Vegas used to offer even more as an open city. Not so many years ago, entertainment and food were quite a lot less expensive than today. Show tickets were substantially cheaper, and most casinos offered good food that was so cheap you couldn't believe it. Like a 99 cent breakfast buffet that did omelettes, eggs to order, and offered a seemingly endless line of accouterments including all the fresh fruit you could eat.

Casino dinner offerings tended to be as ridiculously inexpensive, maybe a few dollars at most, free in many cases if you were actively gambling. It wasn't (usually ) haute cuisine, but it was expensive fresh food like dry aged steak, fresh fish, lobster and prawns — well prepared and offered at a steep loss, available to anybody walking by.

There was a business strategy, of course, and over the years the casino owners have figured out that they don't need to offer such tremendous value to tempt people to the strip and to gamble.

But wow, those were the days!