“The Only 24 Hour Buffet On The Strip!” the fascia’s own gilt frame, c. 2004

Eats

Norm Jansen sold 49¢ steak-and-eggs downtown in the fifties and never saw a reason to change the play: feed them cheap, feed them at 2 a.m., and the rest of the money finds its own way to the tables. The Boardwalk fed the whole graveyard shift of the Strip.

A smiling Surf Buffet employee in a white paper hat, shirt and apron raises a gloved hand in a wave beside the restaurant's painted ocean mural of a windsurfer breaking through a wave. — The Surf Buffet's own welcome: a buffet employee before the wall-size windsurfer mural, November 1, 2005. Image: Flickr user 38017946@N00, November 1, 2005 · © the photographer · modern restoration; full details in Credits & Sources

he really worked this room - the wave moves; the 2005 photograph is the source

Surf Buffet host, November 1, 2005 · photo: Flickr user 38017946@N00 · modern wave animation. Full provenance.

First bell: Butterbean, c. 1997

The Bean don’t eat no snooty food.

The Surf Buffet’s TV pitchman was Butterbean - 300-plus pounds of professional heavyweight - and the ad ran until half the town could do the line. The house roasted itself before anybody else had the chance.

Cheap. Open all night. Absolutely not snooty.

The actual Surf Buffet commercial, via YouTube. Nothing loads until you press play.

370 seats upstairs, up the escalator

The Surf Buffet.

Open all night, every night - the only 24-hour buffet on the Strip. Cooked-to-order steak at two in the morning, blue Jell-O with a reputation, bread pudding defended by name - “legendarily bad,” said a regular, fondly - and that impossible wave rolling over all of it.

Surf Buffet tables below a wall-size ocean mural of a windsurfer breaking through a wave, with a planter of tropical flowers along the wood-panelled rail. — The room’s whole personality in one wall: windsurfer, white water, blue umbrellas and bottles of hot sauce. Photo: Flickr user 38017946@N00, Nov. 1, 2005

Smiling Surf Buffet employee in a white paper hat and apron standing in front of the painted wave mural, food-service gloves on both hands. — The man who kept the room moving, November 2005. Photo: Flickr user 38017946@N00

Surf Buffet dining area with pale wooden chairs with blue seats, indoor palms, a rock planter, a small Christmas tree and the DESSERT BAR sign over the serving line. — The dessert bar, indoor palms and carpet doing its level best - tree up for the holidays. Photo: erik_em (Reddit)

Close view of the Surf Buffet windsurfer mural above wood-panelled wainscot, planter flowers and a dining table set with menus and hot-sauce bottles. — No ocean view? Paint one big enough to forget. Photo: Flickr user 38017946@N00, Nov. 1, 2005

$1.29 breakfast, 24 hours $2.99 “world famous” Hobo Stew $5.69 buffet dinner 99¢ doughnuts by the dozen

Prices changed between 1996 and 2006; surviving examples keep their own dates. Credits & Sources carries the complete image history.

Under the chase bulbs

The Deli.

Salamis on the hook, popcorn machine at the end of the counter, castle burgers three for $1.29 1997. Open 24 hours, because somebody was always getting off shift.

Couples split the two-foot hot dog when the bankroll got thin and called it dinner. Nobody left hungry, because hungry cost extra elsewhere.

THE BIG BREAKFAST SPECIALS
chase bulbs included

The Deli stand in 1997: bulb-bordered marquee with painted beach scenes, strings of hanging sausages, a popcorn machine, coffee urns, and a couple eating at a wooden table. — The Deli in 1997, from the casino’s own hiboardwalk.com. Holiday Inn Casino Boardwalk / hiboardwalk.com (1997)

Cyclone Coffee Shop banner, from the seller’s close-up photograph of the surviving wall art.

Holiday Inn years · coffee and bad advice, 24 hours

The Cyclone Coffee Shop.

The Cyclone served the $1.99 breakfast, $5.95 prime rib and $4.95 baby-backs in 1997–98 their menu pages. Dealers off shift, showgirls in sweats, winners buying, losers eating well anyway.

And this actually hung on the wall: a roller coaster full of gamblers, bogus want ads, a banner for “98.6% dollar slots,” and life advice nobody requested.

“Teenagers: tired of being hassled by your stupid parents? Act now! Move out. Get a job. Pay your own bills while you still know everything.”

A framed blue and yellow Cyclone Coffee Shop print photographed behind glass: a Victorian wooden roller coaster crowded with cartoon riders, biplanes and balloons in the sky, joke classified signs on the boardwalk, and a Holiday Inn Casino Boardwalk address sticker at top left. — The surviving Cyclone wall piece, gloriously incapable of minding its own business - signed **Robert Kolar, 1999**, with 3750 Las Vegas Blvd on the sticker. Photographed under glass; the glare is the glass’s, not ours. Image: resale-listing photograph · artwork © Robert Kolar / successors. Full provenance.

Close-up of the Cyclone artwork: a strongman and a shouting man beside a WANTED GOOD WOMAN ad reading Must Be Able To Clean, Cook, Sew, Dig Worms and Clean Fish, Must Have Boat And Motor, Please Send Picture Of Boat And Motor, next to a 5X Odds on Craps sign and a small dog. — “Must have boat and motor. Please send picture of boat and motor.” - the artist’s signature, **Robert Kolar, 1999**, rides the coaster post.

Close-up of the Cyclone artwork: a WANTED GOOD MAN ad reading About 90 years Old, Half Blind, Bad Leg, Good With A Gun, To Watch My Wife While I’m Out Hunting; the TEENAGERS act-now ad; a LOST DOG barrel notice about a three-legged dog named Lucky; and a banner listing Blackjack, Craps, Let it Ride, Bonus, Spanish 21, Roulette and Caribbean Stud. — A wanted ad for a 90-year-old, half-blind bodyguard; a lost dog named “Lucky” with three legs; every table game in the house.

Then the coffee shop put on a dinner jacket

Caffé Boardwalk.

Under the later owners came red-check menu art and an “Italian dinner menu from $9.95” 2002. Same late-night congregation, fancier napkins - and yes, sushi, on a boardwalk, in a desert: Fujiyama, the house sushi-and-Chinese bar, poured until 2 a.m. their 2004 sales kit.