When I was booking the Palazzo as the hotel for NYE 2016 I noticed they offered a $25 dining credit for Buddy V's. As I was choosing from several options the Buddy V's credit sealed the deal as I can always fall back on this restaurant to serve delicious "homemade" comfort Italian food. With this I convinced my family to dine here for dinner.
Dinner is a different beast from lunch. With lunch the No1DP and I are able to have a pretty quiet meal with plenty of natural sunlight. There's also not much activity going on in the middle of the day. Come dinner, especially on the day before NYE, the place was swamped and the tables were loud. There were also plenty of people in line to get a table or in line for the nearby Carlo bakery.
The 3-course pre-theater menu ($38/person) was a hit with everyone in my family. It made ordering a lot easier and since I was covering the dinner tab, along with the $25 credit made a Vegas dinner more reasonably-priced (but still expensive for regular casual Italian). What made it particularly appealing for me was that the menu options included my favorites: Grandma's Meatballs, My Dad's Bucatini Carbonara and Lisa's Warm Nutella Cake. These were the standout dishes I stated in previous reviews and I was very happy I could have all my favorites in one sitting. This was a lot of food - I remember eating cold bucatini carbonara the next day for breakfast (which BTW is still very good if you don't mind eating it cold).
In summary I've enjoyed both lunch and dinner at Buddy V's though the situations that I'll recommend both are different. I'll recommend doing small plates for lunch as the portion sizes are more manageable if you want to save your appetite for a big and fancy dinner. This is currently the arrangement for the No1DP and I whenever we're in Vegas. I'll recommend dinner as a non-date or casual date option if all a party wants is just some good comfort Italian food.
LUNCH: 4/5.
DINNER: 4.5/5.