Trying to get lost at Rumjungle

I've been to Las Vegas a few times since Mandalay Bay opened in 1999, but I'd never made it to Rumjungle, the rum-themed restaurant located next to Red Square, a vodka-themed restaurant with "perestroika-inspired cuisine" and more than 100 vodkas to choose from.

I happened to be in Las Vegas on a quick trip today, and I found myself with a few free hours. So off I went.

Rumjungle sounded tropical, but it's nothing like that at all. No greenery, no Rain Forest Café fauxism. It's all high-tech hipster, with soaring ceilings, lots of glass and chrome, waterwalls accented with fire, and the thump-thump-thump of the sort of electronic music you hear at Miami Beach tee-shirt shops.

I went early, before the beautiful people came out, and I grabbled a seat at the bar, which is a bubbly resin backlit a lime-green color.

Naturally, I was more interested in the rum. My bartender, sadly, was not. He was very pleasant, almost to the point of jovial, but he didn't know much about hundred-plus types of rum they stocked. When I asked what was moving, he confided, "aged rums," because they're supposed to have more flavor. I pressed a bit further, and he said they often served Pyrat and Zaya to people unfamiliar with rum, because that opened their eyes to the possibilities. Well, that was encouraging at least.

When I asked for suggestions about a classic style cocktail made with one of those aged rums he'd heard about, he didn't have any suggestions for me. So I consulted the menu. The good news was that they had lots and lots of rums – starting at $9 per shot, with most about $12 to $14. Many were aged. The bad news was that their cocktail menu was woefully uninspired, with lots of drinks featuring flavored rums (all called "infused rums" on the bar menu), fruit juices and Coco Lopez. I ordered a rum old-fashioned, which was adequately prepared, if a bit heavy on the bitters.

More discouraging to me were the flights of rums. Three variations on Pyrat rum were offered at $65, but most flights were $20 and consisted of four or five samples. For instance, you could get a Captain Morgan flight, a Cruzan flavored rum flight, and a Bacardi flight (Barcardi Limon, O, Anejo, Coco, Vanila). Or, if your tastebuds were that numb, you could go next door and swill vodka.

The best part about Rumjungle was the soaring wall of backlit rum bottles behind the bar. I know this is now a design cliché in the bar world, but I liked seeing all that rum. While sitting bathed in the Martian glow of the bar, I could be a rum tourist, traveling with my eyes from island to island, and distillery to distillery.

Rumjungle: so close, yet so far. It could use a little peristroika.