The Gambling Gourmet [Kicking Back With Jersey Joe] Jan13

The Gambling Gourmet [Kicking Back With Jersey Joe]

Too hungry to get up from that exciting blackjack game? Can’t stop for even a moment to get a bite to eat during that hot slot session?  The El Cortez Hotel and Casino, one of the nations oldest, has the answer – The Gambling Gourmet. Could this be the next trend in food? I had to give it a try! The El Cortez Hotel and Casino is located at 6th & Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, just one block east of the Fremont Street Experience.  The El Cortez was established before the glittering lights of the Las Vegas Strip. It was opened in 1941 as Vegas’ first casino resort.  The few other gambling halls that had opened downtown in the previous decade featured bare bones games, small restaurants, sawdust floors, and very small (or none at all) hotels, while the El Cortez had 59 rooms to offer. Within a few years of opening, mobsters Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Gus Greenbaum, and Moe Segway would purchase and run the property. A few years after, the previous owner J. Kel Houssels would buy it back, so the mobsters could go on to finance the construction of The Flamingo on the Vegas Strip.  (The money pit of The Flamingo would become cost Siegel his life, as he was gunned down in a mob hit a few years later.) Jackie Gaughan, a rising legend in the gaming world, would purchase the resort a few years later and it stayed in the family until 2009.  To this day, Gaughan still walks the casino floor and talks with visitors about “old Vegas”. The player’s club bears his name. When compared to other casinos in the area, the El Cortez is quite old and a bit run down, but...