Bacchanalia at Caesars; I’ll take the Mubarak Suite, please

Despite rampant neglect elsewhere on the Strip, Caesars Entertainment continues to take good care of its namesake, Caesars Palace. A Wednesday-night visit disclosed that myriad schlock retailers had been banished, as Jay Sarno‘s toga party tries to keep pace with other upscale properties nearby. Our destination was the Bacchanal Buffet, a $17 million investment that was drawing a long — but not dauntingly so — line for midweek dinner. Whether $35 a plate for an evening meal is a good value is for you to decide, although it’s hard to find a Strip restaurant that won’t set you back much, much more. As a Caesars-branded amenity, I would accord it high marks, although I wouldn’t put it at the top of the heap. Also, given the disgruntlement I saw amongst some AARP-vintage customers, I suspect the offerings may be somewhat chi-chi for the Total Rewards crowd. Bacchanal could stand to lose the whunka-whunka “house” music, geared to a nightclub demographic that was nowhere to be seen. It sounded like I was dining in a gay disco. Better lay down some Journey, Elton John and Céline Dion tracks, guys.

Since I mostly hewed to the seafood station — much better than average, by my reckoning — I can’t speak to the overall cuisine experience. (Take your crab legs raw, by the way; my wife had hers steamed and found the result inedible.) Piquant sights elsewhere ranged from a dedicated salsa station to signage for “Mashed potatos [sic]” and my favorite, “Potato tater tots.” As opposed to … ? Service is excellent and very friendly.

So we weren’t disappointed with Bacchanal. Quite the opposite. But if you followed local press coverage, you’d think it was breaking new gustatory frontiers. However, anybody who’s dined at Wicked Spoon will recognize the cosmopolitan (pun intended) array of delicacies, aimed at discerning palates, as well as the small portions and prepared-just-for-you serving style. As for its design, you could wake up at Bacchanal and think you were at Aria, especially since MGM Resorts International‘s preferred Cubist motifs are omnipresent. (Somewhere, Jim Murren is feeling vindicated.) Heck, if you’ve been to The Mirage‘s buffet lately, Bacchanal won’t blow you away with its food and its congested traffic patterns will positively annoy you.

The 600-seat capacity has its drawbacks, too. The Chinese-food station is off in a far corner of Bacchanal. While the layout of this serving-and-dining area may have been conceived as “intimate,” it feels walled-off and remote instead. Bad feng shui, imperator.

While I predict that the food selection will be “mainstreamed” over time (remember, Gary Loveman‘s idea of haute cuisine is a Big Mac), Bacchanal is probably best enjoyed by managing one’s expectations. Caesars is keeping up with the Joneses and not doing too badly at it.

The suite life. Yesterday, I had occasion to check out the renovated Skyline Terrace Suites at MGM Grand. While I like the profusion of red lacquer and the furniture is much more comfortable than it looks, the decor is LOUD! and GARISH! even by Strip standards. The floor plans are odd, too: Everything seems to be ‘around the corner.’ Mr. Charles Monster will be pleased (ha!) to know that the ‘shat phone’ continues to be de rigeur. Anyway, contrary to the account in the Las Vegas Sun, we were told that these will be doled out to “casino guests” (i.e., high rollers), so their design eccentricities needn’t concern us much. While the new look might scream, “Seventies bachelor pad,” MGM had …

… thoughtfully provided photo galleries of the suites in their pre-renovation guise. Although the Green Monster opened in 1993, it looks for all the world like Clifford Perlman and Larry Woolf took a time machine back to 1963 to find furniture and decor. You’d be forgiven for thinking these were room photos from the Sahara. Speaking of which, I didn’t know what to make of the Mideastern music and cuisine that accompanied the showing. Is MGM planning to market these units to its Arabic clientele? (Murren is/was in business with the disgraced Mubarak family, so it’s a reasonable surmise.)

However …

… a big-thumbs up to the Stay Well rooms, purged of allergens and kitted out with both augmented air-filtration technology but also lighting that’s meant to ease the transition from wakefulness to sleep and back again. It’ll cost you an extra $30 to stay in one but my initial reaction was, “It’s worth it” — and I certainly hope the concept is rolled out to other MGM-owned hotels. It’s a very moving-with-the-times concept … and much more useful to the hotel guest than is room technology so complicated (coughMandarin Orientalcough) that you need a user’s manual to operate it.

(Pssst, MGM! I couldn’t help noticing that the bathroom ceiling sloped to the southward. Got any ‘settling’ issues at the Green Monster, perchance?)

We also paid a visit to the Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, mainly to see Nunsense, which we found perfectly delightful. Local song-and-dance standout Anita Bean stepped in with aplomb as the Mother Superior, leading a highly talented (but otherwise nameless) cast of five on a tiny fringe of Shimmer Cabaret stage, in a set that had clearly been scavenged from Something Else. But the capable quintet somehow made it all work in their favor.

There was no delight to be found elsewhere on property. At least one revolving door has been removed from an entrance, to call the casino floor ‘dead’ would slander the deceased and mid-level management appeared to consist of aging, argumentative goombahs. I kept expecting Michael Chiklis‘ Vegas character to come in and start kicking somebody — hard.

Coming soon … another stage appearance by yours truly, in my after-dark guise of amateur actor. I’ll be playing a psychopath on a murderous rampage. In other words, typecasting.