I regret that I'd never visited one of our state's Native American gambling establishments until a few weeks ago. Despite having lived in Washington my entire life, despite the ubiquitous casino ads featuring well-dressed, impossibly happy white people cavorting in an atmosphere of bedazzled luxury, casinos have always seemed like the pastime of the suburban working class, a population that us city slickers are apparently dangerously out of touch with.

I regret navigating Highway 202 in the midst of an exceptionally eerie fog. I regret driving in general, because of what fossil fuels are doing to the environment, but especially driving in the age of aggressively bright headlights. Why do you need so many lumens that you render the tiny, twisty, two-lane highway completely impossible for oncoming drivers to see even with your brights off? Eventually, my 1987 Jeep Comanche emerged into the casino's massive, brightly lit valet area.

I do not regret complimentary valet, which always makes you feel like a boss, even when you don't have power steering. The valet did not bat an eye at my beat-up old pickup, efficiently noting the smashed-in bumper and various other cosmetic travesties on the damage card. Then my dining companion and I stepped into the casino's main hall, a massive cavern of blinking lights and celebratory sound effects. A pleasant young man with a Secret Service–style earpiece greeted us. Though he insisted he'd seen us "plenty of times before"—he hadn't—he asked us for ID.

I do not regret the name of the casino's cigar lounge—"Lit"—even though it is very clear they do not understand the meaning that has to the millennial audience, because that is very funny.

I definitely do not regret tribal sovereignty. It allows the tribes to have indoor smoking and keep all the tax revenue from their cannabis stores and fireworks stands and the other commerce they are allowed to engage in, even though it doesn't begin to make a dent in what the United States owes Native peoples. It's at least a gesture of acknowledgement. I do, however, regret indoor smoking, even as someone who will occasionally join my friends for one outside the bar on a boozy Saturday night. There's a reason you go outside.

I don't regret that Vista, Snoqualmie Casino's recently rebranded fine-dining establishment, is nonsmoking. I was there for a PR dinner, to taste their new menu items. Upon entry, we wended our way over to the small crowd of food journalists and PR folks assembled around the cocktail table, which was laden with fun-size versions of the restaurant's three new specialty cocktails: a cucumber gimlet, a spicy whiskey sour with Honeycrisp juice, and a blueberry press with actual fresh blueberries. There was so much sugar in each concoction, it made it difficult to appreciate the flavor of the booze.

I definitely did not regret the passed appetizers, especially after a long, nerve-racking drive. Though crab cakes are an alarmingly common item around here, they hit the spot. I am always down for deep-fried crab and cream cheese, and Vista's tiny, oily cylinders did not disappoint. The mini steak skewers, however, had so much syrupy balsamic glaze that it distracted from the meat. The deconstructed duck salad served in a pho spoon reminded me of Tom Douglas. I don't regret Tom Douglas, because he's done a lot to raise the bar on food in Seattle and he gainfully employs something like 50 percent of the fine-dining workforce, but I do regret the aspect of his legacy that's led to Northwest food almost always involving some sort of obligatory vaguely Asian salad.

Vista's management very much regrets that we couldn't see the view for which the restaurant was named. It was pitch-black outside, and the only thing lit up was the parking lot.

I don't regret how obsessed Vista is with sources and cuts of meat. It's laudable that the restaurant is really psyched on sourcing quality meats. The emphasis placed on the various striations of steak marbling—gold, black, and silver—is almost ostentatious. But good meat is worth celebrating. Vista's selection of the rib cap cut is, according to Snake River Farms and my taste buds, "the single most delectable and flavorful steak available."

I didn't regret the service. Kwan Won, the newly hired maître d'/flambé master, was a delight, and his tableside shrimp scampi was one of the best dishes of the night. Henry, the server who saw to us, was perfectly attentive to my companion's shellfish allergy, and friendly in a genuine, familial way.

Did I mention not regretting the rib cap steak? Some of the food we were served was forgettable, even regrettable, but the rib cap steak was objectively awesome. The staff recommended it a hair past mid rare, and I dutifully ordered it as such, and even though it came out well shy of mid rare, it ended up being wonderful: The meat's luscious texture was all the better cooked blue.

I regret the chocolate cake. I do not regret that it came on an overlong rectangular plate adorned with various artistically arranged spots and stripes of sauce. I do not regret the throwback to the American Psycho era of plating, because we're far enough away from it that it's funny now, and it's kind of fitting for a high-end casino steak house, and for Trump's America. But the layered cake itself was not a work of culinary art. It had the generic flavor and texture of a Safeway cake.

I do not regret the pyrotechnic display involved in making Cafe Diablo. Kwan Won cut a long, thin strip of orange zest, hung it suspended over a glass, drizzled Grand Marnier down its length, and lit it on fire. That shit was dazzling. I do regret that the coffee-alcohol-dessert beverage was so bafflingly sweet that I almost spat out the sip I took.

I regret playing the casino's new Friends-themed slot machine after dinner. What more all-American experience could there be, I thought, than capping off a steak-and-potatoes dinner by draining my bank account into Joey, Chandler, and Ross's gaping digital maw? I regret the experience, as it instantly reminded me how addictive gambling is, and how well technology has been harnessed to make it more so. The screen is captivating and complex, with so many moving, blinking, noisemaking things that one is instantly distracted from the fact that those things are directly connected to money. The money you put in is instantly converted to a higher value in points. Currency conversion, as the former creative director of wildly addictive mobile game Dragonsoul recently explained to me, makes it easier for players to make impulsive in-app purchases, as the purchase is decoupled from the idea of actual money. Despite coming up $15, against all odds, I couldn't shake my feeling of vague unease about the whole affair. The legions of glassy-eyed seniors smoking Benson & Hedges, drinking well mixers, and soundlessly padding around the casino to sink their savings into video slots certainly didn't help. But I digress.

I don't regret occasional indulgences like this. Yes, you're blowing a little of your hard-earned cash on unadulterated entertainment, but escapism is sometimes necessary. Especially right now. I do not regret gambling implicitly. I do not even regret the modern impulse toward escapism that the casinos hinge their marketing efforts on. I do regret the fact that, for some people, forgetting their problems often involves deepening them. On the other hand: Everything in moderation, including moderation.