Bob's Burgers (Fatburger) in Las Vegas, NV

Thanks a Brunch Burger at Bob's Burgers (Fatburger) in Las Vegas, NV

I have to applaud the creativity of the marketing team responsible for this one.  As a campaign to promote the new animated TV show "Bob's Burgers" on Fox, they've temporarily renamed the old-school burger joint Fatburger as Bob's Burgers.  I happened to be Las Vegas this past weekend and decided that I ought to stop in and check it out!  I actually ate at Bob's Burgers on the day of its premier episode!  If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can watch a teaser clip here:

Fatburger in Las Vegas is temporarily Bob's Burgers

Bob's Burgers (AKA Fatburger) is an classic burger stand with some pretty decent burgers.  I ordered the "Thanks a Brunch Burger" which came with a fried egg and bacon in addition to all the other traditional toppings.  Naturally, I ordered mine without pickles.  I also opted for the homemade onion rings instead of the steak fries or thin-cut fries.  I'm pretty sure that decisions worked out for the best because the onion rings were mighty tasty.

Homemade Onion Rings with the Thanks a Brunch Burger

The burger itself was a little over 5 oz of beef (their medium sized burger).  It didn't have the lick-your-fingers kind of juiciness that I really enjoy, but the fried egg and bacon made up for the semi-dryness of the ground beef.  There's something about putting a fried egg on a burger, or any other sandwich for that matter, that really appeals to me these days.  Maybe it's just a fad... but I'm loving it (global fast food giant marketing slogan's pun intended).

Fatburger... I mean Bob's Burgers... sits right on The Strip for a cheaper meal option when you've had your fill of prime rib buffets.  While the burger, onion rings, and a drink still ran me over $10, I thought it to be worthy of that price, considering the location.

So the marketing plan got me in the door, and it made me want to watch the show.  The burger and onion rings were deemed worthy enough for me to write a post about them.  Now we just have to hope that Bob's Burgers is actually an entertaining addition to Fox's Animation Domination!

The Buffet of Buffets: Las Vegas, Nevada

The Buffet of Buffets

Not too long ago a crew of mine from my younger days descended upon Las Vegas, Nevada for a reunion weekend of shenanigans and tomfoolery.  While most of the acts that occurred in Vegas will "stay in Vegas," I couldn't resist returning home to write about one of the most incredible offers known to man: The Buffet of Buffets!

Thanks to Cheetz for the Limo!

In order from left to right, Chetan, John, Tyler, myself, and Chad, met at the airport where a limo picked us up and brought us to the Plaza Hotel and Casino.  I really enjoyed staying off of The Strip as downtown is such a more relaxed and old-school Vegas atmosphere.  Still, a couple nights later we made our way to Las Vegas Boulevard to experience a culinary conquest like no others.  The Buffet of Buffets is offered by seven Harrah's owned properties.  For one very reasonable price ($39.99 for rewards card holders, $44.99 without the card), diners get 24 hours of access to all seven buffets.  Conceivably it is possible to do all seven.  Perhaps one day I'll try that.  But since we had other things to occupy our time in between buffets, we did manage to hit three of their most famous destinations of glutony.

Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas

Our first stop brought the clan to lunch at the Lago Buffet in Caesar's Palace.  No, Caesar didn't actually live there.  But, the casino/resort is a spectacular place with statues, vaulted archways, and decor that really brings you back to the days of old... minus the constant ringing of slot machines that echo the majestic halls.

Chefs at the Lago Buffet

Lago Buffet had a line accumulated outside its entrance at 1 PM.  Despite the wait time, we knew our dining experience would be worth it.  The Buffet of Buffets kicks off when you arrive at any of the seven buffets on the Harrah's list.  Upon purchasing the buffet, your rewards card is activated that allows their computer system to know exactly when its 24 hour window has expired.  With a time stamp of around 2 PM, we knew how long we had to make our rounds the following day.

The Lago Buffet stuck to their specialties.  The menu featured some Italian and Asian cuisines as well as some excellent herb-roasted meats, a divine dish of braised beef, and some of the best biscotti I've ever tasted.  All in all the buffet offered legitimate quality, wide enough selection, and a commitment to keeping up the standards of the cuisine they produced.  While the Lago Buffet did not offer food from all four corners of the map, they made up for it with doing what they do really well.

