by Alia Akkam
No. 10
Bloody Mary
KING COLE BAR AT ST REGIS NEW YORK, USA
INGREDIENTS
30 ml (1 fl oz) vodka
60 ml (2 fl oz) tomato juice
1 dash of freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 pinches of celery salt
2 pinches of black pepper
2 pinches of cayenne pepper
3 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
lemon wedge, to garnish
METHOD
Combine the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a highball glass filled with ice cubes and garnish with a lemon wedge.
Wealthy John Jacob Astor IV, the tycoon who perished in the Titanic disaster, opened The St Regis New York in 1904. The Beaux-Arts showcase of marble and Waterford crystal chandeliers was situated in a then-residential area of the city, much to the dismay of Vanderbilt Row denizens. If you’re seated at King Cole Bar, which opened at the St Regis in 1932, it is likely that the expertly made drink placed before you will be a Bloody Mary, a cocktail that is often undeservedly reserved for brunch-time feasting.
King Cole Bar is considered the post-Prohibition birthplace of the Bloody Mary, or rather the ‘Red Snapper’. When the drink debuted here, it was given this more dignified name to appease to the hotel’s highfalutin guests. It’s stuck ever since.
As a rite of passage, the signature drink can be ordered any time of the evening, simply dressed with lemon and shorn of celery stalks, pickle spears and olives – those clunky, intrusive garnishes that all too commonly mar a Bloody Mary these days.
Drink lore aside, the room stuns with a Maxfield Parrish mural hanging above the bar, its saturated hues bringing to life Old King Cole, that ‘merry old soul’ eternalised in nursery rhymes. Originally commissioned for Astor’s Knickerbocker Hotel, the painting’s throne-ensconced king, underscoring Astor’s bravado, bears the hotelier’s likeness.
FERNAND PETIOT, SUPPOSED INVENTOR OF THE TOMATO JUICE AND VODKA COCKTAIL, FIRST STARTED SERVING IT TO HIS GENTEEL GUESTS AT KING COLE BAR IN 1934. IT WAS CHRISTENED THE ‘RED SNAPPER’ – A FAR MORE ELEGANT ALTERNATIVE TO THE GAUCHE ‘BLOODY MARY’.
No. 11
Loisaida Avenue
THE NOMAD AND ELEPHANT BARS AT THE NOMAD HOTEL, NEW YORK, USA
Created by Leo Rabitschek
INGREDIENTS
15 ml (½ fl oz) simple syrup
15 ml (½ fl oz) green Chartreuse
25 ml (¾ fl oz) freshly squeezed lemon juice
25 ml (¾ fl oz) Sombra mezcal
25 ml (¾ fl oz) Jalapeño-Infused Tequila*
1 dash of Angostura bitters, to garnish
*For the Jalapeño-Infused Tequila (makes 750 ml/25 fl oz):
3 medium-sized jalapeños, diced
1 x 750 ml (25 fl oz) bottle Excellia Blanco tequila
METHOD
For the Jalapeño-Infused Tequila, steep the jalapeños and tequila in a container for 5 minutes. Taste the mixture to ensure that the spice level is to your taste; if you prefer a spicier end product, allow to steep for longer. Strain into a sterilised airtight container and store in the refrigerator indefinitely.
To make the cocktail, combine all the ingredients except the bitters in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a Nick & Nora glass, then top the cocktail with a dash of Angostura bitters.
Hospitality hit-makers, Sydell Group (The Line, The Ned, Saguaro), first wowed New Yorkers with the NoMad – a revamped, turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts building in Manhattan’s Madison Square North neighbourhood – in 2012. Even if visitors don’t get a peek into the Jacques Garcia-designed guest rooms, reminiscent of a Parisian pied-à-terre with free-standing clawfoot bathtubs and velvet- and-damask-patterned screens, there is the dimly-lit library to gawk at – a spiral staircase imported from the South of France connecting its two floors of wall-to-wall tomes. There is also the eponymous restaurant, home to a storied chicken-for-two stuffed with black truffle and brioche foie gras.
