Spice Market Buffet

For the last meal of our trip to Las Vegas on Monday, June 9, we went to the breakfast buffet at Spice Market in the Planet Hollywood hotel.  We had no trouble getting there because we had done recon the evening before.  We had to walk from the east end of the Miracle Mile shops where parking is located to the casino at the west end.  To get to the buffet, we went to the escalator in the middle of the casino and took it one floor down.  The breakfast buffet at Spice Market occurs between 7:00 am and 10:30 am and costs $12.99 per person.  It is followed by a more expensive lunch buffet (don’t know the price) and dinner buffet ($25.99 per person).  Spice Market has recently been ranked the number one buffet in Las Vegas.

We arrived at Spice Market before 9 am.  Most of the Miracle Mile Shops that we walked by hadn’t opened yet.  There was hardly any line to get into the buffet at that hour.  The hostess assigned us our table and we were ready to check out the choices.  The space is very large with lots of seating in several partitioned spaces.  It’s easy to get lost and not be able to find your assigned table.  The name “Spice Market” seems more applicable to the hotel’s former Middle Eastern theme than its current Hollywood theme.  The décor, however, reflects its current theme and consists of vintage and contemporary movie posters.  There was one for the 1974 movie version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with the words “Coming to Videocassette” at the bottom.  Along with posters for popular movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and American Pie, there are posters for obscure films I hadn’t heard of.  They included The Last Supper, an early Cameron Diaz film; The Watermelon Man; and The Pizza Triangle.

The buffet had several stations but their labels such as Mexican, Asian, and Middle Eastern didn’t really apply to the breakfast food.  The station names are used primarily for the lunch and dinner buffets, though we were disappointed that the Mexican station was empty and didn’t have Mexican breakfast foods.  But there was still a lot of food from which to choose.  One station had bagels, rolls, fruit, and slices of meat and cheese.  Another offered tri-tip, and sausage sliced to order.  Stations served omelets and waffles made to order and the various breakfast foods went on and on.  They had three different kinds of hash browns: traditional in bar form, ranchero style, and home fries.  They had scrambled eggs, thick slices of apple smoked bacon, link sausage, and various baked goods such as muffins and breakfast rolls.  There was also a cereal bar.  Filling our plates was easy.

We sat down at our designated table and a waiter took our drink orders.  They served freshly squeezed orange juice.  Flat screen TVs near the ceiling broadcasted the Food Network.  I made little sandwiches out of my bagel and sourdough roll using the scrambled eggs, sliced sausage, and bacon.  I liked the slice of sausage the best because it was so juicy and flavorful.  My wife also liked the sausage the best.  All three types of hash browns were equally good.  We ended up not going back for seconds as our first plates were more than enough.

After 9 am, the buffet had more of a line and was getting more crowded.  Our waiter was very attentive, though we didn’t need refills.  We left at around 10 am, walked through the now open shops, and drove back to SGV.  It was a short trip to Vegas, but we did a lot.  There are always new things to see there, new restaurants to try, and new places to visit.  We probably won’t return until sometime next year and with all the construction going on they’ll be plenty new to see.