Guy Fieri’s Baltimore Kitchen + Bar is a featured eatery at the new Horseshoe Casino adjacent to Ravens Sta- dium on Russell Street.  The place needs pepper mills.

SUNDAY AT RUSSELL ST. DEN OF INIQUITY
NEXT TO RAVENS/M&T BANK STADIUM;
LUNCH AT GUY FIERI’S KITCHEN + BAR

Depriving Md. children of school funds
as coupons and Groupons rule roost
in era of modern ‘No-Armed Bandits’

A DAY AT THE HORSESHOE YIELDS DIVIDENDS
 
By L. Jonathan Hirsch
 
It’s the day after Valentine’s Day and I have no plans.

My neighbor and buddy Al emails that he has a coupon for a free $10 in slots play at the new Horse- shoe Casino in downtown Baltimore and that we can get an additional $20 to gamble simply by signing our lives away.

I’ve never been to the Horseshoe before or even gambled much. Nor have I been willing to succumb to the reality that life in the new millennium seems to be dictated by coupons and Groupons.

I’m sure if there had been Groupons for a free child 10 years ago, I’d be a parent today.

Al also indicated in his email that he had a coupon for 25 percent off at a choice of restaurants in the Horseshoe — one of which is Guy Fieri’s Baltimore Kitchen + Bar.

Guy is the host of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” on the Food Network — food porn, if there is such a thing. I am a big fan of the Guy, who loves everything and everyone, the self-styled “Mayor of Flavortown.”

I was pretty sure that Guy was not going to be in the back of the restaurant whipping up my order, buying me a beer, or waiting on the table next to us, but I thought surely he would have provided his specially trained agents to do his good works.

Nonetheless I’m always up for lunch and hanging at a casino on a lazy Sunday afternoon between holidays. The Presidents’ Day sales shifted into full swing early Monday.

CASINO OFFERS PLENTY OF FREE PARKING

Although the Horseshoe is surrounded by M&T Bank Stadium’s parking lots — pricey places to put your car for just a few hours during a Ravens football game — the casino offers plenty of free parking. You can’t underestimate the importance of this.

It’s 11 degrees outside on this sunny February Sunday. If I know I don’t have to pay to park close to the slot machines — and of course Guy Fieri’s — I’m in a better mood.

Al directs me to the fourth deck of the huge parking garage. He thinks that’s closest to the casino, although his memory is one floor off the mark: the entrance is actually on the third-floor level.

So we get up there and it’s unclear where to go. However I have faith that the management of the casino will direct us to the slot machines in due time.

I prove to be correct.

To get everything I have coming to me, I get in line at the Horseshoe’s Total Rewards club desk. All I need to show them is my driver’s license, and give an email address.

Al wonders if they will use the email address and all the personal info that goes with it, along with the driver’s license, to market to us and send us coupons, possibly with additional free slot-machine credits that we can “launder” into cash?

I have never been more sure of anything in my life. (About the marketing, that is, not necessarily about the launderable cash.)

ANY SHMOE OFF THE STREET

Our signup not only gives us the coupon value of $10, but any shmoe off the street gets $20 in slots credit just for registering his or her life history with Horseshoe/Caesar’s Entertainment Corporation (formerly Harrah’s Entertainment).

I’ve now got $30 in house money to blow. They know a High-Roller when they see one, don’t they?

Still, the Horseshoe lacks the gaudy over-the-top atmosphere of the Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos, even the Maryland Live! Casino in Arundel Mills, many of which feature specific themes and showgirl costumes.

Horseshoe’s somewhat laid-back atmosphere seems more in tune with what we’re told is “gaming,” as opposed to the harsher-sounding “gambling.”

For most of us, “gaming” means “having fun,” whereas “gambling” means “risking the loss of money.” It’s a subtle “sell” by the casino and the State of Maryland, which also likes to use the term “gaming” in reference to the State Lottery, by which our government’s elected and appointed officials encourage citizens to gamble their life’s savings for a chance at pie in the sky.

So we hit our first machine. The way these things now work is that coins are of a bygone era — only bills and plastic can be entered into what used to be known as the “One-Armed Bandit.”

But even that nickname has fallen by the wayside: Few of today’s slots have a lever attached at the side that you can pull down to activate the roll of your proverbial dice. Most have buttons only, not arms.

COINS NO LONGER DROP DOWN WHEN YOU WIN

Nor will you get the thrill of having tons of coins drop down when you win big, or even a few nickels when the machine rewards you with a partial line of cherries. Which of course don’t actually exist on very many of the machines anymore either.

(Al says he remembers when a casino assistant would rush over to your machine with a large bucket to catch the coins and keep them from splattering onto the casino floor, to prevent nearby patrons from filching your winnings.)

