LAS VEGAS — Saturday night, early last month in the Playboy Club at the Palms Casino Resort: Hugh Hefner enters the room to a cacophonous reaction among the crowd. A crush of camera crews, press, well-wishers, celebrities, high rollers and beautiful young ladies for Mr. Hefner’s 82nd birthday.
The lion in winter is still roaring, accompanied by his girlfriends Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson (stars of the hit E! series “Girls Next Door”), a warren of Playmates and Playmate of the Year Sara Underwood.
Hugh Hefner has been famous longer than most of us have been alive. Playboy and Mr. Hefner entered our national consciousness in 1953, three years before Elvis, long before the Beatles conquered America. I have often called Mr. Hefner the first Beatle, a man who altered the way America views sexuality.
A stalwart champion of civil rights, the First Amendment and, yes, women’s rights, Mr. Hefner and Playboy are in Vegas to celebrate the success of the first Playboy Club to open in decades and, as a part of Las Vegas’ incendiary celebrity destination, the Palms.
Earlier, in the Hugh Hefner Sky Villa, a two-story penthouse extravaganza overlooking the Strip with a rotating round bed in the master suite and a cavernous atrium connecting the living room to its own swimming pool on the balcony, Mr. Hefner offered this comment on the Playboy Club at the Palms:
“It’s a natural extension of where Playboy is going, both with this club and the new Playboy Mansion Casino, set to open in Macau next year, and the Palms is at the center of it. Where else would the Playboy Club be but at the most cutting-edge venue in Vegas?”
Palms owner George Maloof echoes Mr. Hefner: “The biggest part for the Palms is just being associated with the Playboy brand. It has been wildly successful.”
The Playboy Club stands at the top of the Palms’ Fantasy Tower. Elegant and stylish, with Playboy Bunnys dealing blackjack and spinning roulette, it attracts high rollers and an upscale, capacity crowd. The atmosphere is electric, the gaming tables are raging, and the Bunnys lend a charged air. The throbbing nightclub, Moon, sits above, connected to the club by escalators. Mr. Hefner and his entourage party into the night in both clubs before jetting back to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles at 2 a.m.
In a town where a venue or hotel is cutting-edge for five minutes, the Palms has been going at it continually for more than seven years. It has reshaped the way Las Vegas is done. A regular hangout for celebrities from Leonardo DiCaprio to George Clooney to Britney Spears, it is the destination of choice in Vegas for many of the upscale glitterati from both coasts and around the world.
The Palms is just off the Strip, part of what makes it a trend-defining world of its own. Our Grand Suite in the Fantasy Tower is a luxurious retreat with large spaces for the living room, bedroom and bath. One of the Palms’ newest additions is a third tower, Palms Place, with 56 floors of luxury condominiums rented out as hotel rooms and designed for discriminating customers who want luxury just steps away from the action.
Dinner our first night at the Palms is in Little Buddha, voted the best sushi bar in Vegas two years running. The Las Vegas branch of the original world-famous Buddha Bar in Paris, Little Buddha lives up to its reputation with exotic decor and atmosphere, amazing sushi and an excellent selection of cold sakes.
The next day, we have a couples’ massage at the Drift Spa in Palms Place, part of the full-service accommodations in this separate oasis within the resort. We spend the afternoon lounging around the hotel’s two acres of pools, bars, bungalows and bodies, and a party unto itself.
Dinner at the Michelin-starred Alize on the 56th floor of the original Palms Tower offers stunning views of the Strip and exquisite cuisine from master chef Andre Rochet. The menu includes Serrano peppers stuffed with lump crabmeat; classic tender and flaky Dover sole; and veal medallions with crispy sweetbreads, each perfectly prepared. Our three-hour feast is worthy of the view.
After dinner, we go to the Playboy Club for a pajama party with Miss Underwood, the Playmate of the Year, and her fellow Playmates. The gods of roulette smile down upon us, and we take our winnings and while away the evening with champagne.
THE PALAZZO
We check into the Palazzo, the newest addition to the Strip, an outstanding resort from Venetian Sands and its landmark Venetian Hotel, where the legendary Sands Hotel once stood. Our suite on the 47th floor overlooks the heart of the Strip.
