It was a hot summer's happy hour at P.T.'s Pub on Sunset, and I had a vise-grip on this long, tall hefeweisen sweating in front of me, when this guy walked into the bar. He sat down across the corner from me, crammed a 20 into the poker machine, lit up a smoke and ordered a Bud. Before I could hoist my glass, the man, looking like he'd just parked his backhoe, eyed my lemony pint of unfiltered wheat beer suspiciously.
"What kinda drink is that?" he asked, a smirk curled around his cigarette.
"Hefeweisen. It's good," I said, adding a little joke: "And easy on the hangovers."
"I don't worry about hangovers," he snorted. "I just start drinkin' again!"
That was a few years ago, and it was my second encounter with P.T.'s. (The first abruptly climaxed when a woman I had sat down next to sprang off her bar stool and fled for the exit after I uttered the most notorious of all pickup lines: "Hi.") It also was my last. Maybe it wasn't my crowd those two nights, but I generally have a bad reaction to chains anyway, and P.T.'s is the king of that category, with more than 20 links in the Valley. So when my No. 1 barfly buddy suggested I hit P.T.'s Gold on Sunset for my next Bar Exam, I agreed, thinking it might be cleansing to scratch my head over P.T.'s success, if not lament its dull reflection on society.
There was head-scratching all right, because once inside, I realized that the old P.T.'s on Sunset was not of the Gold variety. I was in a P.T.'s "Pub," one of three P.T.'s bar species, and its bartender told me the type I was looking for was a few miles west, across from the airport. The few Gold bars around town are upscale versions, she added, and this new one was especially nice.
I was impressed as soon as I walked through the door. In fact, I had bumped it up from "really nice" to "moderately swanky" before my first drink. I tried to cover up my surprise, but as much as I tried to play hard-to-get, this tasty little lounge saw right through me.
I sat at the rectangular bar that serves as the centerpiece and looked around. Natural light poured in from the big, north windows, with panoramic views of the comings and goings on McCarran's runways and its sleekly handsome Terminal D—one of our city's most underappreciated buildings. Exposed timber trusses held up the vaulted corrugated-steel ceiling. Around its perimeter arched a glimpse of faux wild blue yonder at twilight, and hovering over the bar top were the kind of lamps you'd expect to see above a workbench in a 1940s hanger: galvanized domes of steel with wire cages protecting the bulbs. The blown-up black-and-white photographs of vintage aircraft, including a couple of Howard Hughes in his winged glory days, successfully completed a theme that—shockingly for Vegas—came across gracefully.
Let's call it Retro Airport VIP Lounge. (Who'd have thought that some day there'd be architectural terminology for P.T.'s other than Late 21st-Century Strip Mall Crap?)
And that was before I had seen the Gold's other rooms. There was the little billiards room, whose tables have felt and fringed pockets. And there were two sunny dining areas with booths and high tables flanking my favorite space: an intimate micro-lounge with light-wood wainscoting, wallpaper, carpeting (the rest of the place has treated concrete floors), brown leather couches, and in the center, a large, two-sided fireplace with two embedded flat-screen TVs.
Lastly, a glass door led out front to the patio where, if you just want to enjoy the view and not talk to hard-drinking tradesmen or skittish women, you can relax in steel-mesh chairs amid the roar of McCarran and the rush of Sunset while you wait for the waitress.
And wait. And wait …
But while I waited, I checked out the menu, which emphasizes deep-fried poultry substances such as P.T.'s Exclusive Chicken Fingers Recipe and something I'm also pretty sure is their exclusive idea: "Try Popcorn Chicken on Your Pizza!"
No, thanks. But I'd sure like to try the Sierra Gold …
I ended up going back inside and to the bar, where the minutes passed without a sign of the tender. When she did emerge, she quickly soothed my anxiety by hitting that soft, spongy place in my heart reserved for generously poured samples. The Sierra Gold is good stuff. I ordered a pint and returned to the best new view in Vegas.
But just when I thought P.T.'s was going to seal the deal on its five-star Bar Exam rating by giving me the happy-hour discount that applies to "all domestic beer," I was left asking the tab-bearing waitress, "How could that not qualify as domestic beer? What is it, Sierra Leone Gold?"
No discount on ALL domestic beers during happy hour, no final star. Sorry.
That quibble aside, the only P.T.'s lamenting I'm left to do here, as it turns out, is that I didn't wander into this place sooner. But of course, I can't fault them for not having been built. And besides, this Gold was worth the wait.
Phil Hagen sees Las Vegas the way man was meant to: through the bottom of a glass. E-mail him at [email protected].