It was a 48-hour non-stop star-studded party over two-nights to celebrate the official grand opening of the new 14,000 square foot Hawaiian Tropic Zone at the Planet Hollywood Miracle Mile.

All eyes were on the scantily clad servers in their Nicole Miller-designed sexy sarong-styled swim suits—and the HTZ girls dance team, who cavort both on outside Strip-front raised platforms and the catwalk right above the restaurant. I had a re-union hello with owner Dennis Reise, who runs a slew of restaurants in New York, and he told me he’s looking forward to this first invasion of our Vegas culinary scene. He recruited culinary king David Burke to create the wild menu. On hand for all the “fun in the sun” were gorgeous Carmen Electra, Entourage stars Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon and Jeremy Piven, Mario Lopez and Stacey Keibler from Dancing with the Stars and reality show stars Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge. They all marveled at the water-wall entrance and the largest video wall anywhere in our valley. Each night there are beauty pageants by the HTZ models where diners can vote for a winner.

The highlight of my night was meeting up again with my long-time friend Ron Rice who started the tanning giant way back when he was just a Florida lifeguard and mixed up a batch of “sun-protection oils” in a clean garbage can! When he discovered he could bake out there for hours without burning, he started selling the concoction. Eventually it grew into a worldwide business which he sold a few months ago for multi-million$.

Now he’s launching a new modeling agency with his daughter, Sterling! Ron told me this is the second HTZ, and in combining a restaurant with nightlife, he hopes for more outlets across America with the next back in his home state of Florida.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 10:23 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.