After this all, we got to eat at the famed buffet, bypassing
the line (apparently quite substantial), which is a great
advantage. The wines were Nathanson Creek; I had the Cab,
which was okay if a little inkish. Others included M lager,
a reasonably hopped and clean brew, PBR, some other infra
dig light product, and an interesting pinkish fairly tasty M
cider that was only intermittently available.

Mrp Alert ate only a couple plates, apologizing that he was
unable to do justice to buffets the way he used to; well,
Melville, older than he, at least matched him, and I, close
to twice his age, destroyed five, count 'em, plates of food.

What I had:

enormous snow crab clusters, about 2 lb of them. These were
excellent and worth the price of the entire outing

oysters on the half shell - good but (as is true everywhere
these days) when not consumed, left on the table with the
new ones just put on top; a bad practive, as someone's going
to get sick from the ones on the bottom, sooner or later

steamed mussels and Manila clams - not too popular, so not
frequently replenished, so sort of tired

rib roast - Chef Tina made a big thing about how the M grew
its own cattle, and free range means healthier, blah blah
blah. This meat was notably firm of texture, relatively low
in fat. I asked for the rarest piece, which turned out to be
much more done (medium at least) than I like

kalbi ribs - just like at the Korean store, but leaner (boo)

Penang beef - almost fatally hot, and I can heat food as hot
as almost anyone can. Flavors of lemongrass and citrus came
or rather crawled out under the heat.

This made up the bulk of my meal; I also took some discarded
skin from the rotisserie chicken, which I otherwise ignored,
as it didn't look inspiring; the turkey breast next to it
looked downright forlorn.

Things I might have had but didn't have room for:

mahi-mahi on a bamboo plank; pork Nicoise (cutlets with
olives, tomatoes, and capers); pasta dishes; eggplant parm
made with insufficiently fried vegetable in little chunks -
I tested a piece with the side of the serving spoon and
found it resilient in the way cited by people who don't like
eggplant; tri-tip (way too done for me); chicken in red and
green curry (too full by the time I found this); salads,
both green and composed; ossobuco (actually, this looked
peculiar, big chunks of thick bone with no marrow in sight,
and I probably wouldn't have tried it); chicken adobo.

Mrp Alert excused himself, as he had a father to deal with
or something, but there was an hour or more before the bus
back to the Strip, so Melville and I, neither of us dessert
persons, came back from the dessert station with red wine
and

creme caramel - okay, a little rubbery, more Spanish-style
than French-style

creme brulee (in the sugar-free section) - a somewhat
tasteless brulee with a nice sugar crust (or was it a new
sugar substitute that brulees like the real thing?)

bread pudding - standard, high quality

chocolate mousse concoction layered with crisp wafer -
interesting, very rich

chocolate-pecan pie - good and fresh but way too sweet and
way too rich

warm chocolate cake in a little tin cup - pretty good.

There were 200 items in total, of which I tried 10 to 15.

There was still half an hour before the shuttle, so Melville
introduced me to the pleasures of the penny slots, and I
introduced her to Nancy the concierge; after which Barbie
took us back to the Fashion Show Mall.