James A.
Yelp
Located in the new Durango Casino and Resort that is the only game in the area (about 5 miles west of the Strip in Las Vegas), 'Eat Your Heart Out Food Hall' is a great rendition of the food hall idea that has all become the rage. My brother and his friend were staying at the Durango and had gotten food credits, so my wife and I got the opportunity to try a variety of different cuisines with them for lunch on two separate instances.
The concept is similar to the much more advertised 'Famous Food' Hall in the Resort World complex on the Strip, but we all thought it had much better food for lower prices. It has about 25,000 square feet of space, with a colorful bar (DRNK) in the center, a lot of seating space all around, and various restaurants surrounding it (with some of the restaurants having their own private seating). It has a good website that one can browse ahead to see what is available. It is just off the Casino floor, and I didn't notice anybody smoking in the dining area (Durango, like all other casinos in Vegas, allow smoking, but we didn't feel it was too strong in the places we hung around).
For lunch on a Thursday, we got different dishes from the following restaurants:
-- Oyster Bar - open 24 hours
-- Prince Street Pizza
-- Ai Pono Cafe
-- Shang Artisan Noodle
-- Nielsen's Frozen Custard
One thing I noticed is that each restaurant seems to be individually operated with their own employees and system. This was very different than the other food halls we went to around Vegas, where one operator seemed to be operating the same restaurant across the different stalls, just with different cuisines. It also means there is no central retrieval system: it got pretty backed up during lunchtime, and none of the restaurants gave out pagers to let us know when ready. This was not a great experience since one of us had to be constantly checking to see when our food was ready. For a place like Oyster Bar, where a dish could take 30 minutes or more, it was annoying to eat separately as each dish became available. I also didn't see a public filtered water dispenser...guessing some restaurants give out free water more easily than others.
For lunch on Friday, we came back and got smaller portions from Oyster Bar and Shang Artisan Noodle, our two favorite places in the Hall. And on the final day of his visit, my brother ordered a bunch of pastries from the coffee shop, Vesta, to finish off his total comp. It really went a long way, especially since we didn't use it for any of the finer dining establishments in the casino. It's the best food hall I've been to anywhere, and the prices were very good, compared to all the other places in Vegas. This makes sense since the casino seems to be located and advertised to more local traffic.