Val and I were in Las Vegas a couple of weeks back, and pinged some friends to get recommendations on where to get a good cocktail. Pretty much everyone came back with the same answer: lots to drink, but not much that’s good. So I relied on Google and Yelp and came up with two contenders: Herbs & Rye and Downtown Cocktail Room.
Herbs & Rye is quite a cab ride from the strip, but we gave it a shot anyway. We were there mid-week and so it was pretty dead. I had a Sazerac and Val had an Old Fashioned. Both were pretty good drinks, but we ended up sitting at the bar with a couple of young whippersnappers, one of whom couldn’t get past the fact that the bar was out of Crown Royal, so she couldn’t have her Crown and Coke.
The ambience would probably have been better on a weekend, but The Professional playing silently on the TV was the only thing here to go with the decent drinks.
Downtown Cocktail Room was a bit better in terms of ambience, but the drinks weren’t quite as good. I had an Old Fashioned that had a little fruit salad included, and my second drink was a house special I forget the name of. It was too sweet for my taste, but better than the Old Fashioned. Val had a Manhattan, which was pretty good. There was something of a crowd, and the seating was small pods of couches and tables, and made for a nice, comfortable spot to chat. It was still mid-week, but there was a slight bustle to the place that made us like it just a bit more than Herbs & Rye overall, but your mileage may vary closer to a weekend.