Remem­ber my trip to Las Vegas last month? Here comes part two! We stayed at the Trea­sure Island hotel where we had two buf­fet meals there (a lunch and a din­ner). We chose to go there twice was because we had a $50 credit towards the restau­rant and another buy one get one free coupon. Although their buf­fet wasn’t as grand and expen­sive as Bellagio’s it was still very good and we tasted a vari­ety of yummy dishes there. Lunch as $18.95/person and din­ner was $22.95/person plus taxes.

Here goes the Trea­sure Island buffet!

One of the spe­cial­ties of the TI (Trea­sure Island) buf­fet is their Amer­i­can style dishes.

One of the things that comes to mind when think­ing of Amer­i­can food is of course, BBQ! They offered a vari­ety of BBQ meats and sides. I got myself a sam­pler. Liv­ing in Van­cou­ver, there aren’t many Amer­i­can BBQ restau­rants so I haven’t had the chance to taste authen­tic South­ern Amer­i­can BBQ. So much meat and so tasty . They were all very good, I espe­cially enjoyed the ribs, brisket and chicken — ten­der and smokey. We could actu­ally see the wood and the smok­ers that they used (in their open kitchen) to pre­pare the BBQ meats.

Made to Order Pasta Kitchen

The TI buf­fet has a open pasta kitchen where the pasta dishes are made to order in front of cus­tomers. I chose the Lob­ster Ravi­oli and it was YUM. I saw the chef put the dish together by cook­ing the ravi­oli, sautee­ing the gar­lic and mush­rooms, adding sauce and toss­ing in the ravi­oli. It smelled SO good.

This was prob­a­bly one of the fresh­est and best pasta dishes I’ve ever had. There was so much fill­ing in the ravi­oli, the pasta itself was cooked just right and the rose sauce was so deli­cious. The chef asked me if I wanted mush­rooms and cheese — YES, please. I didn’t see the lob­ster ravi­oli dur­ing lunch so I think it is only avail­able dur­ing dinner.

This was the pasta I had for lunch, I chose sun dried toma­toes, mush­rooms, chicken with a fresh tomato sauce. I liked the tomato sauce — so fresh and flavour­ful and the pasta was al dente.

There was also an Asian sec­tion of the buf­fet. Made to order noo­dle soup was one part of their Asian menu. Here we had a bowl of Viet­namese beef noo­dle soup with beef ten­don balls. I was pon­der­ing whether I should get this or not since there are many Phở stores in Van­cou­ver that serves very good Phở. To my sur­prise, the soup tasted pretty authen­tic with the spices and tasted rich in beef flavour. The rice noo­dles were cooked just right with a tiny bit of bite.

There were also a vari­ety of piz­zas baked fresh in their flam­ing oven. I had a lit­tle bit but the crust was burnt so I didn’t fin­ish it. They also have a made to order salad bar in which I did have a salad but it was way over-dressed that I couldn’t fin­ish it.

This was also part of my lunch visit, my Mex­i­can sam­pler. Of course, Mex­i­can food is an impor­tant part of Amer­i­can cui­sine as well. This was actu­ally the first time I had a tamale, it wasn’t very flavour­ful but had an inter­est­ing tex­ture from the masa. The other sides tasted okay, not outstanding.

They had a lot of desserts but they were more Amer­i­can style com­pared to Bellagio’s buf­fet. Dough­nuts were one of them, there were also cakes, cheese­cakes, choco­late pot de crème, fruit tarts, tri­fle, crois­sants, ice cream etc. I per­son­ally liked the pot de crème and trifle.

More desserts — crème brûlée and guess what? They had cot­ton candy too! Although I didn’t have any (per­son­ally don’t enjoy them too much) but I saw other peo­ple hav­ing it and it really feels like being a kid again.

We also asked for tea and this was what we got. It was good qual­ity tea and it was served with honey and a lemon wedge. I was expect­ing a cup of hot water with a float­ing tea bag .

