Best & Bad Downtown Vegas Buffets
Downtown Vegas Buffets: Good & Bad!
If you are seeking budget or cheap Vegas buffet options, downtown is certainly a place to find them; these come particularly useful during those expensive times such as Saturday and Sunday Brunch; but downtown Vegas is not known for its delicious buffets (compared to the best Vegas buffets) so, wherever you choose to go in this area, you will need to be prepared for gastronomic compromises. So, what are the Downtown Vegas Buffets options?
If you are on a very tight budget and every dollar counts for you, your options on a weekend (or any expensive day) are the buffet at the Fremont Hotel & Casino (right on Fremont Street and the Main Street Station Buffet; the Golden Nugget’s is relatively affordable too and sometimes much better than the other two, but bear in mind that:
unfortunately at present no Downtown Vegas Buffets are really that good. So, if you absolutely must eat here rather than at some much better yet affordable off-Strip buffet (such as at Palms), then the following is our advice. During the week, the better choice used to be the Golden Nugget, but these days it’s declined in quality and range of dishes so it no longer offers delicacies but rather only basic food, plainly presented. However, the dining area looks and feels elegant, rather bright, airy and comfortable, with many booths (unlike the Main Street Station buffet, for example). Some of the tables overlook the pool area and the overall seating area does feel like a ‘proper’ restaurant, which is very pleasant. If you are lucky to have a great server, you will forget that you are in an all-you-can-eat. 
Unfortunately we have lately found the choices to be so limiting that the only way to really enjoy the Golden Nugget buffet would be if each dish offered were of great quality. However, since it’s average at best, you’ll find yourself going round and round wondering why you went there in the first place. Main Street Station and Fremont are the places where you’ll have to go if you want a cheap buffet during the weekend in downtown Vegas; both have severely declined in quality, unfortunately. We also have a page dedicated to the Main Street Station buffet at to the Fremont Buffet giving you details (the good and the bad), hours and prices.
Occasionally we receive a comment from someone who just came from the Golden Nugget buffet or even Main Street Station buffet stating that it was a good experience overall; it can be, especially on those special celebration days where management makes an effort with the menu to attract visitors who simply can’t or won’t pay the extortionate Strip buffet prices. On a ‘regular’ day, though, even on a regular weekend, it can be sad for those who actually like food to be good.
For full details, a full review and hours and prices of the buffet at the Fremont Hotel & Casino, in downtown Vegas right on Fremont Street, go to the Fremont Buffet Vegas page.
The buffets belonging to the Be Connected group in Vegas (Fremont, Main Street, Gold Coast, Orleans etc) however, are not that good if you care about quality and variety, perhaps the Orleans being a mild exception. Maybe Main Street is still worth a visit for historical purposes, as I mentioned on the page on Main Street Buffet), but it seems that downtown Vegas has forgotten what a good buffet is all about and decided that its visitors only want cheap without quality nor significant options.
DOWNTOWN VEGAS BUFFETS ALTERNATIVES
If are staying downtown and you wish a bit of variety in terms of buffet choices, you can always hop onto the Deuce, which starts its route at one end of Fremont Street (very convenient!), close to El Cortez and go to the Stratosphere buffet: it’s still basic but, for a few dollars more, it’s slightly better than most downtown Vegas buffets. However, if you have a car, your best cheap buffet options are without a doubt, the delicious, huge and very affordable Studio B at the beautiful M Resort (very affordable on weekdays), the super affordable yet good Red Rock buffet and the super cheap yet very good Palms buffet. If you click on the underlined words, you can access our dedicated pages on these great yet budget buffets and links to our latest videos of them.
There are other cheap meal options downtown, of course besides Downtown Vegas Buffets or the much better budget buffets we’re mentioning. A good, healthy one is a foot-long Subway sub, which you can buy until midnight (on some weekend nights it’s 24 hours) inside the El Cortez casino; it’s good quality and it offers free drinks refills, as well as 5 dollars foot-long subs (which may not sound like much to US residents, but to Canadians – for example – it’s a very good deal!
Is downtown Vegas safe?
It’s perfectly safe if you stay exactly on the tourist routes and the hotels and casino areas (so basically on Fremont Street until El Cortez, so to speak. In fact, it’s extremely crowded in the evening, very lively, so the atmosphere is cheerful and ‘fun’, all for a fraction of the price of what you can get on the much more expensive Strip. We have an array of videos on downtown Vegas as well as its buffets. You can find them on this website and on my youtube channel ‘jules at top-buffet.com’; don’t hesitate to ask me any questions or make any comments (as long as it’s related to the subjects dealt in this website)