Does the name of this restaurant ring a bell? It might if you’re into politics, as it was where Donald Trump held his rally in Las Vegas when he announced his “no tax on tips” plan. Photos of that event are hanging in the lobby, which is an interesting aside, but the reason we went was to try the Sunday brunch buffet.
Surprise Location
Though we’d heard of Il Toro e La Capra, we didn’t realize until we got there that it had taken over the two-story building at 6435 S. Decatur that was formerly Rhythm Kitchen. It’s an impressive place with dining rooms on both floors. The buffet is served upstairs, a nice setting with a view. There’s a live mariachi band and the buffet is served Sundays (10 am-1 pm), so the TVs were tuned to the NFL games.
Enticing Price
What got our attention, aside from it’s being a rare new buffet to try, was the price: $34 for the buffet, $40 with unlimited sangria and mimosas. That’s an enticing price for a buffet these days and even better is the $6 all-you-can-drink add-on.
The Buffet
So far, so good. What about the food? Uh oh. Let’s get it out of the way right from the start: This is a distinctly low-end spread. Il Toro e La Capra serves a mix of Mexican and Italian food, but it’s almost all Mexican at the buffet, and kind of a strange mix at that. No enchiladas, no tamales, no chili relleno, not even guacamole. Wouldn’t you expect some version of huevos rancheros at a brunch? Nope. In fact, the only eggs presence was steam-tray scrambled. Chicharron verde, fajita fixings with fresh tortillas, chile Colorado, menudo, and nopales (marinated cactus pads) accompany some uninspiring pasta and pizza. They need to do better.
The sangria was good enough that we didn’t veer to the mimosas.
The Verdict
What sounded like a deal isn’t, given the quality of the buffet. There’s an argument that you can make it close with the drinks, but that won’t cut it for most. Maybe if they added some enchiladas and tamales.
Circus Circus – Circus Buffet: This week’s buffet schedule is: Brunch is Tuesday-Sunday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. for $33.95. Dinner is Tuesday-Sunday, 4:30 p.m.-10 p.m. for $39.99. Prices are higher due to New Year’s Eve.
Westgate – Fresh Buffet: The Crab Leg Brunch was removed. Daily Brunch Buffet is the same time 7 a.m.-2 p.m. for $30 instead of $33.
Timing is an important part of successful gambling. I include doing things in the right order. I’m going to list several examples. There are a lot more.
Some casinos require you to swipe your card at a kiosk before you play in order to get a multiplier or some other benefit. Some casinos don’t. Good players learn which is which.
Sometimes promotions begin or end at a particular time. If you’re going to start early, some casinos automatically activate your card once the magic time arrives. Others require you to remove and re-insert your card after that time in order to get the benefit.
If a promotion officially ends at a particular time, sometimes you will continue to get the benefit of that promotion so long as your card remains in the machine.
Drawings universally have times associated with when you can earn entries, when you must activate your entries (if you must), and at old-fashioned drawings, by when do you have to have your tickets into the drum. Also, they usually have some sort of “must be present within so many minutes” should you be a lucky winner.
Casino slot clubs with tiers have time periods during which tiers must be earned. Being a few thousand points shy of the next tier is a shame if you just let the end of the earning period elapse without thinking about whether the higher tier had value for you.
Most players play at more than one casino. Often one or more of them will have some sort of time-related promotion going on. If you’re relatively indifferent between which casino to play at, you should play at the one whose benefits will expire soon.
It’s not exactly time-related, but frequently casinos have promotions where if you earn xxx points you get yyy. If you’re not interested in receiving the benefit, then it pretty much doesn’t matter whether you earn that many points or not. If you are interested, however, make it a point to collect that many points at least. If 5,000 points are required, for example, don’t be one of those people who earn 4,825 points and don’t check how close they are.
At some casinos, if 12 months (or some other time period) elapse since your last visit, all unredeemed comps and points disappear. To prevent this, some players zero out their points at the end of every trip. At casinos I visit regularly or sem-regularly I don’t do this, but I never let enough unredeemed points accumulate that it would be a real pain if I didn’t get back there in time. Even if my intention is to return to this casino every six months, for example, there will come a time that I don’t make it back.
