Bellagio offers all-you-can-eat caviar

The Las Vegas all-you-can-eat buffet arms-race has gone thermonuclear: for $37.99, the Bellagio will give you access to its all-you-can-eat caviar buffet, offering "the world’s finest caviars Ikura and Tobiko."

Although buffets are all you can eat, the chefs recommend that customers take the caviar in small bites. To help novices, the chefs serve an appropriate amount on blinis and mini-waffles with traditional accompaniments such as chopped egg, red onions, chives or creme fraiche.
"We do have some people who come up with a bowl and want us to fill it up," Ortiz said. "But we like to respect the integrity of the dish."

Bellagio introduces all-you-can-eat caviar for $37.99 [Ron Sylvester/Las Vegas Sun]

(via Super Punch)

(Image: downsized, cropped thumbnail from a larger photo by Ron Sylvester)

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MORE: Food • gluttony • klassy • not food • vegas

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dawdler

“But we like to respect the integrity of the dish.”

Too late.
bo1n6bo1n6

Anyone else think caviar is WAY overrated? Am I missing something?
- http://twitter.com/LukeSideris Luke Sideris
  
  If you’ve had salmon or flying fish roe like in the picture, you probably had it on sushi. It’s good, but very different from beluga sturgeon or osserta which are typically served on blini with other ingredients to mix with.
  
  The finer grade caviars tase completely different and have a saltier, more complex flavor. They’re very expensive, typically over $100 per ounce. The fish themselves are nearly extinct which adds to the high prices. If you ever have the opportunity you should try beluga caviar before it’s gone forever, it’s very good.
  - LinkMan
    
    Beluga sturgeon are endangered and its eggs are therefore illegal in most countries.
  - http://instantaneousinstances.com/ Spieguh
    
    So you’re saying we should directly contribute to a species’ extinction so we can has a flavor? No thanks.
  - Ty_MY
    
    Go taste whale too, before they’re all gone!
    - http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter
      
      That’s it, starting today, I’m eating every human I can… I mean, we can’t last much longer, not only are we eating endangered species, there are freaky cannibals out there!
      
      I’m not waiting until this taste treat becomes unavailable!
- bcsizemo
  
  I’m this way with lobster…I just don’t care for it.
  - Bradley Robinson
    
    Ditto.
    
    And caviar.
    
    The former has no taste and the other tastes like, well, fish eggs.
    - millie fink
      
      But oh, they’re both expennnnnnnsive!
      
      I think people are eating money when they eat such things. It’s supposed to imply that they’re above or better than other people. Which makes what they’re eating taste better (to them).
      - stegodon
        
        i just like lobster. i’ll boil a lobster and eat it sitting on the couch in my sweats with my dog. no implication, just crustacean.
      - bcsizemo
        
        To me lobster has an almost sour flavor to it, and I’ve tried it several times. It is a similar flavor that scallops have that I don’t like. Crab is alright, but not something I’ll spend money on.
        
        Honestly for me, in terms of seafood, I love some fresh flounder.
      - dawdler
        
        no implication, just crustacean.
        
        You need to sell that tagline to Red Lobster or something. It’s perfect.
      - retchdog
        
        ditto to stegodon. i haven’t eaten lobster in public in years; at restaurants it’s expensive and often part of an over-elaborate dish (done in order to 1. justify the high prices; 2. bulk up the dish with cheaper ingredients).
        
        it just tastes good. i’ve loved it since i was very young. and what about everyone who didn’t eat lobster just because it was what indentured servants got fed? from wikipedia: “… servants specified in employment agreements that they would not eat lobster more than twice per week.”
  - robuluz
    
    Most lobster tastes like dirty dish water. Crab is superior by far, and my personal favourite is the Balmain Bug (which is actually a species of lobster). Very sweet and delicious.
- IamInnocent
  
  Absolutely… truffles though.
- lev36
  
  Caviar is overrated. Get a can of poppy seed pastry filling instead – looks the same on a cracker, but is in fact yummy instead of gross.
Petzl

The words “world’s finest caviars” do not deserve to be next to the words “Ikura and Tobiko.”
- Heartfruit
  
  Or “all-you-can-eat”
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Ikura and Tobiko used to be called fish eggs or fish roe to distinguish them from real caviar from sturgeons. Apparently, Big Roe got a PR consultant.
spacedmonkey

Ikura is great, sujiko is amazing, and tobiko is okay, but none of those are what I would call caviar. I went to an all you can eat ikura-don place once that was amazing, though.
- http://twitter.com/get_snarky get_snarky
  
  I spent a summer in Alaska packing ikura for export to Japan. I was covered in it, and no matter how many times I washed my clothes I could not get that smell out – and ended up tossing them. While I love caviar, I can’t stand ikura. Still. (I brought a box back – 2kgs! – for a friend’s mom who’s from Nagasaki. She and her friends went NUTS. I think I basically gave them $2500 worth of ikura.)
- billstewart
  
  For those of us who don’t eat meat, Ikea has a packaged-like-caviar product made from a black seaweed that’s pretty tasty. It’s not exactly fishy, but it has a salty oceany taste that’s something in the correct direction, and it’s priced like seaweed rather than like caviar.
  - http://redesigned.com redesigned
    
    and it only takes 4 hours with an allen wrench to assemble your dinner. :-)
timquinn

