Gold Coast: Restaurants

This thread is to be used to discuss restaurants and dining available at Gold Coast.

Ate at Noodle Exchange (twice) and Ping Pang Pong during my last visit. Noodle Exchange is excellent. Throw your expectations of the cheap noodle bar out the window. These folks do it right, and you can tell by the huge line-up they have for every service. My first visit, I ordered the Lamb mini hot pot ($15). They bring out a kind of campfire stove with gel fuel, and a pot of soup with spices and things floating in it. You heat the soup to boiling, and then they bring out the plate of raw meat and veg. The big veg like corn and such goes in first, and the noodles go in last. You have a plate, bowl and dish of sauce to dip everything in. The lamb is thinly sliced so you really just have to swish it around to cook it. Everything is really delicious, and a fun dining experience. You can sit at the bar, or at a table.

The second time I got the spicy Yuen Nan noodle soup. This is so good. It has two kinds of fish balls, noodles, two kinds of hot peppers, all in some kind of spicy soup. Garnished withe fresh cilantro. This is the kind of dish you kill for if you like spicy food. Great stuff. The first time I ate on a $20 comp from the pit, but the second time they wouldn't comp my $10 meal for some reason, even though I did a lot of gaming. Gold Coast is usually pretty good with restaurant comps, so I can't say I know their reasoning. You of course can use your BConnected points at the rate of 600=$1 of dining credit

Ping Pang Pong is a very popular Chinese restaurant that gets good reviews. It is indeed very authentic Chinese food, as far as I can tell. They are almost always busy. We ordered salt-and-pepper frog legs, calamari and fish balls, some kind of Orange Chicken, and salt-and-pepper pork chops. Most of the food was too salty/MSG'ed in my opinion. That's not to say it was bad; just that they could have used less. The frog legs were good and meaty, and freshly fried. Love a good frog. The fish balls were cooked in a really nice broth with cabbage in it. They were good. The chicken and pork chops were just okay, in my opinion. Used my BConnected points to pay for the meal. Would like to go back and try some more selections from the menu; some looked pretty good, like mussels in black bean sauce.

Ate at the Ports of Call Buffet for breakfast on 1/8. I'd seen that it was $6.49 for the breakfast buffet, and since that was half the price of the Rio, we walked next door to try it out. Unfortunately, that is the Monday-Saturday price, and this was a Sunday, so they hit us for $10.99 for 'Sunday Brunch'. Oh well, we were there, slightly hungover, and starving so we paid the price and went in.

Drink service was prompt, but I was disappointed with their lack of juice choices. Only orange or cranberry juice. I had OJ and coffee. We grabbed plates and made our selections. It was almost 11:00 am, but I was not in the mood for anything but breakfast food. They had quite a bit of Asian cuisine out, including sushi & dim sum. Also had a carving station with roast beef, a decent mexican section, and italian. The salad bar was somewhat limited and the fresh fruit part of that left a lot to be desired. Most of the fruit was unappealing, or looked just plain bad. The watermelon slices were the exception, and were very juicy.

I loaded up on bacon, as it was pretty crispy, the way I like it. The scrambled eggs were mostly fluffy and decent, but my 2nd helping was more runny (eww!). Their sausage links were bland and chewy, as was the small breakfast burrito I tried. The limited pastry selection was balanced out by having tasty danish and mini-muffins. They also had a section with pancakes, waffles, and french toast. I tried the french toast, but it wasn't good. My brother opted to try the pancakes and thought they were decent. He also tried the omelette station and liked the results.

I liked the food in general, and thought this would be a pretty good value if it was at the Monday-Saturday price of $6.49. If you are staying at the Rio or Palms, it's probably worth the quick walk over.

Couple things on this last post....

M-F price at GC buffet is a great deal considering what you get. Sunday maybe not so much. I eat here fairly often as I do at the Rio. Rio is 3 times the size and better food though, AND you can get in at Rio at 10:45 paying breakfast price and stay for the lunch changeover, whereas you cannot do this at GC. GC closes down at end of breakfast at 10am for an hour, as does all the Boyd properties.

Something else I don't like about the GC buffet is that all the desserts are behind glass only accessible by the clerk. The clerk even has to put sprinkles on your ice cream, and the customer has no idea WHAT sprinkles are available because they're hidden behind glass 8 feet from us.

Quote: zippyboy

Something else I don't like about the GC buffet is that all the desserts are behind glass only accessible by the clerk.

Desserts are often the most expensive items a buffet
offfers. The tightwad buffets have somebody handing
them out so they don't get wasted. My wife will often take
5 different items and only eat the two she likes while
only taking a test bite from the others. Almost nobody
will ask for 5 desserts if somebody is handing them
out, they're too embarrassed.