Some casinos have “next day free play,” where your play today earns free play starting at noon tomorrow and lasting 90 days. Let’s say the casino day ends at 6 a.m. and your free play becomes available at noon. If you’re not pretty sure you’re going to return with three months, don’t play after 6 a.m. the last day you’re there, and stick around until noon before you leave so you can redeem accumulated free play.
Casinos will often have some sort of multipliers on a Monday or Tuesday, which tend to be the days where they have the fewest customers. If you can, arrange your trips so you can take advantage of this.
Casino restaurants, as do non-casino restaurants, often have happy hour specials where if you eat before the dinner rush you get discount pricing on several food or beverage items. If you’re flexible, your comp dollars will last longer if you take advantage of such specials.
Sometimes you can double dip on promotions timewise. I’ve seen cases where one promotion ended at 3 a.m. and a point multiplier started at midnight. For a three-hour window, both promotions were in effect. If you’re a “must be in bed by 10 p.m.” person, then you won’t be able to take advantage of this specific opportunity.
We stumbled on Downtown Terrace, located on the second floor of a Container Park retail building, and were surprised by what we found. It’s a below-the-radar full-service restaurant and bar with an outdoor patio that overlooks the common area and stage of Container Park, with a view of the 40-foot praying mantis.
In addition, it’s something of foodie scene. We were there between two and three on a Saturday afternoon and the place, both inside and out, was packed with young locals in on the secret.
Open till 7 p.m. daily, starting at 11 a.m. Mon., Tues., and Thurs., and 9 a.m. Wed., Fri., Sat., and Sun., Downtown Terrace serves all-day breakfasts, appetizers, salads, sandwiches, and entrées, all in the $12-$21 range, quite reasonable for what you get. Breakfasts start at two eggs and bacon or sausage ($14) and go up to steak Benedict and two eggs and a bacon burger or chicken fried steak ($19). Salads include Caesars ($14), chicken tostada ($18), and pomegranate-glazed salmon ($19). Caprese or avocado grilled cheese, bacon burger, spicy chicken, and steak sandwiches run $16-$19. And “Just a Little More” shrimp and pasta, blackened salmon, carne asada fries, and lemon chicken entrées go for $18 to $21.
What drew us to Downtown Terrace was the shrimp and salmon ceviche ($17); you don’t often see salmon as a ceviche ingredient. It was as good as we’d hoped, if not better.
If we hadn’t also ordered the chilaquiles (a traditional Mexican breakfast with pieces of corn tortillas cooked in salsa, sprinkled with cheese, and served with eggs and sour cream, also $17), we would’ve been tempted to get another plate of ceviche! The chilaquiles definitely hit the spot and together, they made for an unusual and filling lunch for $36.84 with tax, without tip.
All in all, the foodie scene, good service, reasonable prices, excellent food, and outdoor seating looking over Container Park are plenty to recommend Downtown Terrace — and you’ll feel like you know something that 40 million Las Vegas visitors don’t.
If you’re racing to the bottom, you have to be an early riser to beat Virgin Las Vegas President Cliff Atkinson. Not content with offering his employees insultingly low wages, he recently and shamelessly played the race card, in an effort to divide and conquer the Culinary Union. When that evidently didn’t work, he called out his goon squad.
Fat Sal’s, a sandwich shop with six locations in southern California, opened in late October at Neonopolis, which also hosts the Heart Attack Grill. The two are of a kind — guilty pleasures calorie-wise if you’re of a mind to really indulge. A second location for Fat Sal’s has been announced for the Miracle Eats food hall at Miracle Mile Shops, opening shortly.
