Buffet

LAS VEGAS' concert venues offer nothing if not variety, whether you're looking to catch Morrissey's oily pompadour gleaming in the spotlight with 2,000 of your closest friends or a grimy local act shrouded in cigarette smoke with only 100 others. This variety extends to the essential ingredients of any live music hub, including sound quality, sight lines and the type of crowd milling or, as is sometimes the case, thrashing about in front of the stage.

The lineup sounded suspiciously tepid to begin with. Artists as disparate as syrupy Puerto Rican crooner Luis Fonsi, visionary Cuban trio Orishas and former Kumbia Kings vocalist Frankie J packaged together by McDonald's at the Gibson. No wonder the amphitheater was half empty Friday for the latest edition of Lo McXimo de la Musica. You need a little more star power (or at least a defined aesthetic direction) to fill up a venue of that size.

Buffets Inc., owner of HomeTown Buffet, agreed to buy Ryan's Restaurant Group Inc. for $876 million to create the largest U.S. buffet restaurant chain. Ryan's shareholders would receive $16.25 in cash for each share they own, 45% more than Ryan's closing price Monday. The purchase price includes debt. The combined chain would have more than $1.7 billion in annual sales from 675 restaurants. Eagan, Minn.

THE film that may come closest to living up to CineVegas' self-proclaimed billing as "The World's Most Dangerous Film Festival" is John Maringouin's bizarrely gothic "Running Stumbled." The documentary follows the filmmaker as he returns to his Louisiana hometown after a 25-year absence and, in a peculiar reunion that seems distinctly of the South, drops in on his father, Johnny Roe Jr., a painter and lifelong drug abuser.

I just want to encourage S. Irene Virbila and all her like-minded friends to, by all means, head on down to Manhattan Beach to that new serious Greek restaurant, the very first one in the area ("So Chic and so Very Greek, March 22). This will leave more space, good food and good times for us normal folk who enjoy the down-home feeling of the truly authentic Papa Cristo's, run by the equally down-home proprietor, Chrys Chrys. The fun I've had at his all-you-can-eat Thursday night family style Greek buffet cannot be matched.

OPEN up one of Sin City's largest hotels and, like a Russian doll, it might reveal another hidden inside, albeit not one painted like a Siberian peasant. Call it what you will -- hotel-in-a-hotel, boutique sibling, specialty product -- these accommodations are showing up all over, and in some cases within, the Las Vegas skyline. The newest, coming in May, is the Signature, the first of three high-rises MGM Grand is building on the grounds of what was once the resort's amusement park.

KEEP your ribbons and your bows, your stockings hung by the chimney with care. When it comes to the holidays, what I really want is an open house. All year long we have dinner parties, pretty quiet affairs usually, maybe six or eight friends sitting around enjoying food, wine and polite conversation. But at the holidays we really cut loose, filling the house so full with people we care about that it seems close to bursting.

DECADES AGO, I clutched an official New York state examination booklet as a proctor threatened me and hundreds of my nervous schoolmates with a felony conviction if we cheated. We dutifully signed a statement that declared we would not. Students still sign declarations on examination booklets, but the lingo has changed. Choice is now in.

M Cafe de Chaya Don't be scared off by the macrobiotic label. The food at this 4-month-old eatery, sibling to the Chaya restaurants, is hearty, satisfying and artfully presented. Consider the golden French toast studded with cranberries and walnuts and served with a tart 'n' sweet cranberry compote. There's also a swell tofu scramble accompanied by sweet potato hash, grilled bread and house-made ketchup. * French toast, $7.75; scramble, $8.95. 7119 Melrose Ave., L.A.; (323) 525-0588.

I very much enjoyed the article about composed salads ["Salad, Compose Thyself," Sept. 21]. I have not been familiar with the term, but it's something I pretty much do myself from time to time. I agree, it's the best of lunches. The only salad preparation comparable to this would perhaps be a really fine salad buffet where one can build one's own composee. These buffets do, however, lack a certain piquance of flavor and aura of restraint. At any rate, I'm off to the produce department for my fix for the day. Thank you so very much.