Highly Opinionated: An Editor’s Power Ranking of the Las Vegas Strip’s Buffets

In search of the best prime rib, seafood, and dessert at the Las Vegas buffet

For more than 80 years, tourists on the Las Vegas Strip have reveled in the excess that is the casino buffet. And in the last decade or so, many of these buffets underwent one audacious change: They became good. Yes, they still serve the requisite scrambled eggs, steaming soups, and frosted cake slices. But when operators learned they could command upwards of $100 for access to these hallowed counters, they began to rethink their approach: prioritizing luxury inventory like crab legs and prime rib, expanding the categories of food on offer, and delivering dishes that merit a premium price. The point of the buffet has never been to serve the best food in the city. But in Vegas, buffets do strive to be seen as the best buffet in town.

This shift into the era of the fancy buffet is not entirely widespread: Head off-Strip and you’ll still encounter the humble loss-leader buffet, frequented by those with players cards (received after joining a casino’s rewards program) with comped passes. And buffets at the older properties on Las Vegas Boulevard — like Excalibur, Circus Circus, and the Luxor — haven’t meaningfully transformed their offerings in recent memory.

Lyssa Park

But the big-ticket casino buffets, well, they’re rolling out a veritable red carpet of dinner and brunch dishes to prospective diners. There’s the Las Vegas classic: the prime rib. When done right, this cheaper cut of meat can be transcendent — with its pink center, ring of marbled fat, and seared, herb-dusted crust that has just enough texture to be interesting, but never tough. Seafood is the other main draw of the high-price buffet. In Las Vegas, that takes the form of lobster tails, prawns, and crab legs both chilled and warm, pre-scored or served with a metal cracker. Macaroni and cheese, one of the more common sides on the buffet line, may seem like filler but, in its best form, is actually the marker of a buffet that knows how to double down on indulgence. And then there’s dessert, a course so integral to the experience that its mousse-filled cups and iced slabs of cake are often centered at the buffet’s entrance.

With that in mind, here is the Eater Vegas buffet power ranking.

The best prime rib: The Buffet at Bellagio

Matthew Kang

A roast of herb-crusted prime rib at the Buffet at Bellagio’s carving station glows beneath a heat lamp, a line cook hoisting a knife just above it as they wait for customers to approach and request how thick or thin they would like their slices. For tender, pink prime rib, a thick-cut slice comes off the center of the roast, trailing drippings between the cutting board and its prospective plate. For a slightly more well-done cut, the slices from the roast’s end are almost caramelized at the exterior, its salted crust a satisfying contrast to the fattier inside. (Customers can request one of each.) With a pool of jus, this prime rib rivals even the most dedicated of Vegas’s prime rib restaurants — each slice marbled with silky fat, primed to be drenched in a ladle of savory jus. Pair it with a smear of horseradish or a scoop of mashed potatoes to complete the picture.

The best seafood: Bacchanal Buffet

Janna Karel

There’s a reason that the queue to enter the buffet at Caesars Palace directly faces its seafood station. Commanding nearly $100 per person, the glass-encased display telegraphs what a visit will look like — one packed with repeat runs to icy selections of shellfish. With the largest selection of seafood across the Strip’s buffets, Bacchanal offers lobster tail, crab legs, mussels, oysters, head-on prawns, shelled shrimp, whelk sea snails, mussels, oysters on the half-shell, and clams. Both icy Dungeness crab and warm snow crab legs are thick and longer than the dinner plates, poised for cracking with provided metal crackers. Bites of lobster are subtly sweet and tender, ripe for dunking in melted clarified butter. Most impressively, the seafood succeeds in avoiding “fishiness,” including the humble Chilean mussel, which, here, is supple when iced or buttery and spicy when baked.

The best macaroni and cheese: Bacchanal Buffet

Janna Karel

Bacchanal brilliantly employs cavatappi in its rendition of macaroni and cheese. The thick corkscrew-shaped noodles become silky with layers of creamy cheese sauce; the molten cheese, a blend of smoked Gouda and white cheddar, is just right — thick and pliable, allowing for thin cheese pulls with each bite and fully coating the spiral curves of the hearty, toothsome cavatappi. Far from the boxed stuff, the cheese flavor is sharp and delicately spiced. It makes an ideal side dish for mini sliders, or sliced porchetta, or even, from personal experience, a palate cleanser to cut the sweetness from dessert.

The best dessert: Buffet at Wynn

Matthew Kang

The dessert station at Buffet at Wynn brims with jewel box cake cubes, tiny cups of bruleed custard, and platters upon platters of warm, soft cookies. But you can skip all of that and beeline to the crepe counter. Here, crepes are made to order with thin batter poured over a round flattop and heated until baked into a thin pancake. They can be topped with things like strawberries, blueberries, guava mousse, and cannoli filling. But chief among the options is the bananas Foster. Warm slices of banana are combined with thick syrupy caramel. The mixture is spooned onto the folded crepe and joined with ribbons of Nutella, a puff of whipped cream, and — because Vegas — a dusting of edible golden glitter. This counter has endless sweets — scoops of gelato primed for sundaes, warm rocky road bread pudding, and hexagonal slabs of Key lime pie. It should come as no surprise that Buffet at Wynn’s brunch game is equally strong: That bananas Foster topping works its way atop cinnamon rolls.

The best portions: Wicked Spoon

Janna Karel

This buffet at the Cosmopolitan veers away from the vat-of-food approach common at other buffets on the Strip, with most of its dishes preportioned into ramekins and metal bowls. This means every small plate is individually garnished, sauced, and seasoned. Craggy fried chicken is served hot and crisp in miniature metal baskets. Small bowls of Caesar salad are topped with strips of anchovy and a thin slice of toasted crostini. And bite-sized gyros are individually prepared, the savory shaved meat and creamy tzatziki sandwiched between silver dollar-sized pitas.

The best design: The buffet at Luxor

Janna Karel

Janna Karel

The food here is fine. If you’re staying on property and hungry for brunch (or if you get an option for a comped meal), you can find something among its brunch offerings to satisfy. But the primary draw is the buffet’s design: Located in the casino’s basement, the Luxor’s buffet is rife with homages to ancient Egypt. A sarcophagus stands guard over the salad bar. Booths are nestled against rough-hewn brick or overseen by the watchful eye of a statue Anubis. The queue is even flanked by verdant palm columns. The sheer commitment to theme, in this case, works heavily in the buffet’s favor.

The best value: Buffet at Excalibur

Janna Karel

One of the lower-priced buffets, the experience at Excalibur runs about $40 for brunch. One highlight is its taco bar, where al pastor tacos are surprisingly well-made — vampy red adobe-marinaded meat nestled into tortillas with diced onions and fresh cilantro. Waffles here are the good hotel breakfast bar kind, with thick ridges for collecting warm maple syrup. And, while there is a line to get in, a self-serve kiosk means that savvy buffet-goers can skip the queue.

Best off-Strip buffet: AYCE at Palms

Louiie Victa

This casino buffet at the Palms is off-Strip — but just barely. It’s a favorite among locals for a reason. It hosts a lobster dinner two nights a week in which customers eat through 900 whole lobsters and 1,750 lobster tails per night. On Fridays, diners can eat their fill of tender, dripping prime rib and buttery snow crab.