U.S./CANADA
PECHANGA RESORT AND CASINO, Temecula, California
Jana M. Jones, NBC 17 Travel Expert
PAGE SIX
We didn't get the opportunity to check out the other restaurants, which include fine-dining seafood and fish at The Grotto, Northern Italian cuisine at Paisano's, Asian dishes at Blazing Noodles and the 24-hour coffee shop, Pechanga Café. Between our family dinner at The Great Oak, our room service breakfast and our two forays to the hotel's buffet, we didn't go hungry, either.
The Eagle's Nest, a lounge on the top floor of the hotel, offers jazz on Sunday nights and other performers Wednesday through Saturday. An outside patio overlooking the valley and the mountains is awesome when the weather is nice.
The Cabaret, located within the casino, is a great spot to try your hand at karaoke or enjoy musical performances while the professional Showroom and Perfomance Theatre showcases acts as diverse as Styx, George Jones and Julio Iglesias. The resort also has a 3,000 seat venue used for live televised boxing matches.
The hotel has a great deal of space for meetings and conferences and is an ideal venue for business conventions. There is a full-service business center. All guestrooms have high-speed Internet service, offered free of charge (which impressed and delighted me.) If your laptop doesn't have a LAN card you can rent one from the business center for a small fee.
Considering its location, this really IS an ideal destination resort, close to San Diego County beaches, the Del Mar Racetrack, the Wild Animal Park, and even Disneyland. Wineries and golf courses surround the resort, antique stores line the streets of Old Town Temecula, and on weekends there are open markets and craft fairs. It's a shame that there are no concessions for families, not even a video arcade for teens, although the resort has contracted with a child-care service that is available on request.
Needless to say, I will surely go back to Pechanga the next time I visit southern California. I like Las Vegas casinos, but the slower pace of this community, the ease of getting there, and the proximity to my family makes this a wonderful choice for me. Maybe next time I'll be one of the people winning a jackpot on a 25-cent slot machine, or maybe I'll find a spot at one of the $5 blackjack tables, or maybe... maybe... my daughter and I will have another Swedish massage and just sit around in the sauna for awhile.
RESTAURANTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
We took advantage of the hotel buffet on our last two nights. What large casino hotel would be complete without a buffet? This one was interesting because it featured several Asian dishes that we had never seen in buffet lines before, things like Pud Thai and Larb salad (oddly called "Lab" for some reason) which is a Thai concoction of ground chicken mixed with lime and mint --one of my favorites. There were some pasta dishes, a couple of carving stations, a couple of Mexican entrées and two salad stations. The salads were where the buffet really shines: Piles of fresh fruit, vegetables, olives, Mediterranean items, Asian items, all fresh and appealing. The desserts were mostly uninspired, with a very few exceptions. 
SUMMING UP
Pechanga Resort and Casino has earned every one of its four stars. The staff is friendly and engaging, always ready to assist. The rooms are large, lovely, beautifully appointed.
Room service is excellent as are the other dining venues we tried. The casino is great fun, a real Las Vegas alternative despite the lack of dice games. (While I wouldn't say the slots are "loose," we did play longer on our allotted stake than we have in Vegas over the past few years, and --while we didn't win any jackpots-- it seemed like everyone around us did.) Table games started at $5, but it was almost impossible to find a $5 table, especially when the casino was crowded. There was just one for blackjack, and that was stacked with people waiting for a seat.
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