January 2002
Few Las Vegas buffets have generated such split opinions as the Festival Market Buffet at the new Palms resort on W. Flamingo, near The Rio and The Gold Coast. Some diners are enthusiastic about it while other pan it mercilessly, and it seems there is no middle ground.
This writer can understand why the Palms buffet garners these mixed reactions. There are things to like about it and things to dislike, so you may have to keep an open mind on the subject until you’ve tried it for yourself.
Pricing is a strong suit, with breakfast for $5.99, lunch at $6.99 and dinner at $9.99. With many dinner buffets around town hitting prices of $11.99 and more, Festival Market Buffet is more than competitive. Breakfast hours are 7-10:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday. Lunch is 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Dinner is 4-10 p.m. Thursday through Tuesday. There were no specialty nights when the buffet opened, but Wednesday is now Hawaiian night, at a price of $13.99. A Sunday brunch is offered from 7 a.m.-3 p.m., at a price of $8.99.
The buffet opened with discounts for members of the resort’s players club, and offers discounts for using accumulated points, as well as buffet deals in some of the mailers it sends out.
We found the Festival Market Buffet’s physical layout to be among the least attractive. The dining areas and somewhat spartan food-serving areas give the place the feel of a cafeteria. The bare surfaces, combined with noise from the adjacent casino, result in a high noise level. The posted seating capacity of the buffet room is 645. There are booths along the walls, but most of the seating is at four-top tables, and the room is not really designed for larger groups. Once, after our party of eight entered the buffet, we had to wait about 10 minutes while servers struggled to find available tables that could be pushed together without disturbing other diners.
As you enter the dining room, all the serving stations are along the back wall, starting from the middle of the room and working toward the right.
The Chinese/Mongolian area is at the far right. During our visits, the buffet was serving the following dishes: egg roll; sweet and sour pork; Mongolian beef; Mongolian stir-fried vegetables; Mongolian chicken; vegetable chop suey; vegetable lo mein; beef and broccoli; steamed rice; shrimp fried rice; egg-drop soup.
The sweet and sour pork was superb, as good as any we’ve had in this area. It looked like the still-crispy pieces of pork had been dusted in water-chestnut flour and deep fried, and the sauce was the Shanghai style that lacks the syrupy sweetness such dishes usually have.
The cooks in the Chinese area were all Asian from what I could tell, which I’m sure had a lot to do with the seeming authenticity of the dishes. While it is true that a good cook need not share the ethnicity of a cuisine to prepare it well (e.g., almost all the cooks at Panda Express seem to be Mexican), I’m sure it helps.
At least a half-dozen local buffets now offer Mongolian grills, where the diner chooses a selection of meats, vegetables and seasonings, and a chef then cooks the ingredients on a large griddle, and sweeps them into a plate for the diner to enjoy. The Mongolian grill at the Festival Market Buffet is good, but the overall selection of ingredients is not as broad as the other buffet grills I’ve sampled.
Some buffets stand out by virtue of serving foods not commonly found at other buffets, and Palms owner George Maloof has drawn on his Lebanese heritage to assure that such is the case at the Festival Market Buffet. One of my favorite Middle Eastern dishes is kibbe, usually a mix of ground lamb, bulgar wheat, pine nuts and spices that is baked and sliced into squares for serving. Improper cooking results in kibbe that can be dry and tasteless, but the kibbe at this buffet is as moist and tasty as any I’ve ever enjoyed. If you like kibbe, or you are an adventurous eater, I recommend this buffet’s version, especially when accompanied by the refreshing dill-yogurt sauce available nearby.
Other Middle Eastern specialties at the Festival Market Buffet include: chicken shwarma; beef gyros; pita bread, chicken kabobs, baba ghanoush; tabouli, labneh, marinated Kalamata olives; Lebanese bean salad.
This buffet is not a place to find vegetarians hanging out, but it is a good choice if you are mostly a meat eater. There are entire sections devoted to various barbecued and deli meats, all served hot. These include bbq ribs; chicken, pork and duck, sliced or sectioned and presented in stainless-steel serving wells. There are also slices of ham, corned beef, turkey, pastrami, braised brisket and boiled brisket.
Another unique item is a delicious kugel (noodle pudding), a delicacy especially enjoyed by those of Jewish, German and Austrian heritage. The kugel here was quite good.
Also found at various serving areas (sometimes in duplicate) are mashed potatoes; steamed veggies; chili; two or three soups; roast chicken with biscuits; baked fish of the day (I’ve had tilapia and orange roughy).
Festival Market Buffet serves fresh-baked pizzas, which most buffets seem to be doing these days. I tried a slice of cheese pizza, finding the crust too thick for my liking and the cheese congealed into a thick, gummy wad on the top.
The salad selections are modest but good. These included: antipasti with meats and olives; cucumber, tomato & onion salad; macaroni salad; Caesar salad; iceberg lettuce; Italian combo salad. Dressings, on a small island nearby, included Caesar, Italian, ranch, thousand island and bleu cheese. Another island featured dill pickles, Parmesan cheese, cabbage salad, and a limited fruit selection that included fruit ambrosia, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, and apples in a sweetened sauce.
An Italian serving station offered: chicken cacciatore and mixed Italian vegetables. Also available were three types of pasta (penne, tortellini and ravioli) with two sauces (marinara and Alfredo) to put on them.
Desserts are rather basic: various pies, cheesecakes, brownies, turnovers and cakes, some of them sugar-free, as well as the ubiquitous bread pudding and fruit cobbler.
In summary: The Festival Market Buffet at The Palms is worth a try, especially if you don’t have to travel too far. It is value-priced, and will likely appeal to you if there are two or three specialties you like but don’t find at other buffets. But it seriously lacks in atmosphere, and much of what is served is not memorable in presentation or taste. It is certainly not in the same league of upscale buffets that have strong consensus followings, such as Aladdin, Bellagio, Paris and even Mandalay Bay.
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Best from David in NV
