl of truffle potatos, similar to tater tots, but round, with a stainless-steel cup of ketchup. Trust us when we tell you that it was an astounding meal, both in quality and quantity, and we had to consciously stop ourselves from moaning in culinary rapture from start to finish.
Speaking of finish, we couldn’t. It was a ridiculous amount of food, especially for the price ($18). All the dishes we spied at tables around us were the same. It seems that it doesn’t matter what you order or how big an appetite you have, you probably won’t be able to eat your entire meal.
We can easily see how Yelpers rated Toasted Gastrobrunch the nation’s number one.
Junior’s Cheesecake was founded in 1950 in the heart of Brooklyn on Flatbush Avenue (and DeKalb). The original restaurant remains in place 74 years later; Junior’s has four other locations: two in Times Square, one at Foxwoods, and the 300-seat venue that opened at Resorts World in late February in the space formerly occupied by the Kitchen. Junior’s is, essentially, Resorts World’s new coffee shop.
Junior’s is renowned for the best cheesecake in New York City and beyond, with 25 varieties, plus rich and fancy cakes and pies, along with pastries, brownies, cookies, and more.
It’s also a full-service deli and New York-style diner, with a huge menu of breakfast items and soups, salads, sandwiches, steaks, seafood, barbecue, and chef’s specialties.
On our visit, we opted for the cup of soup and half-sandwich ($19.95), in order to try the matzo ball and corned beef. But the half-san comes on a roll (on the menu, it’s actually called a “plain roll”) and you can’t substitute for bread.
We weren’t about to have a Jewish-style-deli corned-beef sandwich on a hamburger bun (it’s against our religion), so we got the full sandwich (also $19.95, with the soup at $7.95).
We snuck a photo of the half-san on a bun from the table next to ours. Pretty weak.
The sandwich was big, as expected, but not among the better corned beefs we’ve known and loved — dry and tasteless. It comes on marbled rye (so much for good Jewish caraway-seeded rye, let alone double baked) and the house-brand mustard was bland. Likewise, the matzo ball was big and light, but the soup was really salty, indicating the lack of chicken-soup finesse. And the $29.15 (before tax and tip) left us even more unimpressed.
We also got a slice of cheesecake to bring back to the office. That did live up to its reputation. Everyone agreed: rich, creamy, sweet with a little tang, firm rather than full of air, with a soft crust. Redemption!
We’ll probably give Junior’s another chance in the breakfast or all-day-dining department, but so far, we’re considering it go-to place for a decadent dessert.
When you think about Las Vegas’ most acclaimed restaurants, Wing Lei at Wynn Las Vegas probably doesn’t come to mind, but it should. It’s received 5 Diamonds from AAA, 5 Stars from Forbes, and was the first Chinese restaurant in North America to earn a Michelin Star. In 2016, John Curtas named it one of Las Vegas’ “Essential 50” restaurants in Eating Las Vegas. So what took us so long to try it? Well, mostly because it took this long to get a comp. Just kidding. The real reason is we plain overlooked it. We had occasion to try Wing Lei last month and it was fantastic.
A lot goes into becoming a 5-Star restaurant — food quality and service, obviously, but ambience is a big part of it, too. This place has a great feel. For example, since plates are usually shared, every seat has two sets of chopsticks, one for grabbing food from the communal plates and the other for eating it off of yours. That makes so much sense, but the over/under on how many attempts before you forget, or get them mixed up and serve yourself incorrectly, is 2.5. You get the amuse-bouche (free appetizer) to start, mini-pastries you didn’t order for dessert, and a box with cookies to take with you. First-class all the way. You a foodie baller, bro.
We asked an F&B director we know what to order and he said, “You gotta go with the duck,” as in the Imperial Peking Duck. Same advice from John Curtas in Eating Las Vegas. And before we ordered, our dining partner announced that he’d already ordered it ahead. Yep, the word’s out on the duck. We’ve had Peking duck before, but this one was better. The glistening cooked duck is wheeled out, presented, then carved tableside in a little show of its own. Then the server prepares a few Mandarin crepes (so you get a clue about how you’re supposed to eat them) and leaves the rest to you. This dish is $131.88 and, with some appetizers, it was the only entrée needed for our party of three. Those appetizers included a sampler for $53.88, a mushroom combo for $29.88, and potstickers for $28.88 (8s are lucky in Chinese culture). Beers — Lucky Budha and Yanging China — were $10 each.
