The midnight buffet was one of the defining experiences of the Las Vegas Strip, but where did that begin?
The strongest evidence credits El Rancho Vegas’ midnight Chuck Wagon, introduced in November 1946.1 While it was not the first buffet or self-service meal offered in Southern Nevada, it appears to have been the first to establish the buffet as a recurring late-night attraction for casino patrons. It popularized the Las Vegas buffet.
“Las Vegas officialdom and ‘cafe society’ turned out en masse last evening to attend the gigantic opening of the new Chuck Wagon service at El Rancho Vegas ... the ‘chuck wagon’ will be a regular nightly feature of El Rancho’s entertainment and will be served from 1 o’clock in the morning until 4. Starting at 4 o’clock, a savory breakfast will be served ‘on the house’ until 6 o’clock.”
— Las Vegas Review-Journal, November 21, 1946
The newspaper coverage did not attribute the idea to any individual. Decades later, however, El Rancho publicist Herb McDonald recalled creating the concept after repeatedly getting hungry during late-night shifts.
“About three nights in a row, I was working a late shift and I was hungry. So I went to the bar and brought out some cheeses and other things to a hidden area near the bar. Some customers saw it and said, ‘Gee, I would like some of that.’ And I started a midnight buffet.”2
Like many recollections recorded decades after the fact, McDonald’s story cannot be independently verified. McDonald was a longtime Las Vegas publicist whose profession naturally involved promoting both the hotel industry and, at times, his own role in its history. No contemporary newspaper accounts credited him with creating the Chuck Wagon, but his account remains one of the earliest first-person claims.
Earlier Buffets
Hotel Last Frontier advertised a weekend midnight “snack bar” for guests beginning in 1943.3 Smaller club El Rancho Dio across the road from Last Frontier regularly promoted “buffet” service during 1944 and 1945.4 In Henderson, the Swanky Club offered “smorgasbord” in 1946.5
Historian Hal Rothman, in Neon Metropolis, offered yet another origin story. He credited Davie Berman, manager of the El Cortez, and chef Nat Hart with assembling a late-night spread for train passengers around 1945:
“Berman wanted to offer them some kind of meal. Hart whipped up what anyone from an American city would have recognized as a Jewish feast... When the people got off the train, they stormed the table, and a Las Vegas tradition, the buffet, was born.”6
Like McDonald’s recollection, this account was published decades after the events it describes and is difficult to corroborate.
Another frequently repeated claim credits El Rancho Vegas owner Beldon Katleman with creating the buffet through the Buckaroo Buffet. The chronology makes this unlikely. Katleman did not become associated with El Rancho until the 1950s, and the Buckaroo Buffet itself debuted later in 1955.
The buffet was not invented in Las Vegas. Buffet-style dining already existed in Southern Nevada before El Rancho Vegas introduced the Chuck Wagon in November 1946. Food writer Tejal Rao has suggested in The Disappearing Las Vegas Buffets Hold a Mirror to the American Soul, the casino buffet itself may have drawn inspiration from the Swedish smörgåsbord popularized at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair.7 What El Rancho Vegas contributed was something different: it transformed the buffet into a late-night casino promotion, establishing a model that would spread across the Strip and become one of the city's defining traditions.
W. Williams. Chuck Wagon: El Rancho Inaugurates New Feature. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11/21/1946
Herb McDonald: LV’s Promoter Extraordinaire. The Nevadan, 1/3/1982
Hotel Last Frontier, adv. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 3/5/43, p. 2
El Rancho Dio, adv. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 9/30/44, p.4
Swanky Club: Introduced First Chuck Wagon in Clark County. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 10/31/1964
Hal Rothman, Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 120
Tejal Rao. "The Disappearing Las Vegas Buffets Hold a Mirror to the American Soul." The New York Times, July 7, 2026.