Jonathan L.
Yelp
Summary for the busy executive: Meh. The view here is stellar, the decor is cool, and the go-go dancers are sexy. And that's about it.
This review is for the bar/"nightclub" (if you use the term very, very loosely) only. I have not eaten at the restaurant.
The Foundation room sits 63 floors in the air, at the top of the Mandalay Bay. Its most striking feature is its long balcony. Since the bar sits on the far south end of the Strip with no netting or glass, the view is in fact really impressive. You can see the large resorts in their neon glory, and you also get a commanding view of the east side of the Vegas valley.
You pay for the privilege of looking out over this expanse. It costs $20 per person to access the elevator. On the night that I visited, ladies were free, and the bar gave free drink coupons to every visitor. Since I am a Vegas local, they gave me two coupons for free "well" drinks or standard wine/beer options, and they gave my lady companion a ticket for a free champagne or vodka based cocktail. This might seem cute to the management, but it wasn't cute to my companion, who is a bourbon gal, and who found the "lady drink" idea to be a bit sexist.
Still, the free drink coupons did make the $20 elevator ride easy to swallow, since they more than balanced out the cost. Drinks at this bar are staggeringly expensive, as they are at most Strip locales. When I ordered a Maker's Mark on the rocks, the bartender initially said that the charge was $21 (that's about 3x a standard price in a normal Vegas bar off-Strip). So one free drink coupon paid for the elevator charge exactly, and the two additional free coupons made it a pretty good deal, honestly.
The decor is pretty swanky. It has a Victorian vibe, with velvet and gilding and a big wooden bar. Southeast Asian decorations and go-go dancers scantily clad in pseudo Egyptian costumes lend more flair; one might imagine oneself in 1960s San Francisco. Velvet couches and quasi private rooms flank the main bar area.
As cool as it seems initially, there are serious flaws at the Foundation Room that make it a definite once-and-never-again experience.
The room's size is a major issue for what they're trying to do. They want to appeal to the 20-something crowd with a "nightclub" atmosphere with bottle service and dancing and the like. But the space is really too small for such an approach. It would make an awesome cozy and romantic bar. As a dance and party venue, it's so tiny that it could feel claustrophobic.
More damning is the extremely poor decision not to provide any seating to customers who haven't bought bottle service. No barstools. No patio seating. No high tops. Nothing. Given that all of the outdoor tables were vacant and most of the indoor ones were also not taken while I was there, it was pretty irritating to stand at the crowded bar and out on the balcony, drink in hand. This is definitely a poor place for a date. My wife in high heels was unimpressed.
Even worse, and really unforgivable, is the bar stock. Once again, the early-20s crowd is obviously the target audience here, and management must think that people that age have pedestrian tastes. Want a Rusty Nail? Sorry: they don't have Drambuie. Want a sloe gin fizz, even without egg whites? No luck, since they don't have sloe gin. Want a high proof bourbon? Nope. What they *can* do is sell you a single Jack Daniel's serving for the price of a bottle, or a whole bottle of Absolut for the price of a video game console. By Vegas bar standards, where you can basically get everything you want everywhere, this bar sucks.
On the up side, the bartenders were amazingly fast and super polite. The tourist clientele was wowed by the views, and the party atmosphere was fun for a 30-minute drink.
But as a local, I won't be back here (and I won't be recommending it to my out-of-town guests) unless the Foundation Room gets some bar stools and stocks their liquor shelves.