A Vegas Shrimp Cocktail Tour

Stephanie and I just recently returned from an impromptu trip to Las Vegas. We researched different places to go, but Vegas looked sunny and warm, and the new Fontainebleau Hotel and Casino, located inconveniently near the worst parts of the Strip, was giving away suites. We booked for five nights.

Sunny and warm turned into a ninety-five-degree sauna. We spent most days by the pool, then waited until the sun set behind the mountains to explore the town.

That first night, Sunday, we took a city bus (no, really, we took the bus) down to The Paris. Mon Ami Gabi is one of our favorite restaurants in town, with a bar overlooking the hourly fountain show at The Bellagio. I’d met the bartender there a few years back when I asked if she was from Baltimore; I’d recognize the accent from when I lived there years ago (a kind of garbled mix of Southern drawl and New Jersey attitude). She laughed, “I’m from Bulgaria.” That night, she remembered the idiot tourist. I ordered a generous vodka martini and shrimp cocktail. Steph ordered a back-to-the-nineties cosmopolitan. The excellent jumbo shrimp came with both cocktail sauce and remoulade. We followed that up with escargot and roasted chicken, beer and wine. We watched the Bellagio spectacle of erupting water.

The next night, we crossed the street to Circus Circus for a drink and shrimp cocktail at The Steak House. This restaurant has been around since Sean Connery filmed the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever there in 1971. Back then, Circus Circus was new, exciting, and weird. Trapeze performances were held every hour in the big top above the gaming tables. On the second floor was the famous revolving carousel bar featured in Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In the movie version, Benicio del Toro, playing Thompson’s Samoan attorney, stoned on LSD and other substances, panics and can’t get off the moving bar. Johnny Depp, playing Hunter S. Thompson, gives him a good kick. “Circus Circus is now a sad dump that stinks of spilled beer and cigarettes. The cool, neon, fifty-foot-tall circus clown out front barely lights up at night, half its bulbs burnt out or smashed. The carousel bar is tragically gone. But The Steak House still rocks! Inside, you’re greeted by a meat locker with aging prime beef, then a nice little bar. Martinis and shrimp cocktail. We conversed for the next hour with the only other couple at the bar, who were coincidentally moving to Minneapolis. We talked about old Vegas, movies, books, restaurants, and the ICE incursion. We exchanged contacts. That’s the fun of sitting at a bar: talking to fascinating people that you’d rarely have a chance to otherwise meet.

Tuesday night was St Paddy’s Day, and that evening we went up to Fremont Street, Glitter Gulch, to see the street action and have dinner at Oscar’s Steakhouse at the old Union Plaza Casino. The revelers were there in spades; many dressed in green with funny hats, all swilling beer to the sounds of live Irish music. We walked through wafts of now-legal weed. I played a few hands of blackjack at the Horseshoe Casino, while Steph played video poker. We lost our requisite fifty bucks and headed to the Steakhouse. The shrimp cocktail there was fresh but slightly disappointing, with only three crustaceans on the plate (you kinda expect five or six). The following steak, though, was spectacular. The cut was called a prime cap. It’s that outer layer of fat-streaked meat on the prime rib. We had no clue what they did with the rest of the steak, but that outer cap was like butta. We spoke with the single guy sitting beside us (I badgered him with questions until he did). He was from La Jolla and, coincidentally, we’d both waited on tables at the Elephant Bar, and we both remembered the tall and tippy glasses of draft beer that often fell off our trays. He’d gravitated from waiting on tables to transporting cocaine from Mexico, a “mule” in the parlance of that trade. Then to the penitentiary for two years. He was now renting e-bikes on the beach to Southern California nd tourists.

The next night, we had tickets to Culture Club at the Venetian Casino. We’d both grown up listening to the lead singer, Boy George: me as a nightclub manager at Tramps in Vegas; Stephanie as a teen going to the Children’s Theater wearing a Georgie-like porkpie hat and outrageous make-up with neon eye shadow. We started at Emeril Lagasse’s Delmonico’s Restaurant in the Venetian. Not what we’d hoped. The guy next to us wore a dark suit, his hair nicely quaffed, a crisp white shirt, a tie, and a fancy gold watch. Not really a Vegas guy; more like a wheeler-dealer at one of the conventions in town. He was continually on his phone—either doing deals or setting up a hooker for that night’s festivities. Anyway, we avoided conversation. The martinis came, and then the shrimp. I took one bite, experienced soft, decaying flesh, then spat the goo into my pressed cotton napkin. We concluded that Emeril might have been off that night at his namesake restaurant. (Or more likely, he hadn’t set foot in the place since it opened in 1999.)

We had fabulous seats for Boy George, and the two guys sitting next to us were great to enjoy the show with. One owned the famous Gypsy gay nightclub. Back in the day, I’d go there on nights off with the Vegas dancers I knew. Those nights off from Tramps nightclub were typically on slow Mondays. But Mondays at the Gypsy were packed with Strip performers who also had the night off. Apparently, it’s still a thing. Culture Club opened with Clash’s London Calling, then moved into their hits. A few distractions surrounded us. A guy at the end of the aisle was definitely tweaking on speed or crystal meth, or whatever they sell on the streets these days. He danced erratically throughout the show, even during the ballads, his arms sometimes waving, sometimes playing air guitar, and always fanatically jerking. He rushed the stage twice, with security escorting him back with stern warnings to calm-the-fuck-down. Then behind us was a pack of drunk and rowdy London boys who talked and screamed throughout the show. I would have turned around and said something, but then I didn’t want to get beaten bloody.

By far, the best shrimp cocktail was at the Peppermill Fireside Lounge the following night. I’d written about this place in my first book, Las Vegas Turnaround. It’s located just down the street from where we were staying, in no-man’s land. Back in the day, it was where you’d take a date late at night for a last drink. Sitting in the lounge around the glowing gas-lit fireplace was a sure transition to a night of sweaty sex. We sat at the bar playing video poker, enjoying martinis and that shrimp cocktail. It was served old-school in a chilled glass goblet, with shredded lettuce at the bottom and a generous amount of spicy cocktail sauce on top. Then alternating jumbo shrimp and lemon wedges hanging on the rim. The shrimp was big, fresh, and chilled. So fresh, there might have been a crunch when bitten.

Then a change into our matching hotel robes, a drink from the minibar, and a meaningful goodnight kiss. (Sweaty sex not on the menu.)