Chalk up Wing Lei as another primo dining experience at the Wynn. This is a first-rate splurge and not an overly expensive one at that. Appetizers are mostly in the $20s, so an app or two and that $130 duck will get you out at around $100 per person. And it can be less: soy sea bass is $53.88, General Tao’s chicken is $41.88, and Cantonese chow mein is $27.88. We didn’t try them, but it’s -300 that they’re excellent. Check it out, and good luck with that chopstick challenge.
The area code and universal identifier of all things Hawaii is also the name of one of Las Vegas’ best new restaurants. The 808 Café, run by Hawaiian transplant Dennis Lin, is located in a nondescript storefront in a strip mall at Flamingo and Buffalo. Don’t be deterred; the major menu includes authentic Hawaiian and Asian dishes served in big portions and nothing is priced above $20.
We asked a bartender we know from the Islands if she was familiar with 808 and she raved about the selection. Indeed, just about everything associated with Hawaiian cuisine is on this menu—loco moco, mochiko chicken, spam, teriyaki beef, Hawaiian beef stew, Portuguese sausage and eggs. We didn’t go that route, except to try the gau gee (fried wontons), which we’re told aren’t easy to find outside of Hawaii. You get eight for $8.95 and they’re excellent.
Described as Asian-Fusion, the rest of the menu is a mix that’s primarily Chinese. Well over 100 selections include noodles, rice, pastries, soups, meat, seafood, and vegetables. We had garlic edamame ($4.95), Szechuan dumplings ($6.95), siu mai ($7.95), salt & pepper fish ($14.95), shrimp chow fun ($15.95), and the house special rice ($16.95). Different spices, mustard, and hot sauces accompanied. One of our favorites was the siu mai that comes five to an order and they’re huge, but despite the size, still delicate. The star of the show was the salt & pepper fish. This is a gotta-get. Spice it up however you fancy and eat it there (they’re not as good for take-out).
Making everything better, we have two Member Rewards offers for 808 Café, both downloadable. One is a modest offer for non-LVA members: 5% off $25 or 10% off $100—a discount of $2.50 to $10+. The second is more substantial and available to LVA members only: an order of the house special rice for $5 when you spend at least $40. That’s an easy spend for two people and it works out to a $12 saving on the dish. It comes with your choice of beef, chicken, pork, or shrimp and is a meal in itself. Take it out and you have a $5 lunch for two.
You’d expect this place to be in the heart of Chinatown, but it’s about five miles farther west up Flamingo. It’s worth the drive for the good food, not to mention the LVA deal. It’s not fancy, but the owner is usually there to make suggestions and the diners tend to talk with one another, likely due to familiarity from frequenting the place.
This is one of those restaurants you’ll have to go back to several times to even begin to dent the menu and we’re sure we’ll come up with other recommendations (our bartender friend raves about the crab Rangoon), but the S&P fish, another entrée, and orders of siu mai and gau gee will get you there for the rice deal. It’s open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. (11:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat.).
Bellagio – The Buffet at Bellagio: Sat & Sun Brunch is now 8 a.m.-1 p.m. instead of 8 a.m.-11 a.m. for $54.99. Sat & Sun Seafood Dinner is now 1 p.m.-8 p.m. instead of 11 a.m.-8 p.m. for $79.99.
Bellagio is the only MGM property, as of today, to incorporate a new “Line Pass” system. Go online to their website to reserve these dining ‘fast passes’ to skip the line at an increased price point. Pricing ranges from $20 – $30 more expensive than their walk up prices.
Caesars Palace – Bacchanal Buffet: Daily Dinner is now 4 p.m.-10 p.m. instead of 3 p.m.-10 p.m. for $84.99.
