Friday, Jan 8th, 2010

Seafood Smorg at the Potrero Canyon Buffet inside the Morongo Casino

Drove just 25 minutes to go to the smorg in the Morongo casino (we heard about it from other Rv'ers). WOW..... Can't say I have ever seen such a huge venue for $19.95 and all the seafood you could eat! The buffett was HUGE (for those of you back home, this buffet took in the entire area of Quality Foods, in Comox, from the Bread Section over to the till & more)....it is huge.
Everything from steamed prawns, mussels, snow crab (the highlight on everyone's list), then there are things like crawfish, catfish, calamari, breaded sole, caper chicken, stir fried everything (they do it right there - you pick what you want & they saute it there), baron of beef, turkey dinner, lox, sushi, salads of every kind .... on and on and on.

The Morongo has 27 floors; the Cielo hosts an entire floor of restaurant and bar with booths surrounding the glass picture windows at the top. The hallway is lined with masterpiece paintings, including Renoir and VanGogh.

We are not into gambling but watched a bit; the Morongo is Indian owned so they are 'allowed' to offer electronic gaming, including roulette (we watched digitalized roulette) and 'real' blackjack (21 card count). In California, they offer "card rooms" for those areas that are not allowed to call 'casinos.' Blackjack will often be played to 22, instead of 21. Players must pay a commission to the house on every hand they play (if not classified as a 'casino') - 2-5% of the total amount bet.

No idea just how much money was changing hands (I'm sure we would be shocked - especially at the craps tables). One blackjack table the bets started at $10 up to $500 each hand. Interesting but we still aren't tempted - don't think we could handle losing our $20.00 bills so quickly and nothing to show for it. Rather go by shoes!