But I can eat cow for weeks and only take one life. This just seems cruel.
- Brainspore
  
  That’s why the only animal I eat is blue whale.
  - timquinn
    
    Why do you get 13 likes for just exaggerating my joke? (Must be timing)
    - Brainspore
      
      I gotta come clean… most other BB users are really just sock puppet accounts I use to give myself extra “likes.”
Bradley Robinson

As if I needed another reason to avoid Las Vegas.
- TWX
  
  Heh. I had sworn off Vegas after a combination of vehicle breakdowns and no obviously open repair shops on a Sunday, finding no slot machines that take coins anymore and that everything now runs on a form of plastic, and the end of the Star Trek Experience. Being able to try something normally hideously expensive for only a ridiculously expensive price actually appeals…
http://jonathan-peterson.com/ Jonathan Peterson

The “American caviar” can be quite good and drastically cheaper than the imported stuff, but calling any of what is on that buffet the “finest” is laughable. Seems like they’re going for the cruise ship, quantity over quality customer.

http://www.kelleyskatch.com
- Romana_Clef
  
  I think that’s implied in the phrase “all-you-can-eat.” It’s impossible to prepare “quality” in enough quantity to satisfy that phrase.
  - LinkMan
    
    I’ve been fortunate enough to eat at a handful of extraordinarily high quality restaurants where the standard prix fixe meal was more than I could possibly eat. And I have a very, very large appetite.
    
    They generally don’t use the phrase “all you can eat” at those places, though. And they charge a little more than $37.99, too.
    - TWX
      
      I have never eaten at one, but I’ve heard of restaurants where the prices are not on the menu. The mentality is that if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford to eat there. I would expect that some restaurants like that will just serve you until you’re sated, or will attempt to judge your appetite and serve you accordingly.
    - blueelm
      
      Almost any multi-course meal is more than I can eat. This is really embarrassing at formal dinners. Luckily, I almost *never* have anything like that in my life anymore!
      
      And now that food is an issue, I really am grateful my days of eating what is prepared regardless of how it makes me feel because it would look bad if I didn’t are behind me.
      - retchdog
        
        I didn’t understand it either until I had a five-course meal in a very nice restaurant off the beaten path in France.
        
        Multi-course meals are supposed to have smallish portions and take hours to eat over relaxing conversation. It’s like combining lunch and dinner and having them both over, say, 5-9pm, preferably with a lot of very good wine.
        
        Of course, it’s more profitable to turn over a table in 40 minutes, and ridiculously large portions offer a greater `value’ to the less discerning, so here we are…
http://www.facebook.com/kamsbry Kelly Amsbry

I just want to sit at the buffet for a few hours and watch people attempt to fill a bowl with caviar. Sounds like tons of amusement. I would like to sketch their portraits and make them into a coffee table book.
http://www.facebook.com/postelwait Cameron Postelwait

christian slater would finally find a home:
http://www.hbo.com/curb-your-enthusiasm/episodes/7/64-the-hot-towel/video/ep-64-larry-on-cancer-and-caviar.html
http://twitter.com/SunShine_K SunShine_K

Hang on…ikura and tobiko as all you can eat caviar?? Hell, Ive been to Korean sushi joints that border on the same thing…make it Beluga or osserta pls.
http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop

“We do have some people who come up with a bowl and want us to fill it up”

That translates to “We do have some people who have never even tasted caviar, but who have heard it’s super-expensive and therefore want to eat it by the quart just because of that fact. This is why other countries hate America.”
http://profile.yahoo.com/KV3PDLBSUEJ3YCGEWYUGDQ664E Leo

Now this… *pointing with fork, chewing with mouth open, black caviar bits on face and bib* … this, is classy, folks.
http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

Fish eggs
Fish eggs
Roly-poly fish eggs
Fish eggs
Fish eggs
Eat them up
Yum!
L_Mariachi

Salmon and flying fish roe are not caviar.
http://pguertin.myopenid.com/ Paul Guertin

Are they also offering all you can eat truffles (both white and brown button mushrooms), foie gras (actually chopped liver), and champagne (ginger ale)?
robuluz

One bucket of delicacies, good Sir! And don’t spare the pomp!
http://redesigned.com redesigned

because MORE is better…ah vegas.
http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

Personally I tend to like flavored whitefish roe more than most of these (truffled whitefish roe is quite tasty). but my favorite is botargo (cured fish roe – usually mullet). A little sliced onto a dish is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

It wasn’t all-you-can-eat, but I once stayed in a Russian hotel that put out large bowls of red caviar for breakfast.

I’m sure I would have enjoyed it if I hadn’t mistaken it for marmalade.
dawdler

I hear they’re installing vomitoriums at some of the larger buffets in Vegas.

Little do they know that vomitoriums apparently never existed. It’s perfect that Vegas is, in fact, inventing them.
- Deadmeat
  
  Well technically they did/do exist, but not for vomiting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomitorium
  - dawdler
    
    Gives new meaning to the phrase “people spewing out of the exit”.