Circus Circus – Circus Buffet: This week’s buffet schedule is: Weekend Brunch is Friday-Sunday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. for $24.95. Weekend Dinner is Friday-Sunday, 4:30 p.m.-10 p.m. for $24.95.
Rampart – Market Place Buffet: Lunch, Brunch, and Thurs-Sun Dinner increased by $1. Champagne Brunch Sat & Sun, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. is now $33.99; Lunch Mon-Fri, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. is now $21.99; Thurs-Sun Dinner is now $32.99. Mon & Tues Dinner increased by $5 and is now 4 p.m.-8 p.m. for $32.99.
The iconic and beloved Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge on the north Strip celebrated its 50th anniversary the day after Christmas 2022. It was one of six restaurants in the U.S. singled out earlier this year by the James Beard Foundation for an America’s Classics Award. The Foundation cited the Peppermill’s “welcoming atmosphere” and the long-time waitresses who know customers’ names. Indeed, the general manager started as a waitress in her teens and has been there for nearly the whole five decades of the restaurant’s history and her son is executive chef.
It’s a pilgrimage site for visiting old-timers who remember when it was one of the in places on the Boulevard and it garnered the number-one spot in two of our recent polls: the best restaurant for first-timers and the best breakfasts in the resort corridor.
Several items remain from the offerings on opening day 51-plus years ago, such as the fabulous fresh fruit salad (that comes with ice cream, house-baked banana-nut bread, and marshmallow sauce), the sinful French toast ambrosia, and of course the half-pound Peppermill burger. The adjoining Fireside Lounge is as cozy as it gets and that 64-ounce Scorpion starts or ends your Vegas party with a sting.
The Vegas Peppermill is one of six in Nevada; the other five are hotel-casinos: the flagship in Reno, Western Village in Sparks, and three in Wendover. They’re unmistakable for their design and décor, including big video screens with scenes from around the world, myriad concrete tree trunks and lush plastic foliage, Tiffany-style lamps, and pink and purple border tubing above the counters and along the walls. This restaurant also has big windows looking out to the Strip.
Even seating 232, it’s unbelievably busy. There are 32 parking spaces in front and 50 in back and they’re almost always full.
We hadn’t eaten there in a while and though we’ve done so countless times, we’d never reviewed it! In honor of the America’s Classics award, we went back for a late breakfast at noon on a Thursday.
It was an hour wait for a table, so we immediately seated ourselves at the 18-seat counter. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing meal, with 10 cooks bustling around the kitchen, eight waitresses rushing to and fro, loading up their hands and arms with a dozen huge heavy plates of food, clanking dishes and scraping silverware, but it sure beat waiting an hour for bacon and eggs.
Prices have crept up over the years, of course, but shrinkflation hasn’t come anywhere near the place; you either take half your meal back to your hotel room or finish for your one splurge of the day. These meals aren’t cheap, and note that the prices on the restaurant menu are different than the ones on the online menu, but if you want huge portions, the Peppermill is the place to get them.
We had the basic breakfast: three eggs, bacon, hash browns, and bagel ($23) and an a la carte raspberry-lemon muffin ($4.95), which came to $29.15 after tax and before tip. Hefty for breakfast for one, but It was also and lunch and dinner was necessarily light.
In 2015 in conjunction with the next-door Riviera closing and imploding, rumors swirled that the Peppermill might be in jeopardy from the LVCVA’s expansion juggernaut. But it was learned that the lease runs through 2027. So it’s not going anywhere anytime soon and there’s plenty of time to experience it anew.
The original “boneyard” for broken, defunct, and replaced Las Vegas signs was behind the YESCO plant on Cameron Street just south of Tropicana, where they were forgotten and subject to elements and entropy. In 1996, the city of Las Vegas and the Allied Arts Council of Southern Nevada got together and established the Neon Museum to preserve this unique part of Las Vegas history. Today, the non-profit organization occupies a big piece of property on Las Vegas Blvd. just north of downtown, consisting of the old La Concha Motel lobby from the Strip, the two-acre Neon Boneyard, and the North Gallery.