So that was my Trea­sure Island buf­fet expe­ri­ence. Though they are not really known for the buf­fet, I thought I had a pretty good expe­ri­ence there. Most of the food was fresh and tasty and the envi­ron­ment was comfortable.

Yummy in Las Vegas! Just shortly before the win­ter hol­i­days, my mom and I went to Las Vegas for a 4 days, 3 nights trip. Besides just check­ing out the dif­fer­ent hotels and attrac­tions, of course we had to have buf­fet. Just edit­ing and upload­ing the pho­tos of food reminded me of all the yummy flavours! We had a 3 meals of buf­fet, one at Bel­la­gio and two at Trea­sure Island (given we were stay­ing there so we had awe­some discounts).

This post is part one of my Las Vegas trip, the first buf­fet that we went to was at Bel­la­gio. Bel­la­gio is also famous for their humon­gous foun­tain. Since my friend strongly rec­om­mended their buf­fet so we had to go try. Din­ner was $29.95/adult, plus taxes.

Let’s tackle the Bel­la­gio buffet!

The buf­fet had so many sta­tions, the first one I went to was the meat sta­tion (as you can see from my first plate). I had some roasted Kurobuta pork with BBQ sauce and Wagyu beef. They were really ten­der and weren’t dry at all! I per­son­ally liked the pork more than the beef because I thought the beef wasn’t as flavour­ful. The Ital­ian sausage was also very deli­cious and well flavoured.

I also had some rotis­serie chicken, which was right beside the prime rib roast (like pic­tured). My mom (being Asian) asked me why I got chicken and not other stuff like seafood. (LOL) Well, doesn’t the chicken look good? It was really ten­der, juicy and deli­cious, so why not?

Before I went for my sec­ond plate, I saw another lady sit­ting close to our table with (lit­er­ally) a moun­tain of crab legs on her plate which made me won­der if they were THAT good. So for the sec­ond round, I went for the crab legs, fish, prime rib roast some Chi­nese veg­gies. Being a Chi­nese, I would think that the buf­fet wouldn’t offer authen­tic Asian flavours. But to my sur­prise, the greens were really good with gar­lic flavour and the crunch of toasted sesame seeds (although not the usual sus­pect, it turned out pretty good). The fish (for­got what kind) was really good — ten­der and fresh. As for the Alaskan/Snow crab legs, it wasn’t really as good as I expected. The tex­ture was a lit­tle tough, I thought. The prime rib roast really (kind of) blew me away. It was even more ten­der that the Wagyu beef I had ear­lier, I also helped myself to some au jus and mush­rooms. It was so juicy and ten­der but still had good tex­ture in the meat and the au jus added so much beef flavour. The mush­room on the other hand, tasted WAY bet­ter than they looked, they paired so well with the beef!

How can one for­get about dessert? There were so many kinds, my stom­ach can’t fit all the of them! We had the flan — good but could be bet­ter. Rasp­berry macroon — not bad, but pretty big for a macroon. The one beside it was some tart topped with meringue — for­got what it tasted like.

The one on the left was a choco­late mouse cake — very good pre­sen­ta­tion, and tasted good. The other one was a cof­fee cup, lay­ered with cof­fee cream, cus­tard and topped with whipped cream — so good, prob­a­bly the best out of these desserts. We also had the Tiramisu (don’t have a good photo of if), but it wasn’t remarkable.

So…that pretty much sums up my buf­fet at Bel­la­gio. There were also some other lit­tle things I had, like the cock­tail shrimp (so sweet and plump), a bowl of very, very, salty miso soup etc. I was SOOO full after, which is why I typ­i­cally don’t enjoy buf­fet too much because I don’t have a huge appetite. But of course, Las Vegas is an excep­tion. Hope you are as hun­gry read­ing this as I was while writ­ing this post. I think the price was totally worth it given the fresh­ness and vari­ety of the food.

Wait! There is a Part 2 com­ing soon, STAY TUNED.