Las Vegas Locally initially posted the letter from Snowden. A fog machine will help sanitize the properties every night, while slot machines and table games will be cleaned frequently. Staff must wear a mask, and visitors will be encouraged to wear them as well. Live music and entertainment will not perform when resorts reopen. Slot machines and table games will also feature social distancing. The resorts plan to reinforce social distancing guidelines with floor decals and signs where lines generally form. For the Las Vegas dining scene, Penn National Gaming CEO Jay Snowden says buffets remain closed during the initial opening, and restaurants that do open will only offered prepackaged sandwiches, drinks, and snacks. Nowadays, options are more limited, though these buffets remain favorites among tourists.Penn National Gaming, which operates the Tropicana on the Strip and M Resort in Henderson, tells future guests that its preparing to reopen its 41 properties across the country by early June with some new health and safety precautions in place. El Rancho Vegas’ Buckaroo Buffet only charged a dollar for all-you-can-eat fare when it opened back in the day.īefore the pandemic, Las Vegas had more than 70 buffets inside casinos, spanning from Aliante to Henderson, Summerlin to the Strip, serving gourmet fare at various stations. Those early chuck wagons might have served some hot dishes along with cold cuts. It may have seemed like no big deal at the time, but the casino buffet would become a Las Vegas signature restaurant.”

Knowing that the hungry gamblers would be happy with good, plentiful meats and snacks, the El Rancho Vegas’s managers created the all-night chuck wagon.

“The buffet filled a need for the casino, which wanted to keep its late-night gamblers happy, but didn’t want the expense of keeping a full restaurant open all night. As UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research writes, “quantity was usually emphasized over quality.” El Rancho Vegas, the Strip’s first resort, came up with the chuck wagon, the earliest version of the modern-day buffet to turn up in Las Vegas. Culinary trailblazers back in the 1940s found a way to keep gamblers inside the resorts with cheap food, and lots of it.

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