Translation services, noodle shops, high-end restaurants with top Asian chefs, even special gaming rooms are features of local casinos such as Hammond’s Horseshoe, whose luxurious Le Cheng gaming room featuring multiple baccarat tables and pai gow tiles was installed as a part of the casino’s $500 million expansion in 2008.
The shuttles whisk away Chinese-Chicagoans (and anyone else who boards) to a half-dozen massive casinos on the hour every hour, through the night every night. Any given Saturday night, you can shuffle onto a comfortable, heated bus with a dozen or so others-mostof them traveling solo, a few in pairs talking low about the night’s goals-and your driver will joke, “Anything you make tonight, I get half,” and smile as he pulls awayfrom the mud-streaked snowbanks of Archer and Wentworth Avenues.