Fat Sal’s offers Fat sandwiches, such as the Fat Breakfast, with two fried eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, mozzarella sticks, American cheese, and tater tots on a butter-grilled hero ($19); Fat Texas, with pastrami, chicken fingers, bacon, mozzarella sticks, melted mozzarella and cheddar, grilled onions, and fries on a garlic hero ($20); Fat burgers with quarter-pound patties and all kinds of add-ons, such as chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks on the Buffalo chicken ($14.99) and pastrami, chicken fingers, and onion rings on the Pastrami Western ($15.99). Standard burgers are $8.99-$14.99 and heroes are $16-$17 with plenty of Make It Fatter additions for $1 to $7.50. Fat shakes with various combos of ice cream, peanut butter, cheesecake, Oreos, marshmallows, pretzels, and syrup are $13.
Not enough for you? The Big Fat Fatty is a 30-inch (yes, two and half feet long and it weighs 10 pounds) hero with cheesesteak, a double cheeseburger, pastrami, chicken fingers, bacon, mozzarella sticks, fried eggs, fries, onion rings, chili, and marinara. The Big Fat Shake is served with 30 scoops of vanilla and chocolate ice cream each, along with cake, cookies, pretzels, syrup, and whipped cream. They’re both $99.99, but finish the Fatty in 40 minutes or the shake in 10 and they’re free.
Not being into quite that much Fat in our low-metabolism dotage, we tried the standard turkey club with bacon, avocado, lettuce, and tomato on a hero. Frankly, we weren’t expecting much, so we were surprised how good it was. Even without the Fat, it was big enough to make two lunches out of.
Fat Sal’s is all about the kitchen-sink sandwiches and subs, a good gimmick, plus the extensive branding — all the Fat Fat Fat and Sal’s jowly mug, mustache, toque, and shades (a caricature of co-founder Sal Capek, who looks like he tips the scale at around 300) gracing various signs and murals around and outside the joint. It’s clever and fun and popular and the food, at least the little we tried, wasn’t worth going out of the way for, but good enough to sample for the experience.
Note that unless you walk in from somewhere, you’ll pay a minimum of $4 to park in the Fremont Street garage.
We reviewed dinner at the Main Street Station Garden Buffet in the September 2023 issue of the Advisor after trying it on a Friday night in August. The title of the post was “Where Is Everyone?” Here’s how it began: “We arrived right at 6 p.m., thinking we might have to wait in line for 20 to 30 minutes to get into the only downtown buffet, which serves dinner Fri. and Sat. nights only. Au contraire! We didn’t have to wait even 20 seconds. We walked right up to the cashier, paid, and had plate in hand within a minute.” The room remained mostly empty for the next 90 minutes while we were there and we wondered if the buffet might be this empty regularly.
When we stayed at the Plazathe weekend before F1 in November, we were a five-minute walk from Main Street Station, so we determined to check out the line situation at various times.
We started walking over at 1 p.m. on Saturday. No one was in line and not much was happening with an hour to go for brunch, which closes at 2 p.m.
We went back at 4 p.m. for the opening of dinner. This time, the line filled up all three rows of fixed barriers, then stretched to the door; the 70 people or so were handled by two cashiers, one for the VIP line. By 4:15, even with another 25 or so stragglers showing up just after opening, the line was pretty well handled. By six, however, there were two lines, one backed up most of the way to the entrance with people waiting to pay, the other 10 deep after paying and waiting to be seated. The room was pretty full, so tables needed to be cleared before the second line moved. The same pattern repeated on a couple of checks on Sunday evening as well.
Sunday morning we went back and got there right at 8 a.m. to review brunch. Frankly, we weren’t expecting a line that early, so we were a bit surprised that 25 people were ahead of us, almost all hungry Hawaiians (mostly Japanese-Americans). There was only one cashier, but she was very efficient, handling both the VIP and HP (hoi polloi) lines in staggered fashion. By about 8:30, most of the early activity had been handled, but around 9, the later crowd started showing up and the line stayed long until we left at 9:30. Plus, the tables had filled up, so the second line had formed.
Our conclusion? The reason we walked right in to review dinner was that it was a particularly slow weekend night in August. But over a busy weekend in November, the Garden Buffet fills up and the lines get long. For both brunch and dinner, it’s best to arrive as early as you can; for brunch, late is also the better play.
