Category: Dining

Scotch 80 Prime is high-end steakhouse at the Palms (formerly N9NE). The food is big and so are the prices. So a happy hour with several of its best dishes—appetizers and entrées—for 50%-off sounds ridiculous. An 8-ounce ribeye cap for $31? Yes, it’s good, but you need to know a few things going in.

Best HH in Vegas?

There are two happy hours Mon.-Thurs. from 5 to 6:30 pm and 8:30 to 10 pm. The number of HH items is amazing: oysters (6/$12.50), jumbo shrimp cocktail ($13.50), soups and salads ($8.50-$9), ribeye cap ($31), 8-ounce filet (32.50), New Zealand king salmon ($26), Chilean sea bass ($27), sides ($6-$7.50). Crazy. Beer is $5, wine $12, and cocktails $12. We went with appetizers: steak tartare, wedge salad, Caesar salad, brie fondue, grilled asparagus, and the snow beef burger. That’s a lot of food for a tab of $79 before tax. It sounds good, right? Heck, yeah. This HH was immediately anointed one of the best in Vegas. But we ran into some problems.

No Oysters

Our first choice was a couple orders of oysters on the half shell. At $12.50 for 6, that’s a pretty wallet-friendly $2.08-per in a fancy joint like this. Nope.

“Sorry, we’re out of oysters.”

“Really? Is that normal?”

“Yes. Everyone orders them. We run out every day.”

OK, we were at the late happy hour, so lesson learned, go to the early one.

No Sharing Entrees

Our food was delivered. That is, all except for the Scotch 80 Burger. This thing is $50 retail, so we had to try it for $25, but it never came. When we finished, we requested the check and asked the waiter to make sure we weren’t charged for the no-show item. “But it’s ready now” he said. We’d been there for 45 minutes and were ready to leave, but shrugged and told him to bring it with a couple of extra plates so we could split it between the three of us, since no one was in the mood to eat a big burger at that point. He did. We ate it. He brought the check. The price hawk in our party looked it over and saw that we’d been charged the full $50 for the late-arriving burger. When we brought it up to the waiter, he pointed out a clause on the menu indicating that entrées would not be given the discount if shared. Given the circumstances, we eventually got the discount, but that rule is brutal. What constitutes “sharing”? A bite? Several bites? Be aware of this one and make sure that if you order an entrée you can eat it all yourself.

The Verdict

So you need to come early for oysters and understand the sharing rule. Aside from that, this HH is a bargain on the high end, and we didn’t even do the big bangers on the menu. The restaurant is beautiful and, as pointed out, there are lots of discounted options. Of the items we sampled the winners were the fondue and the Caesar salad. We were disappointed in the tartare and that burger was too fancy for us (squid ink on the bun isn’t really our thing). We’re gonna try it again, going early for the oysters and one of those steaks.

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.

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.

Hawaiian

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.

Asian

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).

MRO Deal

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.

The Verdict

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.).

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.