Behind the Bar Read online

  TITLE PAGE

  INTRODUCTION

  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

  THE RECIPES

  HOTEL CONTACTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INDEX

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  GET TO KNOW STAND-OUT HOTEL BARS FROM AROUND THE WORLD, AND THEIR RECIPES FOR LIBATIONS THAT YOU CAN WHIP UP AT YOUR HOME BAR WITH EASE.

  KOLLÁZS, the restaurant inside the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace Budapest, has its own entrance, but when I visit I prefer to reach it through the lobby. This way I can look up at the restored glass cupola overhead and the mosaic tiles at my feet, savouring a taste of what the building was like when it first opened at the beginning of the 20th century. I make my way past the waiters, scuttling across the floor with plates of the signature octopus, scallop and sausage atop a bed of paprika potatoes, to the circular bar dominating one side of the dining room. I sit down – as I often do – alone, yet surrounded by strangers.

  There is banter with the bartenders, eventually leading to a beautiful cocktail set before me, and then, as my thoughts drift, I find calm in the anonymity. None of the people around me know who I am. Here, I can really be anyone – the person I want them to think I am, the person I might still become.

  Certainly, I find comfort in a no-frills neighbourhood bar, too – watching the same locals order the same too-chilled glasses of white wine from the same surly barman – but I know I am not the only one who relishes the hotel bar for the enigmatic aura it conjures, for its power to instil in you the child-like belief in kismet you thought was long gone. Spending the night in a swank hotel room is a fleeting, glamorous experience and the hotel bar, heightened by the knowledge that there is an endless parade of guests slipping in and out of the sumptuous king-size beds above, is just as seductive a setting; the stream of possibilities just as infinite. That is why I wrote this book: to celebrate 50 of the world’s finest hotel bars – some of which you might never have heard of – and their distinctive and colourful legacies.

  In the 1920s, when some American bartenders fled to Europe in the wake of Prohibition, hotel bars were hotspots, places where celebrities and the well-heeled convened. Much of that magic still clings to certain properties and is cleverly reinterpreted at others. To understand the pull of the hotel bar, however, one must understand the evolution of the hotel.

  Bill Kimpton opened the Clarion Bedford Hotel in San Francisco in 1981 (the first location of his soon-to-thrive Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, known for its gratis ‘Wine Hour’ receptions, animal-print bathrobes, and friendly, informal service in every location) and the era of the boutique hotel was unofficially born. Three years later, Ian Schrager and his late business partner Steve Rubell, the genius New York club kings behind Studio 54 and later The Palladium, elevated the model on the East Coast and unveiled the see-and-be-seen-at Morgans New York. At this minimalist Andrée-Putman-designed hotel, the lobby was no longer a utilitarian check-in point, but a sizzling social hub. A similar velvet rope kind of flash (coincidentally the velvet rope, that ubiquitous form of crowd control, was brought to new heights at Studio 54 in the late 70s to ward off the riffraff) engulfed the avant-garde Royalton, Schrager and Rubell’s next New York hotel (the first designed by the madcap Philippe Starck) in 1988. Three years later still, Gerber Group debuted The Whiskey bar at Schrager’s Paramount Hotel and the perception of hotels as sources of electrifying nightlife was sealed.

  Other milestones include the first of Chip Conley’s Joie de Vivre hotels, which premiered in San Francisco (the brand is no longer Conley’s; it’s now part of the Hyatt portfolio); André Balazs readied Chateau Marmont for the scandalous Hollywood set; and Claus Sendlinger, keen to give small, good-looking hotels a voice, co-founded Design Hotels in 1993. W Hotels and Standard Hotels both arrived on the scene in 1998, giving young party people even more chances to romp around in style. A year later, the first Ace Hotel – a magnet for the on-a-budget creative class – was spawned from a one-time Seattle halfway house. All of these brands exhibited a different ethos, but their commitment to unconventionality was the common thread, proving that hotels could be memorable, not mundane. They placed a premium on design and, through their bars, they mesmerised the local community as much as the short-lived nomads. No longer did a hotel bar seem out-of-touch – the domain of the bejewelled affluent – nor did it remain the dingy domain of the business traveller who came around for perfunctory pours of bourbon.

  The rise of the boutique hotel coincided with a universal shift in cocktails, from the morass of artificially flavoured mixers, soda guns and too-sweet drinks that were par for the course in the 1970s and 80s, to the made-from-scratch mindset that is fortunately abundant today.

  As so much of the soulful past gives way to the slick and the bland, it’s an important time to honour the bars that have survived the ages, the ones chock-full of character even if their drinks aren’t the most ravishing, and the stirring ‘modern classics’ that may not have a long heritage bolstering their names, but flaunt quality in spades.

  STAND OUT

  Hotels

  from the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific

  ACCOMPANIED BY

  Cocktail recipes

  directly from their bars

  THE INS AND OUTS OF THE BOOK

  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

  On these pages, you will get to know stand-out hotels from the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific accompanied by recipes directly from their bars. Some are straightforward, some are more time-consuming and complex, but with a little patience you should be able to track down most ingredients.

