What: Citizens Kitchen and Bar
Website: Click here
Where: 3950 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV, USA
Rating: 
Why:
The casino resorts in Las Vegas can be quite confusing, even (or perhaps especially) when you’re sober and not gambling. Everything is designed to ensure you are forced to walk through noisy flashing light gaming areas before you can find whatever non-gambling thing you are looking for.
But even die-hard gamblers and revellers out to “tear up the town” have to eat – and so these resorts usually do restaurants well. Sometimes you want fine dining, sometimes you want buffet, sometimes you want swift and cheap take away – and sometimes you want comfort food. Tucked away in the middle of the “Restaurants” section of the Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort, Citizens Kitchen and Bar is all about the comfort food.
The venue’s website accurately portrays it as “Serving up breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days a week, 24 hours a day” and having “Carefully crafted menus featuring American comfort food”. It’s a pretty basic promise, and that’s what it delivers on. It’s certainly not health food – don’t come here if you’ve just come from the gym and want a skinny half-strength decaffeinated soy latte with a side of quinoa oats and half a cranberry. However, it’s comfort food and it certainly won’t kill you – you might even really enjoy it.
We attended the restaurant when we had just arrived off the plane in Vegas, tired and a little hungry. That doesn’t normally make for the best setting if you are going to review a place, and we hadn’t deliberately set out to review this venue – but we were hungry, and the service was really good, so we decided “Why not?”.
The restaurant is brightly lit inside with tiled deep green walls adorned with numerous framed pictures. Outside the lighting is slightly dimmer, in line with the lighting of the general casino walkways.
We were greeted at the door and cheerfully ushered to our table outside (it’s all indoors of course, being in a casino, but with many of the casino restaurants, you have outside inside and inside inside – this was outside inside). We had barely sat before being greeted by our waiter for the evening, who was very helpful while at the same time very laid back and casual. If the restaurant served comfort food, he was the comfort waiter – a good combination.
There are separate menus for “Breakfast & Cocktails” (that’s when you know you’re in Vegas), “Lunch, Dinner & Cocktails”, “Late Night” and “Kids menu”, and all offerings are reasonably priced (with the average main dish costing pre-tips around USD$18, or USD$12 on the Kids Menu). Soft drinks are also bottomless.
The Breakfast menu offers all the usuals as well as a selection of “signature” breakfasts. The Lunch & Dinner menu offers a range of appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, burgers plus larger “signature” dishes including steaks, fish and chips, meatloaf and a number of other American favourites, supported by a good variety of sides.
A selection of USD$9 desserts is also available plus the day’s selection of cakes and pastries. There is also an impressive selection of cocktails, beers and other assorted beverages.
Whatever your state of mind, wealth, gaming success or sobriety, if you’re in search of tasty comfort food delivered with good service, this is a good place to come.
