Rumor has it that the buffet at the Bellagio, a long-standing institution on the Las Vegas Strip, is set to close.
The buffet will be replaced by a (warning!) food hall, as required by law in Las Vegas since the pandemic.
Casino buffets are notorious for being loss-makers, so it’s no surprise that the buffet at Bellagio will be closing. There’s no official announcement about the closure yet, but hold on a moment.
According to our friend Corey Levitan, who also writes for Casino.org, at least 10 of the 18 buffets on the Strip have closed permanently. We’re not mathematicians, but we can confirm that’s a metric hell-ton.
Closed buffets include those at Aria, Mirage (entire resort closed), Paris, Treasure Island, Harrah’s, Horseshoe (formerly Bally’s, remember the Sterling Brunch?), M Resort, Planet Hollywood, Mandalay Bay, The Strat and Flamingo.
That’s a shame, because about three of them were actually good.
Years before COVID, casinos were looking for an excuse to get rid of their buffets, popular but expensive lures (Caesars Entertainment revealed that its Las Vegas buffets lost an average of $3 million annually) – but the pandemic provided the perfect cover.
Food courts, sometimes called “food halls,” are the new buffets in Las Vegas. Oh yeah, Miracle Mile Shops is calling its under-construction food court, Miracle Eats, a “food collective.” No, really. We can’t convince them to stop.
We are confident that Bellagio, operated by MGM Resorts, will curate a select collection of “accessible” dining concepts for its new food court.
We also trust that the food court hours will be normal, as opposed to the half-hearted hours of the buffet. On Saturdays and Sundays, the buffet is open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., but Monday through Friday, it is open from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. No dinner at the buffet? That was a pretty big red flag. The days of the Bellagio buffet were numbered.
If you’re a buffet fan, there are still some pretty good buffets in Las Vegas.
The Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace is the undisputed champion, but it is not cheap (you get what you pay for). Also very good is the AYCE (All You Can Eat) buffet at the Palms. Prices have recently gone up.
Prices at the Palms buffet are going up a little. There are no more tempting offers in Vegas. (h/t @Pennys4Vegas) pic.twitter.com/DF9WsYEKgv
— Vital Vegas (@VitalVegas) 11 August 2024
There was a rumor that the Wicked Spoon Buffet (at the Cosmo) was closing, but MGM Resorts tried to put a stop to that. It’s pretty clear that our informant caught wind of the impending closure of the Bellagio buffet and confused it with Wicked Spoon, since both resorts are now under the MGM Resorts umbrella.
Other buffets: Luxor, Wynn, Excalibur, Westgate, South Point, Main Street, MGM Grand and Rampart in Summerlin.
We actually only created the list this way to make our PR friends at Wynn Las Vegas feel like they were sandwiched between Luxor and Excalibur.
We have contacted MGM Resorts regarding the Bellagio buffet update but have not yet received a response.
A little housework that isn’t important to you, but should be.
The tip about the Bellagio buffet closing was sent to us via direct message on Twitter on August 18, 2024 at 10:11 p.m. We immediately headed to the Bellagio to take photos of the buffet, which we’ve somehow never visited or photographed in over 11 years of blogging. Our friend Las Vegas Locally tweeted the article on August 18, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. We tweeted it on August 19, 2024 at 12:30 a.m. So technically he beat us out, which is really annoying. However, he didn’t mention that a food court will replace the buffet, and he doesn’t have a blog either, so technically we win anyway. Fine, it’s a tie. Yes, that matters. It’s important because we try to give credit where it’s due, unlike the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which gets its information from Twitter but never admits that virtually all of its stories are stolen from social media. The Las Vegas Review-Journal believes that a social media post is not legitimate media and therefore does not require citing the original source of a story. They are wrong about that. Sometimes they also claim they did not get a story from social media. In most cases, that is a blatant and obvious lie. They use social media as a free news feed, confirming stories and presenting them as original reporting. That is bullshit and they should be ashamed of themselves. In this case, we really did not get this story from Twitter, but from a source who also shared the information with Las Vegas Locally. We still give Las Vegas Locally our respects for being the first to share it on Twitter. The whole situation reminds us that ethics matter, professional courtesy is not dead, and that the Las Vegas Review-Journal also sucks. We all deserve better. It’s the “public’s newspaper.” Yes, in quotation marks, but still.
In any case, the buffet at Bellagio will be closed and replaced by a food court. Timetable unknown.
Buffets are a relic of a time when Las Vegas tried to be “everything for everyone.” It was also a time when gambling revenue subsidized pretty much everything in a resort. Shows, restaurants, the whole program. For a while, gambling revenue even allowed guests to park for free. Crazy, but true.
