Very Disappointing -- Borgata Has Really Gone Downhill…read more
I visited the Borgata buffet over Labor Day weekend with my family of four, and the total was close to $200. Unfortunately, for that price, I honestly felt that we would have been better off going to a regular restaurant with better tasting food.
I hadn't been to the Borgata buffet in a very long time. I remember when it was around $30-$35 per person, and I had much better memories of the food. That's why it was especially disappointing to see how much it seems to have declined.
There were a few highlights. The gelato was very good, and I will say the dessert section seems to have improved. The salmon was probably the standout savory dish. The platanos, waffles, pork ribs, and meatballs were also good. The General Tso's chicken was decent as well.
Unfortunately, those positives were outweighed by the negatives. There wasn't even much of a fruit selection anymore, which was surprising for a buffet at this price point. The sushi rice wasn't prepared properly all mushy and the shrimp cocktail didn't taste particularly fresh. The seasoned shrimp was also far too salty.
The seafood section was particularly disappointing. The clams were so salty that they were essentially inedible, and whoever seasoned the mussels simply did not get the seasoning right. These are not particularly complicated dishes, so it was surprising to see them executed so poorly.
The fried foods were also hit or miss. Some batches looked cooked on the outside, but the shrimp inside were still undercooked and appeared almost raw. Some of the vegetables, such as the zucchini, were noticeably undercooked as well.
The steak was very tough, while the prime rib was extremely bland and lacked flavor. The Chinese section, aside from the General Tso's chicken, was particularly disappointing. The pasta dishes, including the macaroni and cheese over cooked and tasteless w alfredo being was oddly sweet was extremely underwhelming.
And honestly, this is what surprised me most about the entire experience. It's not as though the buffet has an enormous number of dishes that would make it impossible to maintain quality. The selection is relatively limited, and many of the individual dishes are not particularly difficult to prepare. Yet so many of them were either poorly seasoned, undercooked, overcooked, bland, or simply not executed well.
When you have a smaller selection of dishes, you would expect those dishes to be done really well. Instead, it felt like there were only a handful of things that were actually worth eating. That is what made the experience so surprising and disappointing.
Overall, a large majority of the food was simply not good enough to justify going to a buffet. At nearly $200 for four people, I expected significantly better quality and consistency.
What made this experience even more disappointing is that this was my parents' first time staying at the Borgata. Unfortunately, the food experience was poor enough that it actually made them less interested in wanting to stay at the hotel again. When you're spending money on a casino resort, the dining experience is part of the overall experience--and a bad meal can definitely affect whether you want to return.
Borgata used to be one of my favorite places to go in Atlantic City, so I really wanted to like it. But after this visit, I'm not sure I would choose it over newer properties like Hard Rock or Ocean Casino Resort. Those properties may be newer, but at this point, I think I'd rather spend my money there than return to this buffet.
Overall: very disappointing, especially considering the price and what I remember Borgata being like in the past.
