Vanderpump Cocktail Garden

Vanderpump Cocktail Garden opened on 1 April 2019 at Caesars Palace, the first Las Vegas venue from the restaurateur and reality-television personality Lisa Vanderpump. It sits on the Strip between The Colosseum and the entrance to The Forum Shops, and it was designed by Vanderpump with her husband Ken Todd and creative director Nick Alain, the same collaborator behind her Los Angeles bar Tom Tom; Alain handled the lighting, fixtures and furniture. The result is an indoor patio dressed as an al fresco garden — sixteen-foot olive trees, sparkling chandeliers, lush florals and a great deal of pink — and it draws exactly the celebrity-adjacent, camera-forward crowd that suggests. The kitchen sends out decadent small plates alongside the drinks, with the goat cheese balls the most consistently cited order in the room.

For a bar whose whole identity is built on the theatre of a cocktail, the zero-proof handling is better than it needs to be. The menu carries a standing Mighty Mocktails section, which means a non-drinker orders from a named list rather than negotiating with a bartender. The Garden Goddess is built from mint, matcha, pineapple and lemon with aquafaba whipped in for a velvety foam; the Caesars Berries combines raspberry, mint, hibiscus, lemon and coconut with soda for bubbles. Both arrive with the same garnish-forward presentation as the alcoholic list, which matters more than it sounds in a room where the drink is substantially the point and where holding something that looks like everyone else's is the difference between being at the party and being adjacent to it. Visit Las Vegas, the convention and visitors authority's own publication, named the Caesars Berries among the seven must-try mocktails in the city. The garden opens in the afternoon most days and runs late Thursday through Saturday.