Prime rib (left) and bacon-wrapped pork (right)

Plate #2 at Lago Buffet.. the mac & cheese and green beans held their own

Dessert plate at Lago Buffet: the biscotti (far left) stole the show

No caption needed

By the time that evening rolled around we had somehow rolled our way over to the Rio.  We killed a couple hours gambling and allowing our stomachs to settle before meandering over to the world famous Carnival World Buffet.  This behemoth of an eatery seems easily as large as a football field.  It is a hike to get from one end to the other.  Carnival World's gimmick is to offer such a wide variety of international and American cuisines that it would be impossible to not find something to satisfy your taste buds.  The buffet stretched from country to country, continent to continent to come pretty darn close to capturing global cuisine all in one spot.  On my first plate I hit up the meats that were right in the center of the World.  Fresh glazed ham, tender and rare prime rib, and surprisingly delicious sausage were sliced on site and plated to order.  The clear winner, among everything that the Carnival World Buffet had to offer, was the prime rib.  That night, I'd venture to say they had the best prime rib in Vegas.  It was cooked rare, expertly seasoned, and as juicy as a fresh peach.  I got both the end and a center cut off the slab of beef and went to town.  The flavor popped in my mouth and for a brief moment, while I was sitting there amongst a sea of indulgence, I didn't care about anything in the world other than getting that next fork of cow into my mouth.

Ham, prime rib, and sausage awaiting their digestion

Immaculate.  Glorious.  Beef.

Unfortunately, while the prime rib highlighted the trip to Carnival World, the rest of the fare didn't stack up.  It seemed to me that they tried to do too much and focused way more on quantity than the quality of all the little niche cuisine offerings.  The Mexican section didn't even look edible, the sushi was a poor attempt at sub-par rolls, the pizza was alright, but not stellar for the kind of oven they had there, and the American section was downright disappointing.  Still, I'd go back from the prime rib.  I hope it wasn't a fluke.

Carnival World plate #1: check out that prime rib!

You think they go through some crab legs?

Carnival World plate #2... you can actually see the plate in this picture!  And yes, that is a corn dog.  No, it wasn't good.

Desserts at Carnival World... the cookies and cream gelato rocked.

After another night at the blackjack tables at the Plaza with our new friends Janice, Toi, and Kimmy (oops, maybe that was supposed to stay in Vegas... nah, it's on Facebook, so it's official), we were set to leave Vegas.  However, none of us flew out until around 6 PM the next day so we naturally had time to hit up one more buffet in order to make the Buffet of Buffets worth it.  We had stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, so needless to say we skipped breakfast and decided to head back to The Strip where we would hit up lunch at Planet Hollywood's Spice Market Buffet.  While our bellies and digestive tracts were still a little out of sorts from the two buffets the previous day, I was really looking forward to the Spice Market Buffet.  Unfortunately, it fell flat on its face.  We made it through the line just in time to be within our 24 hour window, and from a distance the food looked great.  Like the setup at Carnival World, the Spice Market had a carving station in the middle and was flanked on each side by as series of international cuisine stations.

Plate #1 at the Spice Market Buffet in the Planet Hollywood Casino

After loading up a plate with a selection of prime rib, some Asian fare, a small taste of Mexico and France, and a few morsels of dried out chicken that represented the Middle East, I met my buddies at the table and began to chow down.  Unfortunately, I was hard pressed to find something on my plate that I wanted to take more than one bite of.  The prime rib was the biggest disappointment by far.  One look at that picture and you can tell how well done and over-cooked it was.  It looked to me like they left last night's beef in the oven for too long.  After eating the beautiful rare prime rib the night before, I pushed this rubbish off to the side and refused to take a second bite.  I went back to the prime rib station at Carnival World twice more before leaving, and every chuck of bovine glory that they sliced was well done.  What a shame.  As for the rest of the food, the best item may have been the spicy boneless chicken wings.  Yeah, exactly.  If that's the best thing, I could have just gone to get chicken wings at Hooters (or anywhere else for that matter).  Oh well.  I guess "lunch" on a Monday at Planet Hollywood really just means "Sunday dinner's leftovers."

All in all I was still blown away by the value of the Buffet of Buffets.  For $40 I got three full, gigantic meals at three totally different buffets inside of three of Vegas's most famous resorts... and there were still another four that I never got to try!  The Lago Buffet at Caesar's Palace wins my award for best all-around buffet of the three.  The selection wasn't as great, but what they lacked in quantity to the other two buffets was easily made up for in quality.  My other award for best single food item goes to the prime rib at Carnival World at the Rio.  I could have eaten nothing but that for three days and been satisfied.  The biscotti at Lago would come in second.  In closing, God Bless America, and thanks to Harrah's for allowing us to wallow around Vegas in such glutinous glory!

Vegas Baby, Vegas: Hubert Keller's Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay

There are two ways to travel.  The first option is to plan everything out, be sure of all the details, buy all your tickets and passes ahead of time, and stress out when anything veers off course.  The second kind of traveler does not make plans that are set in stone, chooses not to worry about minor details, does not purchase anything ahead of time, and enjoys going wherever the wind blows, even if it might be unexpected and off the beaten path.  I, obviously, am the second kind.  I hadn't planned on a night in Las Vegas after my trip to San Francisco but, that being said, I certainly did not complain about it!

