Buffets are as large a part of coastal casinos as slot machines, player clubs, and blackjack tables. Every day, thousands of people pay cheap prices to eat egg rolls, crab legs, hush dogs, or chocolate chip cookies as much as possible.

Nearly 22 percent of people who visit Boomtown in Biloxi said they came to the casino for a buffet. The percentage of people who answered that they were coming to the Back Bay casino came in second place with 19 percent. "It's our only amenities," Soldo said. "We have no hotel, no spa."

Ranked the best buffet in South America by Sun Herald readers for the third year in a row, Boomtown serves between 65 and 70,000 customers per month at the buffet. Free meals account for 26 percent of business. Despite the number of customers paying between $5.99 and $12.99 per meal, Boomtown Buffet is a break-even operation that pays for food and for 86 chefs and chefs. "We make a living in empty spaces," Soldo said. "The food is just a chauffeur. And the chauffeur is related to gambling money."

Casinos are willing to break the balance or accept small profits because buffets are the key to attracting slot players, who make up the majority of their gambling income. This has led to continued competition for casinos to upgrade their buffets and offer more food and cooking stations for customers to order dishes.

These upgrades aren't cheap. In April 2001, Biloxi's Vorizi expanded The Buffet at a cost of $8 million. This spring, Capri Island in Biloxi renovated and improved Calypso's Buffet at a cost of $2.2 million. And once the casino has made any kind of improvement, competitors are waiting to copy what's working.

"Like everyone else, we visit different casinos to see what our competitors cook," said Scott Hickson, Calypso's manager. "There's a really nice get-together with chefs and restaurant managers who always check in with each other. They'll bring their family out to different buffets." 슬롯머신

Buffet costs range between $2.99 for some breakfast specials to $14.99 for some seafood-heavy smorgasbords. In comparison, a lunch of blackened tilapia with a salad, side orders of rice casserole, turnip greens and a roll, with lemonade and cheesecake costs $11.96 with tax at Piccadilly Cafeteria in Edgewater Mall in Biloxi.

Despite the apparent price disadvantage, business at casual dining restaurants on the Coast is still solid.

"We don't really worry about the casinos," said Mike Sattley, general manager of O'Charley's in Biloxi. "A lot of people come to casinos to gamble and make one trip over here. As long as they make one trip here, we're happy." Sattley said casino buffets are just another dining choice for Coast residents.

"Sometimes you want KFC, sometimes you want Taco Bell, sometimes you want to go in a restaurant and be waited on," he said. "I see a lot of people I play cards with at the casinos in our restaurant."

The sheer volume of diners at casino buffets is staggering. About 115,000 people eat each month at Grand Casino Biloxi's two buffets, far more than enough to fill up all the seats in the Superdome and Hattiesburg's M.M. Roberts Stadium.

Before going to work as the manager at Calypso's, Hixson worked at Montana's, the family buffet restaurant off U.S. 49 in Gulfport. "When we would have 700 to 800 guests a night there, we were blown out," he said. At Calypso's the average number of nightly guests is higher than that, Hixson said.

To fill up that many hungry guests, it obviously takes a lot of food. The Buffet at Beau Rivage, recently named by Casino Player magazine readers as the best on the Coast, spends about $700,000 a month on food, said George Goldhoff, vice president of food and beverage.

"In many cases, we buy from local vendors," Goldhoff said, noting that the casino buys tons of food every month from Desporte's Bakery, Quality Seafood and Gulf Coast Produce.

Every day, chefs and cooks spend hours baking, frying, sautéing, grilling - every style of food preparation known to humanity. In one kitchen, they produce volumes of food comparable to what the Gulfport School District makes at its 10 schools.

The cooking is an all-day process. At breakfast, cooks are preparing items for lunch. During lunch, cooks are working on dinner. The staggered, assembly-line pace is necessary to keep up with customer demand.

"If we didn't do it in advance, we would never be able to get any food out," said Mike Legge, executive chef at Boomtown, on a recent Friday afternoon.

It was just after 3 p.m. and cooks were busy boiling crab claws and preparing pans of pasta shells and green beans for the steamer. Racks of bread were ready to go into the ovens.

And then there's the matter of all the dirty plates, bowls, glasses and utensils. Frank Burgess, food and beverage director for Casino Magic Biloxi, said on an average day, the buffet has to wash 4,200 dinner plates and side dishes.

"We have a dishwasher that doesn't stop," said Boomtown's Soldo. "We stop it every two hours to drain and clean it, but that's it.