The Palazzo is a decidedly upscale all-suite hotel, with a shopping arcade of high-end stores such as Barneys, Jimmy Choo, Chloe, Michael Kors, Guerlain, Thomas Pink and Catherine Malandrino. The casino is spacious and refined; each dark-wood column is adorned with 12 Lalique glass panels. In a Las Vegas rife with midtempo venues, the Palazzo stands out for class and sophistication.
In Morels, executive chef Eric Bauer has created a sophisticated cuisine in the guise of a French bistro. Oysters from a raw bar are freshly shucked. Japanese A5 Wagyu beef tartar (the highest-quality Kobe beef) is amazingly tender; the 32-day dry-aged Midwestern sirloin is tender, flavorful and perfectly cooked. The short ribs, braised for 18 hours, are fork-tender succulent, and a parade of eight unique homemade sorbets is a perfect desert.
The next day brings an 80-minute couples’ massage at the Canyon Ranch SpaClub in the hotel, a spa complex that lives up to its reputation for pampering, including a climbing wall and cafe.
At Emeril Lagasse’s Table 10, chef de cuisine Jean Paul Laradie dazzles the palate with miso-marinated black cod, bison carpaccio and exquisite gumbo. Though it’s set in an open, casual space to resemble a New Orleans speak-easy, there is nothing casual about the stellar food. An outrageously succulent Snake River Wagyu sirloin is outdone only by a whole Mediterranean sea bass, enjoyed with an extremely hard-to-find Kosta Browne pinot noir.
On our final night, we dine at Mario Batali’s Carnevino, a gorgeous room with 24-foot ceilings. It’s open, spacious and full of dark woods. Executive chef Zach Allen creates an extraordinary culinary experience with zesty steamed clams; black fettuccine with spicy Dungeness crab; and brilliant crisp sweetbreads in a butternut-squash drizzle.
Carnevino’s 32-ounce dry-aged rib-eye is ritualistically carved tableside, drizzled with rare olive oil and served with a trio of salts. After dinner, we go downstairs to Jay Z’s 40/40 nightclub, an upscale, raging, multilevel, multiroom hip-hop experience with an extremely well-dressed crowd and a great vibe.
“LOVE”
Of all the entertainment in Las Vegas, the most electrically emotional is the Beatle’s “Love” at the Mirage Hotel, an innovative collaboration between the Beatles and Cirque de Soleil. Combining theatrics, multimedia projections, acrobatics and the music of a band many consider the greatest in the history of rock, “Love” transcends its parts to become an enormously satisfying and magical entertainment.
The “Love” theater is disorienting, although it is surprisingly intimate for a 2,000-seat theater staged in the round. The show is an acrobatic ballet set to a 90-minute re-imagination of numerous Beatles songs melded seamlessly, rising to an emotional crescendo.
Initially devised by George Harrison and Cirque de Soleil, “Love” is the last fully involved Beatles collaboration through the participation and approval of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.
The soundtrack was produced by original Beatles producer George Martin, working with his son, Giles, from the original master tapes. It is quite an accomplishment. More than a remix, the “Love” album is a 90-minute ride through the Beatles catalog, shifting among the band’s hits.
It is a roller coaster of visual images spanning the Beatles’ lives and career, interpreting through acrobatics, puppetry, theater and ballet the soundtrack of our lives on a multidimensional stage that envelops us from all angles. “Something” is a sky ballet of lovers on a trapeze; “Mr. Kite” is an onstage vaudeville psychedelic freak show of stunts and acrobatic stilt-walking; “Help” is a rush of in-line ramp skating gone mad.
“Yesterday” is a beautiful pas de duex played out among poignant flying fragments of memory. “Strawberry Fields” is a giant bubble fest that would do Lawrence Welk proud. “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is an aerial delight on the flying trapeze. The finale, “All You Need Is Love,” brings tears to your eyes.
The footage of the band projected at the emotional high point resonates on levels best felt and not described. “Love” transcends whatever minor flaws it may have as it takes us back to a time, long ago, when we were fab.
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