The NoMad Bar, which has the air of a gussied-up tavern and serves dry-aged beef burgers to match, and The Elephant Bar – a swirl of mahogany and leather that invites multiple nightcaps – are just as romantic, swelling with both hotel guests and locals seeking out some of the city’s most finely wrought cocktails. With a flair for the savoury, these creations deftly incorporate ingredients such as olive oil-infused tequila, sheep’s milk yoghurt and horseradish. Despite the growth of the NoMad brand, since expanding into Los Angeles, Las Vegas and London, the New York original thankfully feels at once timeless and energised.
SPOTLIGHT:
WORDS FROM THE WISE
a few industry heavyweights wax on about hotel bars
HOTEL BAR MAGIC
‘Historically, the hotel was simply a place in which to rest; a place just for hotel guests. Now, however, the hotel has become a social hub; a place where everyone can gather. This is largely thanks to the hotel bar, which universally appeals. The legendary bars of the roaring twenties provided a blueprint for hotel bars: approachable and comfortable, yet incredibly glamorous and with a hint of intrigue. I’ve always sought to make the hotel bar feel special and a destination in its own right. By incorporating aspects such as a separate entrance and a concept that feels different from the rest of the hotel, the hotel bar is unique and appealing; it’s a place of excitement.’
Martin Brudnizki, London- and New York-based founder of Martin Brudnizksi Design Studio, which has handled such bars as The Coral Room at The Bloomsbury Hotel in London; The Bar Room at The Beekman, A Thompson Hotel, in New York; and Doyle at the Dupont Circle hotel in Washington, DC.
‘Part of the allure of hotel bars is that anything is possible. There is an extra level of intrigue with the mix of people who have been here before, are enjoying the freedom of travel, or shaking off a workday far away from their community. There is more of an openness to talk to a neighbour, or be adventurous with a drink order. I sometimes get the sense that people are trying out a different version of themselves. At Dear Irving on Hudson it is a big part of our philosophy to remember the first trip we saved up for, knowing that we are going to see many people visiting NYC for the first time who cannot truly be themselves at home, but here there is a possibility of feeling fulfilled, even for just a day or two. The desire to be a positive impact on or memory of that trip is part of what motivates us. Hotel bars are also a landing point for guests on their way back in, so we get a report of their adventures while they mellow out over a nightcap.’
Meaghan Dorman, New York-based bar director at Raines Law Room and Dear Irving, as well as Raines Law Room at The William hotel and Dear Irving on Hudson at the Aliz Hotel Times Square.
‘For me, opening a tiki bar in a hotel was an act of resurrection: back during tiki’s golden age in the 1950s and 60s, some of the best tiki places were in hotels. The Trader Vic’s chain had restaurants in Hiltons across the US and Europe; the Kon-Tiki Ports chain opened lavish, multi-million-dollar Polynesian palaces, complete with dining room waterfalls and lagoons, in Sheraton hotels; and even Marriott hotels had their own tiki chain, the Kona Kai. Being in a hotel can be a transporting experience, so being in a tiki bar inside a hotel can be doubly so.’
Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry, author, historian and owner of Latitude 29 at Bienville House Hotel in New Orleans.
‘Grupo Habita, without even knowing it, invented the pool rooftop bar in 2000. Before the Standard, Downtown LA, Soho House New York or Fasano in Rio, we had discovered a new way of drinking. It all started in Mexico City – a bar on the roof next to a pool and a great party scene. Not only did the bar at Hotel Habita, with its huge projection screen on the wall of the building across the street, change the way we partied in Mexico City, but it also inspired other hotel groups to change the way they designed and conceived nightlife. Bars went from dark and underground to outdoors, on top of buildings and around a pool. The trend has not stopped since. For us, it takes
four ingredients to make a great bar: unique lighting, inventive drinks, good music and a sexy crowd. Its success has little to do with design. Our hotels are known for their great energy. We reinvent ourselves every time.’
Carlos Couturier, managing partner at the Mexico City-based boutique hotel developer and operator, Grupo Habita.
‘There is a sense of anonymity at a hotel bar. Even if you’re somewhat of a regular travelling through a few times a year, it’s certainly not your neighbourhood bar. You are who you say you are. You drink slightly differently. You’re not afraid to order your favourite classic, yet off-the-beaten-path cocktail. You have confidence in your bartender. Surprisingly, having been of service to famous entertainers and politicians for many years, it’s my experiences with guests whose families had history connected to Waldorf Astoria New York that stay with me the most – the more personal stories: someone whose grandparents met at the clock in the lobby on a blind date; a married couple who met by chance at a charity ballroom event; a now-successful businessman whose initial meetings were held in the lobby because he had not yet been able to afford an office; none of these events could have happened at many other locales.’
