Royally Flushed

Lindeman's and Guinness Stout combine to make the Cupid's Arrow at First Food & Bar, Las Vegas.

Have we told you how much we *heart* FIRST Food and Bar at The Palazzo?  No?  Then let us count the ways:

1. FIRST feels like one of those secret out-of-the-way joints that only “insiders” know about.  Really.  To get there, you have to go to the second floor of the retail shopping area connecting the Venetian to the Palazzo; hang a right at Barney’s New York; and then make your way down the corridor to the barely-marked restaurant.  (We had a hard time just getting past the shoe display in Barneys’ windows.)
2. It’s open late — ’til 1 a.m. during the week and even later on weekends.
3. The front-of-the-house manager stops by — more than once — to check on your food, drinks, service, etc.  On our last visit, we felt like “regulars” by the end of the meal.
4. The food:  big yummy portions of amped-up diner food.  Burgers to blackened steak, pasta to pizza: this is comfort food meant to help banish your hangover (or get you poised to work on a new one.)
5. 

   Hearty breakfast sammie with Tater Tots at First Food Bar at the Palazzo, Vegas.

   Sunday brunch (11 a.m. – 4 p.m.) — A traveling Bloody Mary bar complete with a cute mixologist ready to make it your way.  (Our way?  Extra Tabasco and black pepper plus enough green olives to mimic a salad bar.)  A $10 per person all-you-can-drink champagne deal.  This may not be Krug or Cristal but face it, there’s something abnormally fun and decadent about washing down your corned beef hash or chicken and waffles with a glass or two — or eight — of bubbly.  Try the Breakfast Mini-Burgers with cheese, bacon, Hollandaise sauce and a side of Tater Tots.

6. The Cupid’s Arrow — Just like drinking an alcoholic dark chocolate truffle.  Take a bottle of Guinness Stout and a bottle of Lindeman’s Framboise Ale then pour them — simultaneously — into an iced schooner.  Drink.  Drink.  Burp.  Drink.
7. Strip view.  Grab a spot near the windows and gaze out onto Treasure Island and, if the sun has set, the pirate battle show.