As for the brunch buffet itself, the selection was as extensive as dinner and the quality was about equal, which is to say good enough for downtown’s only buffet.
Being brunch, the salad bar had romaine, spinach, and toppings right next to bagels, lox, sliced tomato, kimchee, namasu (sliced cucumbers and carrots in a light vinegar sauce), and a toaster. Next to cold cereal and milk were six different kinds of pizza and garlic toast, crepes, corned beef hash, pancakes, waffles, and French toast. Steam-table eggs were scrambled plain or with chorizo, along with bacon, sausage, and home fries. The carving station offered ham, chicken, and three kinds of sausage (kielbasa, Italian, and Portuguese). Our cooked-to-order cheese omelet came out in less than a minute.
The lunch food included pulled pork and cabbage, Hawaiian beef stew, fried and shoyu chicken, fish of the day, roasted yams, green-bean casserole, mashed potatoes with turkey gravy, and mac and cheese.
The desserts occupy an entire serving island: self-serve soft chocolate and vanilla with toppings, pies, pastries, puddings, cakes, cookies, muffins, and sugar-free selections.
We went back for seconds and thirds of namasu, a second bagel and lox, pulled pork and mashed, and desserts.
The total price came to $29.95, which in this day and age is quite reasonable for the only Las Vegas buffet within several miles and a decent one at that.
On November 8, Swingers adults-only golf club and high-end entertainment venue opened its flagship location at Mandalay Bay. It was the latest in a line — Atomic Golf next to STRAT and Pop Stroke extreme mini-golf at Town Square — of golf attractions arriving in Las Vegas.
Swingers is the first thing you encounter when you enter MBay on the ground level from the parking garage. It’s on the left and occupies the entire wall that stretches into the casino’s dining area.
The 40,000-square-foot two-story venue encompasses two bars, a street-food eatery, an arcade, and four “crazy-golf” courses; founded in London, Swingers claims to have pioneered the “competitive-socializing” mini-golf experience. Swingers debuted in 2014 and currently operates six locations: two in London, one in Washington, D.C., one in New York City, one in Dubai, and the Vegas venue, with a location coming to Boston.
From the main lobby, you walk up to the first level and immediately encounter a very long bar.
From there, you descend half a floor to the lower two nine-hole golf courses: Balloon on the left, Clocktower on the right. At the far end of the bar is Emmy’s Squared, the restaurant. At the near end is a selfie room.
You go up a flight of stairs to the second floor for another long bar and two more nine-holes. Carnival, the arcade, is at the near end of the second floor.
If you’re used to expansive outdoor miniature-golf courses, like PopStroke’s, you’ll be surprised by how small these are, being indoors; they can get pretty crowded at prime times. Still, the courses are imaginative and challenging, with lots of neon and such obstacles as windmills, waterwheels, and carousels, jumps, and loops.
Swingers is an attraction that proves an evolving rule in Vegas: LOUD IS THE NEW FUN! Fronting the otherwise uninhabited two-story English country house is a DJ spinning relentless monotonous electronic dance music, every track in four-four time: BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom. Forget trying to have a conversation; forget even hearing the specials recited by a waiter at Emmy’s.
As for the Carnival, the arcade collects 6-10 credits per game and you pay $10 for 48 credits (20.5 cents) or roughly $1.20-$2 per game. Higher spend lowers the price per credit (12.5 cents per $100). Examples: Wack n Win is 6 credits, Wack a Hole 8 credits, Bowler Roller 10. The games dispense tickets that you redeem for logo merch.
On our visit a week or so after it opened, Swingers had an unbelievable number of people working: waiters, bartenders, cocktail runners, security, suits, and at least 12 people in the kitchen. We wouldn’t be surprised to hear that, like Atomic Golf, they lay off people soon. In the meantime, you can sit anywhere and you’ll be immediately approached for service.
