Now That Buffets Are Open, What Are They Doing To Keep Us Safe From COVID-19?
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Las Vegas' reopening has brought buffets back into our lives, though many didn't survive. Here's what they're doing differently now.
When COVID-19 shut the world down in March 2020, none of us could envision a post-pandemic era and we didn’t quite know if pre-pandemic features like self-serve buffets would become obsolete. More than a year later, the world is slowly reopening, variants be damned (unfortunately, Nevada is now seeing the highest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the United States). Restaurants allow full capacity. People have shed their masks. Cruises are sailing, albeit with restrictions. And as Patton Oswalt predicted to Conan O’Brien, self-serve buffets have returned to their glory — though they look slightly different. Grand all-you-can-stuff-on-your-plate buffets have always been equated with Las Vegas, and last March, as many as 60 Vegas buffets temporarily closed. A handful reopened last summer only to temporarily shutter again. (Station Casinos said it’s permanently closing its buffets.) In June 2020, The Buffet at Wynn became the first casino buffet to reopen on the Strip, but it closed again in September. But on July 1, 2021, it joined seven other casino buffets — Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace, Garden Buffet at South Point Hotel Casino and Spa, Wicked Spoon at Cosmopolitan, Circus Buffet at Circus Circus, MGM Grand Buffet, The Buffet at Bellagio and The Buffet at Excalibur — in reemerging after a long slumber.More Related News