All of the casinos around San Diego have different offers and incentives to entice you into their casino to get you to spend money there. My mom is an avid fan (*ahem*) of the casinos and knows pretty much all of the deals. My dad also keeps track of any specials going on and gave me a coupon for Valley View Casino which was good for a $20 dining credit to the restaurants within the casino.
The kicker is that you have to be a Player’s Club Member and you have to go visit the Player’s Club to get the voucher. Jake and I went on a Friday night (don’t be like us) to go and after getting our vouchers, we put our name in at BLD’s. Everyone was trying to go to the buffet and my folks told me that BLD’s was a better option.
We shall see.
After a long ass wait (1 hour+), we were finally called up and then had to sit in another waiting area… but this time we could see inside the restaurant… so yay? Another five minutes… and finally – we get seated!
Took a little while to get some service… but our first thing we got was some free bread.
We like free bread. Especially when it looks like oven mitts?
I seriously didn’t notice the oven mitt thing until now.
The bread was hot and fresh and kept me happy while we waited to order our actual food.
Both of our dinners came with sides – Jake got a cup of Steak & Barley soup with his. He really liked the flavor of this, but to me it was way too rich and concentrated of a flavor for me to like it. Luckily it wasn’t mine!
I got a pretty, pretty salad instead, with some blue cheese dressing on the side. I loved the colors and freshness of this salad – and I loved that there was corn in it! Corn should be in more salads, if you ask me. I love it so.
[soup and half sandwich – $9.99]
Jake actually ordered two things – and this is number one. Half a french dip sandwich (with the soup above, which came out first). I think he asked for french fries and they have him one onion rings along with the fries, which I thought was pretty cool.
Jake’s notes: “Very tender meat, but no flavor. Au jus mostly bland. Big Ass Pickle looked good, decent flavor, but no crunch. French fries not seasoned and not very crunchy.”
[crispy orange peel beef – $10.99]
This is the orange peel beef, Jake’s other dish.
More Jake notes: “Excellent flavor, small portion and too much orange sauce – very rich. Brown rice was a nice way to mix up the flavors.”
[brick chicken – $13.99]
I ordered the Brick Chicken since everything about it sounded awesome: half chicken, wild mushroom bread pudding with a lemon thyme pan sauce.
Also… it looked so impressive!
Alas… it had it faults. The skin… which looks so impressively crispy… was not crispy in any way. Surprising since that’s also what I expect from “brick” chicken. Brick is supposed to be a way to cook the chicken faster and result in a very crispy, juicy chicken… well, it was somewhat juicy anyway.
Another thing was … I did not like the pan sauce. At all. Any part of my food that touched the sauce made me not want to eat it and I ended up picking all around it. The flavor was off and weird. I really should have sent it back, but I was so hungry and it was so hard to get our waitress to come over, that I just didn’t bother.
I’m happy to report though that the wild mushroom bread pudding was fabulous. Especially the parts that didn’t have that weird ass pan sauce on it. It was moist, flavorful and full of mushroom bits. I wish I just had the mushroom bread pudding by itself!
[donut bread pudding – $5.99]
The only other thing that really saved this dinner for me was dessert.
If I see something like “DONUT BREAD PUDDING” on a menu, I just have to order it. It’s a rule or something.
This came out at the perfect temperature – the donuts/pudding was still nice and warm; the donuts still retained a crispy edge; the ice cream was able to slowly melt all over it. It tasted a lot like warm rice pudding… but with donuts! Mmmm.
Overall, I was really happy we had $40 of credit to take off this bill. Gratuity was automatically included in the bill, which didn’t really make us happy either since the service was incredibly slow, but whatever. We paid about $8 for this meal, plus – oh – 2 hours + of our time, plus the drive out to Valley View.
I’m not sure if it was worth it exactly…
but I did get to spend all of that time with this boy, and that made it all worthwhile in the end.
BLD’s (at Valley View Casino)
16300 Nyemii Pass Rd.
Valley Center, CA 92082
