The password for The Underground changes every week, and the Mob Museum posts it on Instagram Stories and also prints it on the speakeasy page of its own website, so the hard part of getting in is finding the stairs. The Underground is a speakeasy cocktail bar and working moonshine distillery in the basement of the Mob Museum in Downtown Las Vegas, two blocks north of the Fremont Street Experience, and it has been pouring since April 19, 2018, when the first toast was house moonshine run through an ice sculpture shaped like a coupe.
Through the Side Door at 300 Stewart Avenue
The Mob Museum's building was dedicated on November 11, 1933 as the first federal building in Las Vegas, a U.S. post office and federal courthouse that opened about a month before Prohibition ended, and during the restoration someone found a gin bottle hidden inside a second-floor wall. On November 15, 1950, Senator Estes Kefauver's organized crime committee held the seventh of its 27 hearings in that courtroom, which is now restored as the museum's centerpiece. The museum opened in 2012, and The Underground, which takes up the entire basement, was the last piece of a $9 million renovation.
You can get into The Underground through the museum with a ticket, but you don't need one, and there are no reservations to make. Get the week's password from @mobmuseum_underground on Instagram or the museum's speakeasy page, then walk around to the back corner of the building, where an old wooden barrel in the landscaping marks an unsigned staircase. At the bottom is a dark green door with a buzzer. Press it, give the password and you're in, free.
Flapper Dresses and a Four Deuces Phone Booth
The speakeasy seats 50 around an L-shaped bar with a gold-tiled front, a red damask wall and black ductwork overhead, and the museum carries on between the tables, with exhibit panels on the concrete pillars, flapper dresses, Paul Mares's trumpet and a phone booth from the Four Deuces, Johnny Torrio and Al Capone's Chicago headquarters at 2222 S. Wabash. Behind a secret entrance off the speakeasy is the Fitting Room, a lounge for 10 with oxblood tufted banquettes, Art Deco fan wallpaper and a pressed-copper ceiling, which the museum books for private parties. The distillery is through a sliding barn door, behind glass, with 24 chairs at six tables.
Live jazz is free with the password on Friday and Saturday from 8pm to midnight and on Sunday from 7 to 11pm. October's lineup at The Underground includes Coco & The Sidecars, Jennifer Keith and The Volsteads (about the right name for a band booked into a Prohibition museum).
Moonshine and Light Reading at The Underground, Las Vegas
Every cocktail on The Underground's menu comes with a short history note (the spirits list is just names and prices), and the menu opens with an instruction: "Raise a glass to the past, drink what they drank, and remember–you were never here." Start with the moonshine, which is 100% corn and unaged, made on a custom 60-gallon copper pot still nicknamed the Virginia Still after Bugsy Siegel's girlfriend Virginia Hill, and which the menu says has "notes of buttery, sweet popcorn." The Moonshine of the Museum flight is four of the house moonshines for $25, and three of the cocktails use them: Moonshine Mayhem is House-Distilled Moonshine, Pineapple, Tea, Cardamom ($15), the Italian Crème Soda is The Goodfella's House-Distilled Vanilla Moonshine, Amaretto, Cherry, Cream ($15), and the Preservation Peach is Rye, The Fuzz House-Distilled Peach Moonshine, Cinnamon, Lemon, Sugar, Bitters, Egg Whites ($15).
For gin, try the Aunt Vivian ($16), Gin, Dry Curaçao, Galliano, Orange Bitters, the menu's version of the Alaska from the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book. It's named for a children's program on the radio station owned by Roy Olmstead, a Seattle police lieutenant turned bootlegger, and the program was rumored to carry coded messages to his smugglers. The Bee's Knees is Strawberry-Infused Gin, Lemon, Jalapeño Honey ($15). The Underground Old Fashioned is Bourbon, Vanilla Bean, Brown Sugar, Bitters for $16, or $40 if you want to take home the keepsake, and the menu says it arrives "with some light reading material."
Spirits come in two-ounce pours, with bourbon running from $12 for Maker's Mark to $40 for Little Book and a Benriach 1997 at $90 for the splurge. In September the distillery released 300 Stewart Reserve, a 100% corn straight bourbon aged 37 months in new charred oak and bottled at 90 proof, 1,047 half-bottles at $45.95, and the bar pours it neat or on the rocks while it lasts. For those not drinking, the four zero-proof cocktails are $10 each, including The Test Pilot (Juniper Berry, Elderflower, Cherry, Soda), inspired by the Aviation. You should also order the Spinach & Artichoke Dip ($15), if only for the menu note on Ciro "Artichoke King" Terranova and La Guardia's 1935 artichoke ban.
Hours, Ages and the Distillery Tasting
The Underground is open 11am to 11pm Sunday through Thursday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday, but it closes early for private events on a long list of dates, so check the museum's hours page before you go. The museum's FAQ says that before 5pm anyone can walk through the exhibits, though only guests 21 and over can sit and order, and that after 5pm it's 21 and over only. The speakeasy's own page skips the daytime exception and says access is restricted to ages 21 and over. There's no cover with the password, the museum lists no happy hour, and on jazz nights you'll want to get there early for a table.
The 25-minute Distillery Tasting covers Prohibition and the still before pouring several moonshines, and it comes with the museum's Deluxe or Premier pass (13 and up, 21 to taste). For more of downtown, The Laundry Room and Oak & Ivy are both on Fremont East, and both are in our guide to the best bars in Las Vegas.
Bottles are sold at the bar, from $8.95 for 50ml to $31.95 for a 750ml jar of the signature moonshine. The Margarita Moonshine, new this July and sold only at the museum, is moonshine and lime at 60 proof, with no tequila in it at all.
Photos: The Mob Museum, The Mob Museum, The Mob Museum, Han Zheng (CC BY-SA 2.0), The Mob Museum
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