She’s shaking The Bourbon Room all night long
By Kiko Miyasato
Jennifer Romas
With all the rage for Rock of Ages—the Broadway show, and now the A-list celebrity movie—The Venetian is getting in on all the action with the recently opened Bourbon Room, a homage to the decade of hair-band decadence, a bar that screams all things ’80s. Helping to keep the party train rolling in the rockin’ room is Jennifer Romas, The Bourbon Room’s cocktail entertainment coordinator. If she looks familiar, you might recognize her from America’s Got Talent, where she made it into the top 15. But Romas’ dancing career started long before the television show. She is a dance veteran—gifted in everything from modern, jazz and fire dancing to ballet and ballroom—beginning her career at age 15.
After dancing professionally with a Chicago dance troupe, the Michigan native moved to Vegas in 1997 and has since lit the Strip on fire with her moves, performing in nearly a dozen shows. Today, you can see Romas serving drinks and performing mini choreographed routines along with a cast of more than 20 bartenders and cocktail servers in The Bourbon Room. “We do five different shows a night, six to seven minutes each, a lot of audience participation, really fun stuff, very high-energy,” she said. “I just don’t think there’s really anything like (The Bourbon Room) here … it’s this crazy ’80s, total hair-band experience.” And Romas is right. It’s all Whitesnake, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and, yup, you guessed it, lots of very strong, very delicious bourbon cocktails.
Big Apple
With more than two dozen specialty drinks on the menu (there’s even some moonshine on there), the Big Apple is a stand-out unisex drink that’s like a rock ’n’ roll version of the appletini. The potent but tasty cocktail is mixed with Knob Creek bourbon, apple liqueur, apple purée and then garnished with a thin slice of Granny Smith apple.