Frank Caiafa, author and beverage director at The Stayton Room inside Lexington Hotel, Autograph Collection, in New York, and former bar manager of Peacock Alley and La Chine at Waldorf Astoria New York.
‘I believe that Bemelmans thrived not solely because of the success of the cocktail programme, but because internally the interpersonal energy within the room had grown into a very supportive, positive one. I believe that real hospitality begins at home, with the very people that you work alongside every day. It was my first time working with a union, which in Manhattan dictated the type of service that was provided to guests. Bemelmans was staffed with older gentlemen who had all been working there together for many years; two of them for over 50 years, one having served President Truman. It is the depth of concern and care that you show to the people you work with that I believe has allowed my teams to thrive and become successes in their own right over the years. I took care of those gents as if they were my own flesh and blood. I gave them honesty, trust and humanity, and in turn they did exactly the same for me.’
Audrey Saunders, owner of New York’s former Pegu Club and former beverage director at Bemelmans Bar.
unique lighting
...
inventive drinks
...
good music
...
a sexy crowd
No. 12
Passion Royale
BEMELMANS BAR AT THE CARLYLE, NEW YORK, USA
INGREDIENTS
90 ml (3 fl oz) X-Rated Fusion Liqueur
Canard-Duchêne Champagne, to top up
¼ lime, for squeezing
METHOD
Fill a chilled Martini glass with a handful of crushed ice and pour in the passion fruit vodka. Add a splash of Canard-Duchêne Champagne and squeeze in the lime, leaving the squeezed lime in the cocktail to garnish.
Ludwig Bemelmans is undoubtedly best known for Madeline, the darling children’s book series he launched in 1939, starring a fearless little red-headed protagonist. The Austrian-born author and illustrator was also quite a talented painter – in exchange for lodging, in the mid-1940s he was commissioned to cover the walls of The Carlyle hotel’s new bar in playful murals. The hotel opened in 1931 and Bemelmans’ balloon- and striped-umbrella-strewn paintings evoke a charmed Central Park, weaving together vignettes such as a tie-donning rabbit smoking a cigar, while providing a light-hearted juxtaposition to such Art-Deco accoutrements as the black glass and gold leaf ceiling.
Bemelmans Bar, as it was fittingly named, was unveiled in 1947. It is the only place where it’s still possible for the public to take a gander at the artist’s work. It’s also one of the few joints where the Upper East Side feels gloriously frozen in time, with ‘Vespers’, ‘Luxury Sidecars’ and ‘Whiskey Smashes’ ordered over and over again by the loyal locals who, after a night of cabaret at the hotel’s Café Carlyle, sink into one of the leather banquettes for a last piano-accentuated hurrah.
No. 13
Macadamia Nut Sour
BACCHUS PIANO LOUNGE AT WEDGEWOOD HOTEL & SPA, VANCOUVER
INGREDIENTS
40 ml (1¼ fl oz) macadamia nut liqueur
25 ml (¾ fl oz) freshly squeezed lemon juice
15 ml (½ fl oz) simple syrup
1 egg white
2 dashes of Angostura bitters
1 Guinette cherry, to garnish
METHOD
Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and dry shake, then add ice to the shaker and shake vigorously. Strain into a rocks glass and garnish with a Guinette cherry.
It was 1984 when the late Eleni Skalbania, a native of Greece, opened the Wedgewood Hotel & Spa in downtown Vancouver. Here, across from the Vancouver Art Gallery and the then-new civic hub Robson Square, dignitaries and celebrities could discreetly check in to a European-style hotel that felt as cosy as a Cotswolds’ manor house. More than 35 years later, the family-run Wedgewood, with its fringed lampshades, upholstered furniture, stash of antiques and heaps of cherry wood, hasn’t lost any of that enticing grace.
Bacchus Piano Lounge – the more relaxed, yet no less elegant, zone of Bacchus, the restaurant where West-Coast ingredients get the French treatment – greets visitors with a large oil painting depicting the Roman god of wine and hedonism, for whom the bar is named. During the day, the lounge’s sinuous red booths are filled with patrons partaking in lavish afternoon tea. Come evening, it’s the roster of classic cocktails that gets attention, sipped to the sounds of nightly live music. Martinis, such as the stand-in-for-dessert ‘Red Satin Slip’ with vodka, raspberry liqueur, cranberry and lime, are plentiful.
