I have friends who live there and don't want to talk shit about the real city of Las Vegas where people actually live, but the part of Las Vegas that Black Hat and Defcon drag us to every year is probably the worst place in the country.
It's a minor networking hit for me, but a total win otherwise (and I can make up by networking elsewhere - I cannot get time spent in Vegas back).
Plus it's in the middle of a desert, so options are pretty limited.
"good restaurants": (1) lots of top-tier cooks go there because money and it's cheap because Vegas, or (2) lots of off-strip places with good chefs trying to make it big.
"crappy, overpriced food": (1) Wolfgang Puck etc, or (2) Even off-strip food is bad and expensive because they can't afford water.
So in reality which is it?
However, there are also some of the best buffets in the world there (if you're into that). There are also some awesome high-end restaurants: https://www.tripsavvy.com/michelin-guide-rated-restaurants-l...
Because Vegas is a massive tourist destination where you are guaranteed to have a deep market of people eating out every day of the week, it attracts tons of restaurants so you do need to do a little research. Picking a random one will likely get you overpriced 'meh'.
We've gone off the strip for sushi, Korean bbq, Thai, and Ethiopian and had good luck; I don't know enough about greater Las Vegas to judge it. But the strip is bad.
Plus the fact that it works on a plurality of tourists coming through makes it sad.
I leave Vegas with less faith in humanity than I had when I came. It's been a few years though.
Hunter S. Thompson had it right: try to cram as many drugs into your body as possible, seek out the ghosts of America's dead dreams and you may come out with some semblance of spirit intact.