The Bar Crawl at Venetian and Palazzo
Las Vegas has always been a good place to drink. But now it’s an excellent place to drink. Not jut because you’re always within arm’s reach of someone happy to serve you (age and moderation in mind) but because there’s so much variety and creativity everywhere you turn.
Take the Venetian and Palazzo resorts for example. Say you wanted to try a few things there, just for fun. No commitments, just playing the field, as it were. Okay, let’s ease into things. Go to the Palazzo casino floor and depending on your mood, find either the raised Laguna Champagne bar or circular Fusion Mixology bar. At the first, you can take your pick of bubbly, or sparkling-based cocktails, a nice apertif to an evening of tippling. At the second, they offer an excellent program of clever cocktails using fresh ingredients, infused liquors, and gorgeous garnishes. This casino bar, crazy as it sounds, is as good as any downtown garters-and-mustaches hipster hang you can find.
Okay, now move back towards the Venetian. You could certainly make a stop at Wolfgang Puck’s CUT, they’ve got one of the most civilized lounges around, with good cocktails and wines by-the-glass, not to mention some fantastic sliders if there’s a need to feed. Next, wander through the waterfall pavilion to that “other” steakhouse, Emeril’s Delmonico, where the bar might look like any other typical watering hole, but nothing could be further from the truth. Here you’re going to find an incredible selection of whiskeys and other barrel-aged sprits—I’m talking hundreds, many very, very rare—and cocktails the likes of which have no comparison. This is the kind of place to say “surprise me,” and mean it. And again, not a bad choice for a bar bite. Excellent steak tartare, and the last time we visited, they did a pig trotter I’m still thinking about.
Still walking upright? Okay, it’s just a few steps to Public House, with a large and carefully selected beer list (believe me, Blue Moon is not the fanciest thing here) as well as a few nice original cocktails in a setting more sophisticated than its “gastropub” name implies. But still fun—make sure to check out the bathrooms. No, really.
Keep it together, so you can make one last stop, on the Venetian casino floor at the Bourbon Room. Inspired by the Rock of Ages show this is a really fun place to do a shot and burn off some calories to the hits of the 80s. Be goofy, no one cares. In fact, it’s practically required.
So there you go, from sophisticated to silly in one memorable evening. And you didn’t have to step outside a single time.
My huge thanks to E.C. Gladstone for helping out with this bar crawl. One, he knows his liquor and two, well, he actually can mix a pretty fine drink.