Dollars are stored on a debit card which you put into whichever machine you play. It transfers money in increments that it alone decides on and gives you the option to accept its terms or not play.

The different machines have differing transfer amounts and minimum bets. However I don’t really care about that this day because I’m playing with house money.

So we create a new game: It’s called, “How to Convert Horseshoe Casino Promotional Funds into Jon and Al’s Money” — a/k/a “Legal Laundering of Cash.”

See, this debit card which was pre-loaded with $30 in casino credits can’t be redeemed: only winnings can be converted into currency. So every winning spin must be cashed out immediately or the machine will continue playing with your winnings until there’s nothing left.

ON ONE SPIN ‘I WON 40 CENTS!’

On one of the spins I won 40 cents! On another, a dollar-twenty. (Big money! you say facetiously. However it’s certainly better than losing!)

I put all the little strips of bar-coded vouchers into my pants pocket. Yayyy, I get the flashing lights and music from the machine. I turn it up (you really can!) I’m a High-Roller, baby!

Lunch time and we make our way to Guy Fieri’s Baltimore Kitchen + Bar. (High-Rollers get hungry too, ya know!)

Place has a very friendly staff, I expected that. I mean, would Guy ever put his name on a place with surly help? I know what I want because I scoped the menu online the night before.

We end up splitting a $14 order of B-More Fries and each getting a Caesar salad. The fries are waffle cut with crab dip on top. They are dusted with green onion which I asked our server to leave off, but Al and I are salivating for this carb-fest and can’t wait for a re-do.

The salads arrive by kitchen runner who insists on dropping them in front of us without regard to the unfinished appetizer that we are still working on. Worse yet, they broke the “First Commandment of Salad-Serving”: Any restaurant that offers a Caesar salad as an entrée must, by law, have a pepper mill on standby.

Freakin’ Guy Fieri knows this like the Amish know the horse and buggy!

Guy Fieri, the self-styled “Mayor of Flavortown” and flamboyant host of “Diners, Drive- Ins, and Dives” on the Food Network.  His Horseshoe Casino restaurant, next door to Ravens Stadium, lacks pepper mills, a breach of First Commandment of Salad-Serving.

Guy needs to get on over to Williams-Sonoma and pick up a few pepper mills to drop at the Horseshoe location with his name on it. Plus he may need to coach-up the staff on how this “serving food to people thing” works.

Show ’em how it’s done, Guy, then give ‘em a fist bump and roll-out to another town on Triple-D.

We hung in Guy’s talking for a while, then it was back to the task of turning casino- scrip into Jon and Al’s currency.

We tried half a dozen machines with themes such as “Island Princess” and Greek gods. Ultimately I returned to draw poker in the back of the casino, where a pair of Jacks is a draw/winner, and each time I cashed-out everything I could before exhausting my credits.

Time to cash-in my chips! All the little strips of bar-coded vouchers in my pants pocket were exchanged for the munificent total of $26.84. Pretty much what you would expect, statistically speaking, from even-money betting.

Thirty dollars in casino-scrip converted into nearly $27 in cold hard cash. A loser if you’re spending your own money, but a sure winner when the stake is the casino’s.

I split the money with my “spiritual adviser” Al. We both felt appropriately bad about depriving Maryland schoolchildren of education funds. (The bulk of Maryland slot machine profits are earmarked by state law for education.)

Sure we each dropped $21 at Guy Fieri’s — we split the check — which was $46 before the 25 percent discount and generous tip for our delightful server. (Too bad her assistants weren’t as competent and cheerful.)

‘WE ATE THERE OUT OF ADMIRATION’

But we ate there out of admiration. I’d go back to Guy’s anytime, he is the Mayor of Flavortown after all!

On the way home we ran into our server at the convenience store across Russell Street. She was spending the tip we gave her, to buy cigarettes and food.

Quite sensibly she used it for purchases of necessity — who says cigarettes aren’t a necessity?! — instead of blowing it on the slots. Which would have provided some element of poetic justice for the casino that so generously funded our high-stakes gambling afternoon.

As for future Sunday gaming excursions:  With the right coupon (read: “house money for me and Al to ‘launder’”), I’d go back anytime to the Horseshoe Casino and its plentiful free parking.

But first, I’d contact Guy Fieri and tell him to buy some pepper mills.
 
jonhirsch@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
VoB Managing Editor Alan Z. Forman contributed to this report.
 
EDITOR’S NOTE:  Jon Hirsch is a former Baltimore property manager and Ravens fan who knows better than to invest his own money in casino “gaming.”  This is his initial contribution to Voice of Baltimore.