It was the place to be. On a recent Saturday night at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Scott Conant surveyed the scene inside D.O.C.G., one of his two Italian restaurants in the 7-month-old Strip property. The house was packed, the atmosphere electric. Smiling as he weaved in and out of the aisles, the New York-based celebrity chef chatted up diners about their meals and his TV career (he's a judge on the Food Network's "Chopped" and "24-Hour Restaurant Battle" reality cooking shows).
Across the lobby at Jaleo, an outpost of Jose Andres' popular tapas restaurant, patrons animatedly conversed as they sipped and supped. On this night, every eatery on the third floor's aptly named Restaurant Row buzzed with energy.
Ditto for the entire Cosmopolitan. Seven months after it opened, the place was still rocking, from the bars to the pool (although the casino was only half full).
If the prognosticators are right and Cosmopolitan is the last property that will be built on the Strip for the next five to 10 years, then the megaresort boom that began with the Mirage's 1989 opening has ended on a high note. Despite costing nearly twice as much as the Palazzo and Wynn Las Vegas, the Cosmopolitan opened with half their buzz: no media crews coming in from around the globe, no parade of celebrities heralding its arrival.
And yet in some ways, the Cosmopolitan feels more progressive than either of those luxe properties. Sure, it has buzzworthy twists: a three-story bar inside a chandelier, a hidden pizzeria. But it's a megaresort of a different scale, primarily because it eschews scale. It occupies one-eighth the acreage of MGM Resorts International's neighboring 67-acre CityCenter. As such, its amenities are spread up, not out (gaming, retail and dining are on separate floors), making it easily navigable and, as I would soon discover, fun to explore.
Born amid strife
The Cosmopolitan almost never made it to opening day. Construction began in October 2005, at a time when Strip mega-resorts practically minted money. MGM Resorts (then MGM Mirage) had begun building CityCenter next door. Boyd Gaming planned its own multibillion-dollar minimetropolis, Echelon Place, farther north. The term "condo-hotel" entered the local lexicon. With its private terraces, the Cosmopolitan promised a residential lifestyle in the heart of the Strip.
Then, in late 2007, the economy began to tank. Visitor volume dropped. So did tourism revenue. Projects got scrapped. The Cosmopolitan's funding dried up. Lenders foreclosed in March 2008. That August, Germany-based Deutsche Bank paid $1 billion for the half-built property. Over the next two years, the bank injected $2 billion more to handle excavation issues, major interior redesigns and litigation.
CityCenter's December 2009 opening added 7,000 rooms to a supply-stacked inventory. To sell its 2,995 rooms, Cosmopolitan's staff traveled the globe and its marketing staff produced slick, eyebrow-raising commercials targeted at what CEO John Unwin called the "curious class": periodic visitors eager to experience something new. When I interviewed him last year, General Manager Arthur Keith said the Cosmopolitan would fuse the luxury found at the Bellagio and the Wynn with twists never before seen in Vegas.
Believe the hype
For the most part, the Cosmopolitan delivers on Arthur's promise. I was amazed and amused at all there was to see, discover, experience and taste, starting with the three-story Chandelier Bar. Inventive and quirky, the bar features a different experience on each floor: classic bar on the bottom level, upscale bar on the interior second floor, lounge at the top.
I'd heard about the eight columns wrapped with mirrors and LCD screens in the west lobby. The columns produce stunningly surreal videos and images (fruit and the seasons during my stay). I was equally impressed with the 40-foot LED sign overlooking the pool district. Platinum-selling rapper Nas and Damian Marley, son of reggae legend Bob Marley, performed that weekend to a packed crowd at Boulevard Pool, one of the resort's three pools and the only resort pool with views of the Strip.
As for the rooms, the residential-style accommodations and high-end accoutrements -- plasma TVs, marble-floored bathrooms with Japanese soaking tubs -- were unpretentiously classy.
The private terraces offer a unique-for-the-Strip experience. Each room has one, a remnant of Cosmopolitan's initial design as a condo-hotel. The sight lines are amazing. Depending on whether you're in the east or west tower, you can see the Bellagio's fountains, CityCenter, the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas and Planet Hollywood's pool. My only complaint: It was hard to get a good night's sleep because of the thumping bass emanating from Cosmopolitan's popular Marquee nightclub (nearly an hour-long wait to get in on the nights I was there).
A lot to experience
It's been a long time since I've had this much fun trying new restaurants. Most of the concepts are new to the market, which made for exciting and intriguing dining. The steak at French brasserie Comme Ca, from Michelin-starred Los Angeles chef David Myers, was meltingly tender and succulent. I devoured the lobster tacos at China Poblano, Jose Andres' Chinese-Mexican fusion restaurant, completely forgetting that these two cuisines seem diametrically opposed.
The pizzeria was an amazing find -- once I found it, that is. There are neither advertising signs nor directional arrows pointing you in the right direction. A security guard tipped me that it was on the third floor. And there it was, next to the Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar and cloaked by a random hallway.
The guard also recommended I check out Art-O-Mat, a refurbished cigarette machine that dispenses original, miniature works of art such as jewelry, prints, paintings and sculptures. And thanks to the resort's collaboration with the New York-based Art Production Fund, walls in the B2, B3, B4 and B5 parking garages bear murals by underground graffiti artists.
On the entertainment side, the Cosmopolitan has made a splash with concerts from Grammy Award-winning rappers Lauryn Hill and Jay-Z and Grammy-winning rock band Coldplay as well as boxing matches.
Visit www.cosmopolitanlasvegas.com.