After leaving San Francisco, Eusebio and I flew out of Oakland to Las Vegas where we were supposed to catch a flight an hour later to New Orleans.  The problem occured because we were flying stand-by and the flight was already overbooked.  We basically didn't have a chance to catch that flight to New Orleans, which happened to be the final flight of the day, so we were stuck in Vegas for the night.  Oops!

I pulled out the laptop and used Kayak.com to find a cheap hotel room in Las Vegas.  If you are a fan of Priceline, Hotels.com, Expedia, Travelocity, or Orbitz, you need to try Kayak.  It searches all of them for you at once and compares the prices!  Apparently it isn't very hard to find a cheap room in Vegas on a random Sunday night in November!  We booked a room at the Excalibur hotel and casino for a whopping $31 and carried on with our business.  Our checked bags were already on their way to New Orleans so we took our carry ons, got in a shuttle to The Strip, and started reciting quotes from Swingers such as "Vegas Baby, Vegas!" and "You're so money".  What a great film.

We checked into Excalibur and found ourselves with a renewed energy and substantial hunger.  After doing a quick internet and Urbanspoon search, there was one obvious choice for us within walking distance and affordable price range: Hubert Keller's Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay!

Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino

Everything in Vegas is built on such a grand scale that it is really hard to describe what it is like to walk around all the glorious hotels and casinos on The Strip.  Mandalay Bay stands tall among the casinos with its iconic building inviting patrons into its massive wings.  Each individual casino exists as a city in itself with more to do than one could find in most entire American towns.  Nestled inside the walls of Mandalay Bay sits the Burger Bar, where Eusebio and I stopped in for a bite and booze.

Hubert Keller's Burger Bar in Mandalay Bay

My Beer Selection at the Burger Bar

We took a seat at the bar and ordered samplers of splendid suds.  From left to right, my beer choices included: Bitch Creek ESB, Dogfish Head 90 Min IPA, Primo Premium Hawaiian Lager, Pyramid Snow Cap, Sin City Amber Lager, Monsoon Double IPA, and New Belgium 2 Below.  Every single brew tasted terrific on my lips and quenched my thirst with great glee.  The Dogfish Head 90 Min IPA and the Monsoon Double IPA stood out from the rest with their tremendous hops and fantastic flavor.  They were true IPA lover's beers, and I enjoyed every drop!

The Hubert Keller Burger with Zucchini Fries

I went ahead and ordered the chef's namesake burger.  This feast on a bun came with a generous chunk of ground buffalo, caramelized onions, baby spinach, and blue cheese on a ciabatta bun.  Every bite that entered my mouth contained the juicy and savory buffalo meat with an incredible accompaniment of fixings.  Hubert Keller did well!  I got my burger served with some zucchini fries that needed no condiment to dress them up as they were crispy and delicious all by their lonesome.

Creamy Cheesecake Burger

Eusebio splurged on the signature burger with 100% Kobe beef, truffles, and foie gras which also came with a free dessert.  I'm sure he'll post about his burger and dessert on Chef Thinks, so I'll just explain the dessert burger and move on.  The creamy cheesecake burger consisted of a warm donut sliced in half and filled with cheesecake, caramelized pineapple, and strawberries.  It wasn't good at all.  That was sarcasm.  That wasn't sarcasm.

Custom Made Milk Shake at the Burger Bar

Knowing that the Burger Bar's milk shakes are nearly as famous as their burgers themselves, I ordered one for my dessert.  My custom milk shake included vanilla ice cream with peanut butter, hot fudge, and, of course, Maker's Mark bourbon!  If you've ever seen Pulp Fiction, then you know about a $5 dollar milk shake that doesn't have any bourbon in it or anything.  In front of me stood a real milkshake, made with bourbon, that was worth every penny... though it certainly cost me more than the $5 that Travolta complained about!

After the Burger Bar, Eusebio and I made one more stop in Mandalay Bay before retreating back to Excalibur for the night.  We stopped by the Minus 5 Ice Lounge for some cocktails in a bar made completely out of ice.  Even our glasses were made out of ice, so the drinks were sure to stay cold!  The Minus 5 experience made it worth going once, but the entire thing was certainly there for the tourists.  But Hell, it is Vegas, and I was, in fact, a tourist.  So I enjoyed my cocktails, got some pictures with a chick in a penguin suit, and had a good time with it all.  The place really did create an interesting environment and a unique setting, which I'm all about.

Eusebio and Jay in the Minus 5 Ice Lounge, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas

Jay, a penguin, and Eusebio in the Minus 5 Ice Lounge

The next morning we had a little more drama with catching a flight back to New Orleans with a freak November hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast and flights still full from the day before.  However, this time were able to snag two of the last available seats on a plane so we made our way back to Cajun country a day late, a few dollars short, and with a weekend full of delicious food, plentiful drinks, and fond memories that wont soon be forgotten!

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