Trying to (b)eat the house…

Trying to (b)eat the house…

Streamlined to cater almost exclusively to greed, both offer visitors near-infinite ways to overindulge and, as long as you’ve got the cash, you can have pretty much anything you want.

The city’s beauty – and there was something beautiful about the famously vast and dazzling Vegas Strip, with all its towering neon, sky-high fountains and flashing lights – runs only skin deep, however.

And it’s the same at the warehouse-sized canteens, where hotels take your $20 and say ‘there’s all the food in the world – go nuts’. You could spend a day grazing and not manage to try everything. Commercial catering dishes are piled high with crowd-pleasing favourites, triple-fried, sickly sweet and heavily salted.

Want a slice of pepperoni pizza at 9 am? No problem. Just spent seven hours at the roulette table? Have some roast turkey and gravy for brunch. Got married in a hurry to a cocktail waitress as Elvis crooned in the corner? Time for a stack of pancakes so high that they block out the sun. Not that you’ve much chance of seeing the sun inside a Vegas hotel/casino – for natural light is the enemy here. In fact, anything that gives anyone even a slight hint about what time it might be is the enemy. Pit bosses want you blissfully unaware that it’s 3.40 am and you’ve said to yourself: ‘Just one more trip to the ATM and I’m sure that I’ll break even…’

Yes some of the a buffet fodder looks appetising, and it does a great job of appealing to our inner Augustus Gloops (pizza for breakfast!), but if you’re looking for quality, you’re in the wrong place.

And good luck trying to get value in an all-you-can-eat setting. Hardly anyone takes the House by eating more than $20 of what must be incredibly cheap to produce food. If they did, buffets like this wouldn’t exist – and they’re everywhere.

Heading to get your plate is like joining a throng off to a watering hole on the wild plains of Africa. Everyone is there jostling for position, the largest beast taking the lion’s share. It’s OK though, this watering hole refills every seven minutes or so.

It’s a funny sensation to stuff yourself silly and leave feeling empty. But that’s the city, and some people love it.

For me, once was enough.

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