Lisa Vanderpump knows your secrets. She isn’t telling — so far. For now, everything is sub rosa, on the QT and very Hush Hush.
The latter is a marquee cocktail at Gigolo, the new lounge in The Vanderpump Hotel (formerly The Cromwell) on the Las Vegas Strip. On Thursday, the grand opening began with Vanderpump emerging from a Rolls-Royce in a gleaming dress, like a column of liquid silver, punctuated by pops of color from lilac opera gloves.
The party went late, but there Vanderpump was the next morning in Gigolo, looking fresh in a white pantsuit with a spangled jacket that framed a triple-strand pearl-and-diamond choker and a lariat-style necklace with a fat double-diamond pendant. Folks sipped Hush Hush cocktails at this gathering of friends of the house.
The drink arrives with a small black envelope edged in gold and closed by a Vanderpump Hotel seal. The envelope holds a blank sheet of paper. Imbibers write down a secret, seal it in the envelope, and deposit it in the vault beneath the 5-foot-2-inch black resin statue of Gigolo (Giggy, affectionately), Vanderpump’s late Pomeranian who gave his name to the bar.
The Hush Hush is, effectively, a strawberry jalapeño martini: gently creamy, lightly sweet, with an insistent thrum of heat and a buzz that descends quickly.
“One day, I might open the envelopes and spill all the secrets,” Vanderpump said, with a slightly naughty laugh, during a chat with Neon on Friday at Gigolo. Her laugh, it turns out, was in keeping with Giggy’s M.O. “He was a naughty little dog.”
What’s in a name?
A sexy knowingness has been the order of the day from the beginning of the lounge.
“When I pitched the idea to Caesars, I said I had the name for the new bar,” Vanderpump recalled. “They said, ‘What is it?’ I said, ‘It’s Gigolo.’ They said, ‘What?!’ I said, ‘No, it’s not a male escort. It’s a dog. He was the sexiest dog on the planet.’ ”
The lounge is moodier and more sultry than Vanderpump’s three other spots on the Strip, offering a profusion of grays and blacks spiked with rich color, as imagined by Vanderpump and her design partner, Nick Alain, who collaborated on the rebranding and renovation of the property.
”I always think of Vegas as very playful. It’s the playground of the U.S., if not the world. I wanted playful, beautiful, sexy, gorgeous,” Vanderpump said of the Gigolo vibe. “I wanted to have the feel of the heart of sexiness, the heart of romance, then couple with that with this giant statue of His Royal Highness.”
This mingling of sultry vibe, the sort-of double entendre of the word “gigolo” and a bit of cheeky humor lies at the heart of the lounge. After all, as Vanderpump said, “it’s still named after a dog.”
Helping dogs
But something serious also informs Gigolo.
Giggy inspired the hotelier and her husband, Ken Todd, to found The Vanderpump Dog Foundation in 2016. The nonprofit works in the U.S. and internationally to create a better world for dogs with programs that encompass dog rescue and feeding, neutering and spaying, vaccinations and other medical care, adoptions, grooming, humane treatment legislation and more.
“There is an emotional component here. There is a poignancy about it,” Vanderpump said. “His memory lives on.”
‘A proper drink’
Vanderpump concepts in Vegas — Vanderpump Cocktail Garden in Caesars Palace, Vanderpump à Paris in Paris Las Vegas, Pinky’s by Vanderpump in the Flamingo — have developed a following for cocktails that are fresh, lively, layered, visually appealingly and inventively presented.
Vanderpump’s daughter, Pandora Vanderpump Sabo, leads the cocktail program for the brand. The other morning at Gigolo, she circulated with trays of cocktails. A Slow Burn, a hickory-smoked old-fashioned, delivered a spin on the classic with raspberry purée. A Giggy Tonic in a goblet — gin, tonic, lavender bitters, butterfly pea tea for a blush of purple — required two hands.
A Talk Dirty to Me touched down featuring a pair of gin martinis with a shared skewer of olives slung across both as garnish. Orange bitters lent a delicate note, a hum of citrus, but the cocktails were still boozy, as martinis ought to be.
As Vanderpump put it: “We want to give you a proper drink.”
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at [email protected]. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.