  Although I mention how a bar specifically makes the drinks, I also note when they’ve been adapted in this book for the reader’s ease. Likewise, many of the establishments call for the use of a particular brand in their creations. I have pointed these out to honour the bars’ recipes – and the bartender’s preference for a product – but if you can’t track down a bottle that isn’t widely available, don’t fret; you can swap in, say, another whisky as you see fit.

  In the book you will constantly see simple syrup listed as an ingredient. It’s a breeze to whip this up at home, and the same version can be applied to any cocktail that asks for it. A building block to numerous drinks, it’s essentially sugar water, melding one part sugar with one part water (if this standard measurement varies, it’s noted in the respective recipes). To achieve this convenient 1:1 ratio, simply combine a cup of water with a cup of granulated sugar in a saucepan. Bring them to a boil and stir together until dissolved over a medium heat, then measure out the amount noted in the recipe. After making a round of cocktails, store the remainder of the syrup in a glass jar for up to two weeks in the refrigerator until the next batch beckons.

  Armed with a basic bar tool kit – shaker, strainer, jigger, bar spoon, muddler, ice tongs – you should be well on your way to hosting a boozy dinner party.

  Finally, interspersed throughout the book are feature spreads that will give you a deeper understanding of hotel bar culture.

  In 1954, bartender Ramón ‘Monchito’ Marrero was credited with creating the holiday-in-a-glass Piña Colada at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The rum libation, with coconut cream, double (heavy) cream, pineapple juice and crushed ice was transporting, and exactly the kind of thrill bar-goers of the past looked forward to having brighten their long-planned vacations. Marrero’s Piña Colada isn’t the only cocktail rumoured to have been invented at a hotel bar, but its simplicity underscores the basic desires of guests and how hotels are well poised to fulfil them.

  The cocktail craze that took hold in the States during the 2000s, and naturally spread north to Canada and
south to Latin America, has yet to loosen its grip, and the bar stock in this region, including those in hotels, is much better for it. Bartenders use stellar ingredients now, and just like that 1950s Piña Colada did, a perfectly sculpted sphere of ice and piquant homemade syrups are what bring smiles these days. Hotel bars in the Americas may possess a certain razzle-dazzle, but the good ones know it’s only one part of the game.

  No. 1

  Pisco Sour

  BAR INGLÉS AT COUNTRY CLUB LIMA HOTEL, LIMA, PERU

  INGREDIENTS

  120 ml (4 fl oz) pure Quebranta pisco

  30 ml (1 fl oz) freshly squeezed lemon juice

  30 ml (1 fl oz) simple syrup

  dash of egg white

  Angostura bitters, to garnish

  METHOD

  Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled goblet and add 1–2 drops of Angostura bitters to garnish.

  When it opened in 1927, Country Club Lima Hotel resembled a sweeping Spanish colonial mansion – a style that was then very much in vogue among Lima’s high-society circles, despite Peru’s liberation from Spain in the 1820s. Located in the fashionable San Isidro neighbourhood, it was once complete with a circa-1940s polo field and, in its heyday, it lured in luminaries such as Nelson Rockefeller, Ava Gardner and John Wayne, who first met his third wife here. If they hobnobbed, they likely all did so with a Pisco Sour by their side in the wood-panelled Bar Inglés, which calls to mind an English gentlemen’s club.

  Years later, Peru’s frothy flagship cocktail remains the go-to drink order, but curious tipplers may want those still-dapper bartenders to pour them another pisco specialty for their second round, such as the refreshing ‘Chilcano’ with ginger ale, or the ‘Chicha Sour’ brightened by Peruvian purple corn.

  A Peruvian history lesson isn’t taught solely at the bar but throughout the property. Three hundred pieces of colonial art donated by the Pedro de Osma Museum delineate the country’s vast artistic legacy, along with the murals illuminating Andean textiles that hang over the guest-room beds.

  No. 2

  Carioca Iced Tea

  POOL BAR AT BELMOND COPACABANA PALACE, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

  INGREDIENTS

  20 ml (⅔ fl oz) cachaça

  20 ml (⅔ fl oz) vodka

  20 ml (⅔ fl oz) gin

  20 ml (⅔ fl oz) freshly squeezed lemon juice

  20 ml (⅔ fl oz) simple syrup

  50 ml (1¾ fl oz) freshly brewed tea (the bar uses mate, but any chilled, citrus-forward black tea would work)

  mint leaves and lemon twist, to garnish

  METHOD

  Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Strain into a collins or highball glass filled with ice, then garnish with mint leaves and a lemon twist.

  Illustrious dancing duo Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were first paired together on screen in Flying Down to Rio, a 1933 musical-comedy-romance that introduced audiences to both the forehead-touching dance craze ‘Carioca’, and the notion of Rio de Janeiro as a cinematic South-American getaway. At the centre of this fantasy is the Copacabana Palace.

