I went to Jerry's Nugget tonight for a prime rib dinner. I'm not really fond of the location and neighborhood, so I elected to try it for dinner while it's still light outside at dinner time. I am glad that I made that decision because afterwards I was checking out other landmarks in that part of town, and as it got dark, I was seeing more and more undesirable elements.

The coffee shop is near the valet entrance, so it is an easy in and out if you use that. It's a pretty good coffee shop that is popular for big and tasty desserts. I've found the coffee shop to be relatively friendly and have pretty good food.

I picked the medium size cut of prime rib for my dinner. It was labeled on the menu as the "thick" cut, and costs $16. There is a "double cut" for about $33 and there is a smaller cut. The meal comes with soup or salad and choice of potato and a hunk of garlic bread.

I had a salad for starters. It was kinda basic with lettuce and tomatoes. I could tell that it was not a bagged salad like so many other coffee shops use. It was not fancy at all. It was pretty fresh and a good serving.

My prime rib came out and appeared to be a perfect medium rare as ordered. It was a really nice size cut of meat too. It was about a fork and a half in thickness which made it well over an inch thick. It was bigger that most steakhouses version of their largest cut of prime rib. The meat was well seasoned and the heavy black pepper taste was notable on the outside edges.

The meat was pretty tender. It was not fork tender at all. I thought the tenderness was good considering how thick it was. The meat had very good texture as I ate it. The connective tissues between the muscle meat groups was pretty tough. Again, the meat was fine. It was a bone in cut and it was such a big cut that by the time I got close to the bone, I didn't make an attempt to get every last piece of meat. The small plate of fries and garlic bread were somewhat underwhelming but not bad.

I think the final tab was $17.88. That was a lot of bang for the buck. The only thing that kept it from being a great prime rib is that a great prime rib would have layers of fat between the muscle groups that easily pulls off. This meat had tough stringy connective tissue between the meat. That and location are what keep this meal under the radar.

I asked my waitress (Kati) what time they started serving prime rib. She said that they have it 24 hours a day. That little tidbit of info might come in handy for someone with a hankerin' for a prime rib at any hour. Also, for those traveling in groups with someone not fond of prime rib, this coffee shop has a pretty decent menu with a variety of items. You can view it on line or download it to your computer. They also have daily specials that always look very appealing. Their long term promo is a steak and lobster tail dinner for $11. The ones i saw looked decent. Most everything that I have seen coming out of the kitchen look to be pretty good.

A final bit of info. This coffee shop is relatively friendly but they are kinda slow. They aren't in a hurry for anything. Don't go there looking for a quick meal.

Must have been back about 6 years ago but I was playing Poiker with some little, ole, gray haired ladies at one of the smaller poker rooms in town when one of them commented about the great Prime Rib dinner she and her family had at a place called Jerry's Nugget just a bit north of Fremont Street. She claimed that Jerry's served the best and largest portion of roast beef in town.

So I rounded up a couple of friends who are big eaters and we took off in search of Jerry's and found it exactly where is was supposed to be - inside the kind-of-run-down locals' casino just a mile or so north of downtown Las Vegas on the street whose name I presently cannot recall, but might just be North Las Vegas Blvd.

The had $1.00 Blackjack then so we sat at one of the tables and had a couple of pre-dinner highballs and probably won or lost five bucks or so before heading into what looked like a casino coffee shop to see what this prime rib speal was all about.

As we stood in a very short line wating for the waitress to show us to a table (the place was almost completely vacant) we decided to have a bet in which the person who managed to eat the most of what was placed on the plate before us would not have to pay for his own meal.

So with that challenge completely understood we were shown to a vacant table (most all of them were vacant) and grabbed the menu which the waitress placed before our noses and proceed to tell her of the bet that was underway.

She merely laughed and told each of us that none of us would be able to consume at one sitting the largest cut of Prime Rib that Jerry had to offer.

So that was another challenge we had to overcome and each of us ordered the largest cut of prime rib that the coffee shop had to offer and, "Make sure you include all the trimmings!". (Salad, potato, etc.)

So I probably sat back and had a martini or two knowning full well that I was gonna lose this bet but enjoying the fact that I was competing against some pretty big eaters who loved great Prime RIb almost as much as I do.

Maybe three martinis later the entre order arrived and "WOW's! and "Oh-Oh's" were offered to the waitress just because she was strong enough to carry what appeared to be half a cow on that little serving tray.

This was definitely more meat than any of us had ever seen. One plate alone could feed a Christmas or Thanksgiving family gathering.

We attacked out plates and each of us agreed that this meal was among the best Prime RIb meals we'd ever had.

And to cut to the chase ...... only one of us was able to consume his entire dinner and leave his plate clean and spotless except for the bone and small amounts of fat.

His name was Chris and he won and didn't have to reach for his wallet. And to this day, he still wants to go back to Jerry's Nugget and see if they still serve the largest cut of Roast Beef in town or probably anyplace else in the whole darn world.

I was there a couple of months ago and noticed that they had remodeled the restaurant, but they still serve what they claim to be the best and biggest roast beef in a town where roast beef lovers congregate.

It was too early to have a roast beef dinner so I can't claim that it's the same as it used to be a few years back but I can tell you that the price of that fine meal is not the same as it was back then.

But nothing is so what the heck!? I'll be going back in a couple of weeks and Jerry's will be a definite visit.

Thanks for the reminder, JMT!

I've eaten the big one twice. Both times I was much younger.

I do remember eating there once in a quest to find the best prime rib in Las Vegas. I remember Jerry's Nugget rating pretty good, but not one of the tops. Maybe someone from the Prodigy daze can remember how that went.

Was the prime rib good in addition to being oversized?

It was pretty good. It was flavorful. It was dense and had the texture of a good NY steak.

It was NOT fork tender. It was NOT melt in your mouth tender.

There are so many ways to rate a meal in Las Vegas, one would almost need a disclaimer. If you rate a meal in bang for the buck, it rates very high. If you rate food quality without regard to price, it's just above average. If you rate it by comparing it to every other prime rib in town, it is well above average.