When three young and audacious former school chums opened Experimental Cocktail Club in Paris in 2007, it unleashed a forward-thinking cocktail culture in a city where such glories had largely been confined to genteel hotels. Similar bars soon sprang up in London and New York before the collective expanded to hotels, including Grand Pigalle in Paris and the Henrietta in London’s Covent Garden. Experimental Group now includes a Verbier chalet, a Venetian palazzo and a Menorcan finca; and it’s not surprising that all of these disparate settings put the startling cocktails for which the hospitality group is known at the forefront. Contemporary concepts such as these are flowering (and welcomed) across the continent. Even London – a city with particular classic cocktail gravitas – is wide open to astonishing guests with unpredictably well-executed creations. But the proud old girls, the bars that are portals into bygone days of pocket squares, Scotch-sipping tycoons and bronzed celebrities necking on terraces, are gratefully as confident as ever.
No. 14
Hanky Panky
AMERICAN BAR AT THE SAVOY, LONDON, UK
Created by Ada Coleman
INGREDIENTS
45 ml (1½ fl oz) London Dry Gin
45 ml (1½ fl oz) sweet red vermouth
7.5 ml (¼ fl oz) Fernet Branca
orange twist, to garnish
METHOD
Stir all the ingredients together in a mixing glass filled with ice. Strain into a coupe glass and finish with an orange twist.
One peep at the Thames Foyer, with its gazebo and patrons sat down to afternoon tea underneath the glass-domed atrium, and it’s clear that The Savoy – former playground for the likes of Sarah Bernhardt, George Gershwin and Judy Garland and the first London hotel to feature lifts that were hydraulically operated – is every bit as luminous as when theatrical impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte opened the hotel in 1889. A year later, famed hotelier César Ritz joined him as general manager. One of the most tempting reasons to pop into the Edwardian-meets-Art-Deco hotel in theatre-packed Covent Garden is the grand-piano-shaped American Bar, going strong since the 1890s (1904 in this location).
Drink-slinging females were a rarity in 1903, when Ada Coleman was named head bartender, yet
she held that post for over two decades. Together with Harry Craddock, the bartender who compiled the recipes for The Savoy Cocktail Book, which published in 1930, they moulded the American Bar’s reputation. In more recent years, bartenders like Peter Dorelli and Erik Lorincz ensured that it was preserved. Do try a drink from the ‘Savoy Songbook’, a modern-day tribute to musicians such as Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley, then order a ‘White Lady’ from the vintage menu. Heightened by the pianist in the background, it’s a jolt of old-fashioned romance.
COLEMAN FIRST STARTED SERVING DRINKS AT CLARIDGE’S BEFORE MAKING HER WAY OVER TO THE EQUALLY STYLISH SAVOY’S BRAND-NEW AMERICAN BAR. AS HEAD BARTENDER – NO SMALL ACCOMPLISHMENT IN AN ERA WHEN WOMEN WERE DEEMED MERE ‘BAR-MAIDS’ – THE THEATRE-LOVING ‘COLEY’, AS SHE WAS KNOWN, TENDED TO CELEBRITY GUESTS LIKE THE PRINCE OF WALES AND MARK TWAIN WITH GREAT SKILL AND HUMOUR FOR 23 YEARS. HER MOST FAMOUS CREATION IS UNDOUBTEDLY THE HANKY PANKY, WHICH WAS MADE WHEN SIR CHARLES HAWTREY SAID TO HER ‘I’M HALF DEAD; WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE ME FEEL QUITE ALIVE’. THE FOLLOWING EVENING SIR CHARLES RETURNED AND ASKED FOR…
‘some more of that hanky-panky’.
No. 15
White Mouse
THE AMERICAN BAR AT THE STAFFORD LONDON, UK
INGREDIENTS
50 ml (1¾ fl oz) Gabriel Boudier Saffron Gin
25 ml (¾ fl oz) freshly squeezed lemon juice
15 ml (½ fl oz) Rosemary Syrup*
10 ml (⅓ fl oz) egg white
Champagne, to top up
fresh rosemary sprig, to garnish
*For the Rosemary Syrup
500 ml (17 fl oz) water
