Las Vegas (and particularly The Strip) is a place of excess, and sometimes this only translates to excessive prices for subpar food. Yet, if you know where to look, you can find hidden gems much more common than winners in Black Jack. Fat Choy is one of these, located in the classic Eureka Casino, which seems to be a place made only for locals.
Fat Choy is situated in a classic diner and serves up a combination of Asian (mostly Chinese from my perspective) and American food. As much as I love the Asian persuasion, I was only interested in the Fat Choy Burger, which is a half pound, topped with short rib, bacon, a fried egg, cheddar and onion jam. I asked for mine without the onion jam, medium rare and with a side of fries.
When the burger came out, I was a little disappointed to find lettuce and tomato accompanying the good stuff, but I could remove it easily and went to work on the thing. And let me tell you, this was one great burger. The fried egg was the right amount of runny, the bacon was crispy and the short rib was delicious, if somewhat overpowered by the other flavors. Most important, though, was the patty, which had an uneven shape to show off that this wasn’t just some generic patty, yet it still managed to be cooked to a perfect medium rare throughout.
The fries were even great and I admired the fact that there was no attempt to fancy them up. They literally tasted like someone had taken some McDonald’s fries, but applied some actual care to preparing them.
If you can get off of The Strip for a burger while in Vegas, Fat Choy’s is a great way to go. You’ll certainly leave happier than if you stopped at Guy Fieri’s or Gordon Ramsay’s on The Strip.
