Circus Circus Buffet ~ Las Vegas NV

OCTOBER 2012

On Hallowe'en, LJ and I took a trip to Las Vegas. Neither of us had ever been, we had time, so we just went. We were worried about our trip not happening as this was the time of Hurricane Sandy that was shutting down flights all over the place. Turns out we got there without any issues. 

photo I took later that night

We arrived on the Wednesday and  headed straight to our hotel: Circus Circus. The place had it's pro's and con's and I won't get into the interesting stories about the place here on the blog, but ask me sometime. Anyways, we were starved and headed to one of the restaurants advertised at the hotel. But when we got there, it was closed (like many things we found in Vegas). So we headed to the hotel buffet instead.

Our time zones were off, so the place was dead inside. A lot of the stations were not running, and not a lot of things were being refilled because, well, no one was eating it. There was a mix of options from Tex-Mex to seafood to all day breakfast. Not the best buffet options I have seen, but not terrible either.

The atmosphere and decor were nothing special. Clean though.

I was very excited to see they had fountain Wild Cherry Pepsi! It's hard to get cherry pop back in Ontario, so I took full advantage of the self serve. The orange pop was awesome too.

I enjoyed the Tex-Mex: made myself a soft shell taco (although you could have hard shell) with rice and beef and nacho cheese and jalapenos. The bacon was, well, I just couldn't resist a strip of bacon.

So not really a wing review, but they did have fried chicken. They also had fried shrimp, and some nice roasted potatoes.

The fried chicken was decent. Breaded, slightly crispy. It was ok. The shrimp was ok. The whole buffet was ok. But I had no desire to go back. Well, maybe for Cherry Pepsi. But not the food. Not really.

Circus Circus Buffet
2880 S Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas Nevada USA
circuscircus.com

FATBURGER ~ Las Vegas NV

OCT 2012

Day 3 of being in Las Vegas. We had a busy day touring around, and had a great evening at Cirque de Soliel's "Ka" (amazing show by the way). We wanted something to eat but just had no clue where to go. We walked a bit on the strip and we came across Fatburger.

There were two distinctly different parts to this chain (that I had never heard of before this moment) and I'm assuming its a Las Vegas difference: the fast food/take out inside and the bar/patio outside. We sat on the outside because the weather was awesome.

Coming from an region that has snow for possibly 5-6 month, seeing a permanant outdoor establishment seems odd. Also, the proliferation of booze everywhere in Vegas makes bars seem less likely when I can head into any casino and get a drink for free.

Inside is self service but outside, we had a server. Jenna was friendly but not super available. It took a little while for our drinks to come. I had Coke, and it tasted amazing - like it was made with cane sugar. I asked Jenna if it was anything special and she said no, asking if it was ok. I said it was great, and she said good, most people complain that it isn't good. Huh.

I wanted to sample a bunch of things off the menu, but my and LJ's tastes were in alignment that night. Burger and chili cheese fries.

The above is their "Small" burger ($4.50). You can go Med, Lg, XXL and XXL, a 24oz tripple burger for $13. Toppings are standard but you can add on bacon, cheese, chili as well as an egg. The above burger just had a few standards on it (onion, cheese, mayo, pickles, relish) and I had a bite and agreed with LJ, it was tasty. Nice bark on the flatop grilled burger, tender meat, fresh bun. A little greasy but it was really good.

The chili cheese fries ($5) my look very tasty, or very revolting depending on your position. I thought they looked heart cloggingly awesome. It was actually melted cheese (as opposed to cheese sauce). The fries were ok, but really they are just a vehicle for the chili and cheese. You also get to choose 'fat' fries or 'skinny'; we went with skinny.

Oh it turns out they had wings too.

There is no mention of wings on Fatburger's website, nor were they available inside the restaurant, only the patio/bar area. So this might be a Vegas thing only. Wings came in orders of 6 or 12, and the price was pretty inflated, but then again, it is the strip.

My wings came with exactly one celery stick and one carrot stick. I mean, really what was the point? And then my dip on the side was a packet of David Newman blue cheese dressing. This just seemed a little silly.

 The wings were pretty big surprisingly. Large at best, on the larger side of medium at their worst. They were also pretty meaty. The skin was crisp, and even had an airy quality which made for a nice snap when biting into them. The wings were nice and saucy too.

There is only hot and mild sauces to choose from, so I went with hot. FYI, it's not even hot. So mild and maybe medium. But I didn't really expect heat from a fast food chain. It was a classic Buffalo sauce, very orange, and pretty good. 

 FINAL SCORE:
These were some tasty wings. I wasn't expecting that. Good size wings. Crispy skin. Tasty sauce. The chili cheese fries were a great side. The burgers were pretty good too. I would definitely go back to Fatburger and it turned out to be our best meal in Vegas. That's cool and sad at the same time. 6/10

Fatburger
3763 S Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas NV USA
fatburger.com

BUFFALO WINGS ~ Las Vegas NV

OCTOBER 2012

Across from our hotel the Circus Circus is the Riviera Casino. Inside they have, well a crappy little food court. We were getting a late lunch/ early supper and were desperate. LJ went to a Mexican place, but I was drawn to Buffalo Wings.

I was pumped.  I mean, there wasn't anything else in this place I wanted in the first place, but a chicken wing joint? Awesome.

I wasn't super hungry, so I wasn't going to try all the things I would have wanted to (waffle fries, potato skins, jalapeno poppers). I went with their combo of 12 wings (split into two flavours) with fries (I went with curly fries) and a drink.

The lady behind the counter took my order. I watched her take the wings out of a plastic bag that went into the deep fryer. Not impressive, but oh well. 10 minutes later I had my order.

Styrofoam and tinfoiled wings. Mmmmm.

The curly fries were ok. There was no seasoning to them, so they just end up being fun shaped fries.

My blue cheese dip. Standard, tasty, and had chunks of blue cheese. There were also veggies to dip, but I didn't need them.

Wings come in denominations from 6 to 75 to 100.

The wings were a variety of sizes: mostly medium to large, but there were some small ones too. A real hodgepodge. Also some were roughly cut so there might be chunks of the tip still partially attached. I just imagined them buying these wings from some sketchy dealer where they are dirt cheap.

Even though they were fresh out of the fryer, they were not crispy. And there was a ton of sauce, which also made them soggy. They were not enjoyable.

SUICIDE

They have mild, then hot, then suicide. That tells me that Hot is actually medium and Suicide is actually hot. There was no real heat to them.

 Flavour wise Suicide was ok. It didn't seem like Buffalo sauce. Well it did, just not that great a take on them.

HONEY BBQ

I split the flavours I wanted to sample some of the menu. I wanted to go with Hot BBQ, but figured Suicide would be good enough. So I went with Honey BBQ. The Honey BBQ was also, ok. A little HFCS-ish sweet. 

FINAL SCORE:

Well, the whole wing dinner was a failure. I kept going back and forth between the wings not because I wanted to go back and forth, but I didn't want to keep eating the wings. In fact, I couldn't even finish them. Soggy, sickly sweet sauces and untender chicken. No thank you, no thank you. 3.5/9

photo courtesy of Google street view

Buffalo Wings

2901 S Las Vegas Boulevard (inside the Riviera Casino/Hotel), Las Vegas NV USA

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