For many years, we’d intended to review the Neon Museum and finally got around to it.
You check in at the La Concha building, where you can buy tickets or show your pass purchased online. From there, you walk into the main Boneyard, where more than 200 neon signs and other pieces from a couple of hundred Las Vegas properties are collected and displayed. To say that this is a wonderland of symbolic Las Vegas history is an epic understatement. It’s quite a thrill, even overwhelming to start, to lay eyes on these bright slices of the past; small or large, famous or obscure, monochrome or multicolored, they’re all as rare as they are fascinating.
Be sure to access the museum’s app via a sign with the QR code for the self-guided walking tour with 25 stops. The signs start just down the stairs and to the right of the gift shop and under the towering Hard Rock guitar; you walk the loop counterclockwise. In addition, informational signs along the path impart more historical details about what you’re seeing: signs from the Golden Nugget, Moulin Rouge (one of the biggest and brightest), Binion’s, Sassy Sally’s, several motels, a pool hall, a dry cleaners, a dairy (established 1907), the Green Shack restaurant (one of the longest lived in Vegas history), Treasure Island (a lying-down skull), wedding information, the Riviera and Sahara, even an Ugly Duckling (car rental).
It’s a dirt yard covered in gravel and since there’s a lot of wandering involved, it’s best to wear good walking shoes.
You can also pay for a tour led by highly knowledgeable guides. One idea is to do it on your own and perhaps catch some snippets from the guide or guides as you go; then, if you’re really into it, you can came back and take the tour.
Best is to come 20 minutes before sundown to see all the signs, including the ones that won’t be lit up; many aren’t. When it gets dark, you see all the illuminated signs — spectacular against the desert night sky and a new perspective. (You’ll also save by buying the daytime admission and taking it into the night.)
Another attraction at the Neon Museum is “Brilliant,” a 20-minute or so “audiovisual immersion experience” that takes place in the North Gallery. “Brilliant” reanimates 40 more vintage signs via eight projectors housed by the two Champagne-bubble cylinders designed to resemble the one from the original Flamingo; two dozen 3D speakers amplify the soundtrack of classic tunes about gambling and Las Vegas.
You gather in a park across the street from the lobby and at the appointed time, a guide takes you over to the North Gallery. The outside wall has a long mural depicting some historical moments that the guide describes; then he opens the gallery and you file into the first space to see a short video from the artist who put together the show. From there, you walk around to the outdoor “showroom” for the presentation.
After two hours on our feet touring the main Boneyard and waiting for “Brilliant” on a cold and windy early-spring evening, we didn’t enjoy as much as we could or should have. If you have to see everything, you should catch it, but if you don’t, you can probably miss it. (Here’s a link to the video.)
You leave the Neon Museum and drive south back into downtown and the neon night. As you pass all the historical signs installed along Las Vegas Blvd. and the original Glitter Gulch, you can’t help but be thankful that the museum is preserving this important part of Las Vegas’ past.
Daytime admission to the museum is $20 adult, $10 (7-17 years old), and $15 military; evening is $25/$12.50/$20. With the “Brilliant” package, add $17. The guided tour is another $8.
Bellagio – The Buffet at Bellagio: Seafood Brunch turned to Seafood Dinner. Saturday & Sunday, 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. for $79.99. Brunch was 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. for $66.99. A $13 difference.
Circus Circus – Circus Buffet: This week’s buffet schedule is: Breakfast Buffet was Friday only but now it changed to Monday only. Same time 7:30 – 11 a.m. for $19.95. Weekend brunch is Saturday & Sunday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. for $24.95, and weekend dinner is Friday-Sunday, 4:30 p.m.-10 p.m. for $24.95.
Luxor – The Buffet at Luxor: Weekday and Weekend Brunch ends 1 hour sooner. From 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. now. Weekday brunch is still at $30.99 per person. While Weekend Brunch increased by three dollars to $36.99.
Westgate – Fresh Buffet: Brunch went up by two dollars to $30 per person. Crab Leg Brunch was added this month. It’s served Friday and Saturday starting at 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. for $37.
