(FORTUNE Magazine) – For years, your odds in Las Vegas were better at baccarat than they were at the dinner table. But today Vegas is a boomtown, and some great restaurants have opened in the splashy new hotels on the strip. So there's no need to crap out if you're headed for the Comdex convention this month. Couple some meals at the new spots with a few old standbys, and the chips--be they silicon or poker--should fall nicely into place during your week in Las Vegas.

Your culinary tour should start with the marquee chefs who have established beachheads in the past few years. At the MGM Grand you'll find the Coyote Cafe, the creation of owner Mark Miller, who owns other Coyotes in Santa Fe and Austin, Texas, as well as the Red Sage in Washington, D.C. In the same hotel, Emeril Lagasse's New Orleans Fish House opened last year. Emeril also mans the stove at his eponymous New Orleans restaurant.

Though neither man makes his home in Las Vegas, Coyote Cafe in particular has transferred well. In the Grill Room section of the cafe, the soups and appetizers are superb, the entrees merely great. So eat tapas-style and try the soup of the day, the buttermilk corncakes, the portobello mushroom tamale, and the red chile onion rings. For dessert go to Emeril's and try the creme brulee made with chicory coffee imported from the Big Easy.

The New Orleans theme isn't the only new gimmick in Las Vegas. At Dive, Steven Spielberg has taken the strip underwater in a restaurant that looks like a submarine. Unlike most theme restaurants, the food at this dive is no afterthought. The submarine sandwiches are creative enough, prepared in a brick oven with goodies like smoked gouda, beef tenderloin, and portobello mushrooms. But the French fries, fresh cut in thick, salty spears and served European-style in a paper cone with exotic dipping sauces, are worth the trip all by themselves. Don't miss the homemade s'mores as well, a rare restaurant treat that most of us remember fondly from childhood campfires. Too bad more pastry chefs don't.

God help you if you're crazy enough to bring your kids to Las Vegas, where the malls and roller coasters don't change the fact that you have to walk the children through ten miles of slot machines to get to them. If they're tagging along anyway, they'll love Dive too. With movie screens disguised as portholes showing underwater footage from the Discovery Channel and a periscope that looks out onto the strip, most kids should be sufficiently preoccupied.

For more of an adult treat, the Bacchanal at Caesars Palace is still the culinary equivalent of a Roman orgy. Course after course of Continental cuisine is followed closely by scantily clad wine goddesses who keep your goblet full. Say the word, and they slink up behind you to give you a massage. As your goddess plops grapes into your mouth, belly dancers arrive to gyrate for tips and drunk conventioneers get up to dance with them. It's easy to forget that the place isn't some kind of high-class strip club until the trumpet sounds and Caesar arrives to give an address and make the rounds. Though the restaurant wins points for finding purple potatoes to mash (did they have such things in ancient Rome?), the rack of lamb and veal were not entrees worthy of the empire. But the food isn't the point; you should go for sheer camp value, especially if you can get someone from Microsoft to pick up the tab. Just don't plan on driving home.

Most hotel-operated restaurants tend to be loss leaders, but the grand hotel buffets in Vegas must hemorrhage money. And why not? What's another New York sirloin if it gives you the stamina to stick with the slots for another six hours? Nothing's changed since you last visited; they're still dirt cheap, and you can eat till you burst. The best of these smorgasbords are off the Strip at the Rio (check out the Mongolian barbecue) and the Boomtown (for clams and crab).

No matter where you are, it's always best to eat where the locals do, so ask the staff at the hotel where they like to dine. This was how I found the Green Shack, a fried chicken and fixin's spot that's been around for decades. Exotic eaters should also head to Poppa Gar's, where the walls are festooned with animal heads and pictures of local pols. If you're lucky, you'll get to sit at the counter next to Pop himself and dine on a buffalo burger, some quail, or whatever else he and his hunter friends have managed to rustle up.