Vine-ripened tomatoes in the Caprese salad, usually a mealy and flavorless mess this time of year, were brightened up and given added depth by the addition of a well-balanced pesto and a Port reduction that brought to mind the more traditional balsamic but tweaked the formula just enough to make it interesting. There are witty touches throughout the menu that evidence a confidence-building attention to detail in the kitchen. And the flavors, as one guest at my table noted, were every bit as good as they are at certain well-known steak houses, though here at generally far more reasonable prices. That aesthetic, in fact, is echoed in the presentations of the dishes, which tend toward the simple and clean with an occasional flourish for visual interest. Parx Grill itself, the casino’s high-end steak house, is just as visually stunning, its cavernous- industrial shell brightened up-and given a touch of unexpected warmth-by shimmering modern chandeliers and a hearth’s fire projected on the far wall.

It ain’t Monte Carlo, but it’s a heck of scene right here in our own backyard, far more shiny than anything most of us had come to expect in this decidedly un-glitzy corner of Bucks.

The chameleon-like color changes and sculptural detail of the casino’s facade, the incessant ringing and bleeping of the slots, the wall of cigarette smoke that greets you like an open-handed slap. The space, in its entirety, seems to have been constructed somewhere else and dropped- humanitarian relief-style-into the center of the least likely place on the planet.īut there it is, shimmering in the distance like some sort of proto-Vegas promised land as your car trundles past strip center after rundown strip center en route to Bucks County’s one-building stand-in for The Strip itself.īut then you pull into the valet line and the journey there is forgotten in an instant. As you head into the Parx Casino in Bensalem, be prepared for the cognitive dissonance you’ll inevitably experience.

Parx casino restaurant