the gold coast is good.

The Gold Coast opened at the end of 1986, less than a year before I arrived in Vegas. I doubt I'm alone in being surprised at that date; I'm sure lots of people thought it has been around a lot longer than that. This is because it is so consistently popular among locals. The Gold Coast really is the epitome of the locals' casino, the standard long before Station Casinos blew the whole thing up with super swanky suburban joints. I don't remember a whole lot about life as a sixth-grader, but I do recall going to the Gold Coast buffet with my family (My father had rather odd tastes when it came to choosing which buffet or coffee shop was worth regular visitation. He was a fan of places like this, the Village Pub in Desert Shores, the Sunshine Cafe on Vegas and Decatur, and the Rio coffee shop. Why? No one knows.) and occasionally bowling here as well.

It's very different now. The buffet isn't in the same place in the casino. But the casino looks exactly the same as it did through my 11-year-old eyes. In fact, the Gold Coast is keeping it real on a level you're not going to see very much anymore in Vegas. It's old school in here, right down to a spacious, red-and-gold, boothed-out casino lounge with drink specials, free bands and karaoke on Mondays. Check out the leather chairs in the casino bar between Ping Pang Pong and the Cortez Room. It feels like you're having a drink in Casino, waiting for Joe Pesci to come through and slap somebody.

Nostalgia is not the only reason to visit. I came to grab a quick lunch of sweet and sour braised shrimp, glistening and delicious fried rice and above average egg flower soup at Noodle Exchange, which, like the dim sum haven Ping Pang Pong a few steps away, is owned and operated by Kevin Wu, who knows what he is doing. (He also does Noodle Asia, at the Venetian, in case you are wondering.) These two restaurants are always full of local diners, mostly Asian, and serve food much better than you would suspect.

If you're new, you might not remember, but the Gaughan family used to run Coast Casinos, before Boyd Gaming came in and basically fucked them all up. For some reason, and I'm guessing it's Gaughan-related, there was always good Chinese food to be had at Coast properties. (Of course, Chinatown is very close to the Gold Coast, but these two restaurants give the neighbors a run for their money.) If there wasn't an Asian restaurant on property, you could go to the coffee shop and they'd have a full-on Chinese menu. The cafe here at Gold Coast was a great example. But now they've gone the corporate route with a TGI Friday's, which took over that space. The classic steakhouse, the Cortez Room, also is in a new location, where the Arriva Italian restaurant used to be (over by that cool bar).

What I'm saying is, I'm going to eat great Chinese food and drink cheap beer or whiskey at this old-school bar, and I'm going to like it. And if I can't make it out of the building, at least the rooms are super cheap.