At the bars, bottled and draft Heineken, Coors Light, Budweiser, Michelob and the like are $10, craft beers $14. Wine by the glass starts at $15 and goes up to $26. Proseco by the glass is $18, with bottles up to $990 for Krug Vintage. Sangria is $17, espresso $23, cocktails start at $12 go to $26, or splurge on eight-year-old scotch for $142. Nightclub prices, almost.
Emmy’s Squared is a Brooklyn-born Detroit-style pizza and burger place. You can get three kinds of pizza by the slice: cheese, pepperoni, and pepperoni-pineapple ($10). A chicken sandwich, meatballs, chicken parm, burgers, and double burgers are $16-$23. Waffle fries are $10 and Caesars salad $19. We tried a slice of pepperoni. The frico crust was marginal and it’s baked with honey as a topping. We don’t know about you, but we don’t want honey on our pepperoni pizza and we didn’t finish the lone slice ($10.84 with tax).
A round of crazy golf starts at $35 per person and ticket packages are available for purchase that include cocktails, street food, crazy golf, and reserved seating. And whatever you do, don’t forget that you’ll pay $20-$23 to park at Mandalay Bay. If you go, make sure Swingers is open and not closed for a private party, which happened to a member when he went, so you don’t pay to park for nothing.
I attended a wedding recently in Las Vegas. I’ve known the groom for about 25 years. We both were successful players at the MGM Grand during the time I was able to make $1 million there during a six-month period.
I was seated at the wedding reception next to a player I’ve known even longer. “Sam” now lives in California and mentioned he has some advantage plays in California, Oregon, and Washington. I asked him if there was anything he could tell me about the plays.
Sam told me he had partners and they were all sworn to secrecy. They believed the plays wouldn’t last if other pros started showing up. I understood.
Sam later asked me if I was still gambling. I told him yes. There were a few casinos who were “giving away the store,” so to speak, and I was managing to get my share of what they were giving away.
He pressed me for details and I gave him approximately the same answer as he had given me, which was that I had a partner and we believe that if too many pros know the exact details, the duration of the promotion would be limited.
But Sam pressed on. He told me that we’ve known each other “forever,” and that should count for something. Again, I demurred, he took the hint, and we began talking about something else.
The thing is, I do have friends with whom I share things. But those friends also share things with me. Currently, three of my best four regular plays came on a tip from somebody else. On one of them, when I got into the play and found out some extra things, I explained the “enhancements” I had found to the friend who told me about the play in the first place.
Is there a possible scenario when Sam and I start sharing with each other? Sure. But I’m going to need some useful information from him before I start sharing my “good stuff.” I’ve given him some hints in the past and so far, it’s not been reciprocated.
Once a player, “Tom,” told me he was willing to share a video poker play with me for single-line quarters where, including mailers and everything, the player had a 1½% advantage.
I thanked him and told him I wasn’t interested. That play might be worth $15 per hour — including the time it took to drive back and forth. There was a time when I would have jumped at that play, but now I want to spend my time on plays that are more lucrative than that. I played a lot for quarters as I was beginning my video poker career, and I certainly don’t mean to put others down who are now in that position, but that’s no longer my thing.
If Tom were actually a quarter player, then my best plays would be beyond his means. But he could easily know players for whom the plays were not beyond their means. I didn’t want to have to give up plays for something that would be worthless to me.
I told Tom that if he found a good play on $5 or higher machines, I’d certainly be interested. I could trade information or give him a finder’s fee, whichever he preferred. But for me to pay, the information had to be useful.
A player recently told me about a play at a casino that was exceptionally lucrative. Unfortunately, it consisted of four-times-a-week drawings — at a casino well over 1,000 miles from Las Vegas. That information wasn’t going to be useful to me personally, but I’m still glad I know about it. That might be information that someday I could barter with someone else in order to obtain knowledge that was potentially profitable to me.
Another player, “Ulrich,” told me about a play that had been good, but the casino changed the promotion a week before I showed up. Ulrich later swore he didn’t know, but I wonder. There are players who will try to trade useless information in the hopes that they will receive something useful in return. Ulrich swore he’d make it up to me. We’ll see. It’s been two years, and I haven’t heard from him since.
