Zippy's Las Vegas

Critic's Review

Zippy's is a popular diner concept from Hawaii; their first mainland restaurant has opened in Las Vegas. They hype around this place is massive; on opening day they had a long out the door and wrapped around the sidewalk.

Hawaiin food isn't interesting to me; I've never been impressed with Hawaiian BBQs or Poke bowls. But I wanted to try the place so I wandered in a couple of weeks later when I had to go to Whole Foods Market for something.

There are 2 separate areas inside; a Dine In dining room is to the right.

To the left is take out. No waiting today. I orders the trademark chili with rice and a small Portuguese bean soup; another one of their hyped items. I'm not paying for Spam.

The waiting area is like a bus station with all kinds of characters waiting for their balls of rice.

The take out window has a hard to read board above with the names of people who's orders are ready. They ask for your first name and last initial when you place the order.

While waiting I checked out the outside space. I thought there were taking applications with the laptops. Not sure what's going on out there but it didn't seem very popular. People with masks still crack me up.

They guy asked if I wanted condiments, and I said I needed a spoon. "It's in the bag". So when I got out to my car I wanted to taste the stuff while it was hot.

First, the tops were not tight on the containers and some of the goopy soup had already spilled. When I went to grap it I got it on my hand; of course there were no napkins in the bad. And also no spoon. I had some napkins but I had to go back in to get a spoon.

First I tasted the soup. Bah. Bland, goopy. This is what you get when you order the chicken parm in a pizzeria and they give you a cup of soup. Big chunks of cabbage. no real taste. I added some salt when I got home but I ended up throwing this away.

I tasted the chili and I also wasn't impressed. I was OK, but not really all that tasty and no spice at all. The rice has a little flavor but nothing that all that interesting.

When I got home I microwaved it and it heated up nicely, but there was really nothing distinctive about it.

Conclusion

Growing up on Long Island I've eaten at a lot of diners, and this place is nothing like them. They have a lot of weird food and their signature chili is totally unmemorable. It's the kind of place where if I worked next door I'd stop in for fuel once in a while, but I'll never be going out of my way to come here again. In fact next time I'm out this way I'm more likely to go to Eggworks down the block.