Spice Market Buffet

Kevin and I had not been to a single buffet since moving to Sin City, a city that is kind of known for the buffets. In fact, we hadn’t even been to a Vegas buffet since before we got married, so it had been a really long time. But as part of our little “vacation at home” we decided to visit one. We went to the Spice Market Buffet at the Planet Hollywood, or the resort formerly known as the Aladdin. I don’t know why they kept the buffet name the same, for some reason the “spice market” theme seems to go along with the old theme of the hotel, but whatever.

Basically my approach was to take one bite of everything that intrigued me at all. I’m not a big fan of buffets, but since Vegas ones are supposed to have more variety, I thought it might present an opportunity to taste things that I may not want to order as an entire entree in other situations. Since the buffet is broken down into different stations, I’m going to base my review on the stations we visited.

Salad:
Um… this section was pathetic. There were a couple different fruits (pineapple, pears, melon), a big bowl of lettuce and several prepared salads. I hate pre-made salads full of mayonnaise-based dressings.

Sushi:
Oooh… Sushi! Oh, yuck… it’s rubbery and tastes weird.

Soup:
Good tomato soup, terrible garlic bread toasts that were rock hard.

Mediterranean:
Good hummus, weird baba ghannouj, decent pitas if you eat them warm but as they cool they get gross. Good skewered lamb, yummy vegetables. I also tasted falafel for the first time and wasn’t impressed. But then, I have no baseline comparison.

Seafood:
The crab was frozen and the chef at that station was MIA. But when Kevin went back to the station after the chef reappeared, he got some crab steamed and it was better. Other fish items were kind of gross, salmon and halibut were not that great.

Italian:
Pizza was pointless, eggplant parmesan was pretty good, the spinach lasagne was the best thing in this section, the lobster risotto was pretty good, the cheese ravioli was good. They had oyster stuffing balls, they just tasted like stuffing and I decided that it doesn’t meet my requirement of trying oysters before this summer.

Classics (or whatever it was called):
Prime rib is scary but Kevin said it was okay, overly-candied sweet potatoes, duck with no meat on it, dry turkey.

Dessert:
We got about 12 different desserts and took little bites of a bunch of them. Sadly, the cookies were the best out of all the fancy, elaborate dishes. Oh, the fresh chocolate crepes were okay too. But most of them were just weird.

Okay, so I’m still not a big buffet fan, but it was a fun experience and I wasn’t really there for a mind-blowing culinary experience. It more served a point of experimenting and that was satisfying.