  Now Belmond Copacabana Palace, the hotel opened in 1923, directly across from its beautiful (soon to be world-famous) namesake beach. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style by French architect Joseph Gire, it attracted jet-setters eager to soak up luxe tropical vibes – Orson Welles, Brigitte Bardot and Mick Jagger all holed up here over the years. And a conversation at the hotel between Barry Manilow and lyricist Bruce Sussman supposedly sparked their 1978 hit song ‘Copacabana’. The domed Golden Room, where Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole once performed, is now a private events venue, but the spectacular swimming pool is still cloaked in Old World glamour. At the Pool Bar, libations feature Brazilian ingredients such as white cachaça mixed with guarana, a cumaru-fruit-infused-gin Negroni, and a cashew-pulp Bellini.

  No. 3

  Hotel Nacional Riff

  HOTEL NACIONAL DE CUBA, HAVANA

  Created by Erik Adkins

  INGREDIENTS

  45 ml (1½ fl oz) Banks 7 Golden Age rum (Barbancourt 8-year-old rum also works well)

  25 ml (¾ fl oz) freshly squeezed lime juice

  25 ml (¾ fl oz) Small Hand Foods pineapple gum syrup

  15 ml (½ fl oz) Rothman & Winter apricot liqueur

  small dash of Angostura bitters

  lime twist, to garnish

  METHOD

  Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with a lime twist.

  During the 1920s, in the grim days of Prohibition, US bartenders eager to escape the oppressive booze ban opened their own boîtes in Havana. It was amid this vortex of creativity (a time when American Eddie Woelke was credited with inventing the El Presidente cocktail at the Jockey Club – he possibly came up with the rum-based Mary Pickford, too) that Hotel Nacional de Cuba, aimed at tourists from the States, opened in 1930.

  Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the New York architects behind projects including the Brooklyn Museum and Columbia University, the Nacional was a stately building with views onto Havana’s harbour and Morro Castle. There were tennis courts, a salt-water swimming pool, and a bar that amplified Havana’s reputation as the ‘Paris of the Caribbean’, with guests like Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. Old-fashioned Cuban elements, such as the tiles, brass and mahogany in the lobby, the lush gardens and, of course, the memorabilia-packed bar, all summon a pre-Castro Havana.

  The cocktail of choice – rumoured to have been created for the hotel by its American bartender, Wil P. Taylor – blended white rum with pineapple juice and apricot liqueur, and there have been numerous versions since, including the recipe with gold rum that Charles H. Baker Jr. included in his seminal travelogue-cum-cookbook, The Gentleman’s Companion.

  The original recipe – the Hotel Nacional – calls for pineapple juice, but in this riff (known as Hotel Nacional Special C) by Erik Adkins, bar director of The Slanted Door Group in San Francisco, he opts for pineapple gum syrup, imbuing the cocktail with a velvety feel.

  SPOTLIGHT:

  A NEW KIND OF LUXURY

  the culture of mixology

  MEET ME IN THE LOBBY

  Twenty years ago, a guest might have checked into a ‘luxury hotel’ expecting copious swathes of veined marble in their bathroom, a room-service club sandwich formally presented underneath a silver cloche and a plush terry-cloth robe draped over the king-size bed. This uniform approach to top-tier hospitality worked in the past, but with the terms ‘boutique’ and ‘lifestyle hotel’ constantly bandied about today, the lines are now blurred. Luxury is subtlety; it’s more personalised than ever. That means guests are less concerned with one-size-fits-all grandeur and wrapping themselves in high thread-count sheets than they are with the hotel’s distinct point of view. How is this property impacting the community? How is it different from its neighbour with the equally thronged lobby of laptop-toting day drinkers up the street?

  Often, this translates to pared-down (and gentler on the wallet), thoughtfully designed rooms that are bolstered by a strongly defined cultural and culinary ethos that unfurls in its public spaces. The modern-day hotel bar, then, helps contribute to an overall robust mixology scene while redefining luxury for guests who value fun over pretence.

  Consider Portland, Oregon. Inside Hotel deLuxe is the Driftwood Room, a holdover from its days as the Regency-style Hotel Mallory. In the 1950s, locals came to the crystal-chandelier-appointed hotel for billiards and cigars. Now, even though it looks lifted from a retro Paramount set with its voluptuous banquettes and ribbed ceiling, the Driftwood Room is ultimately a relaxed joint, where dressed-down couples sneak away for cheeky absinthe-fountain service and happy-hour Champagne cocktails such as the ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ with crème de violette.

  Just a few minutes away is Ace Hotel Portland, home
to the laidback restaurant and bar Clyde Common. This is where bar manager Jeffrey Morgenthaler (you can also find him around the corner at the subterranean Pépé le Moko), author of Drinking Distilled: A User’s Manual and The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique, first created the still-going-strong ‘Barrel-Aged Negroni’ at the end of 2009. Other cocktails, such as the ‘Southbound Suarez’ (reposado tequila, lime, agave, Becherovka, house-made horchata), keep the mix of visitors and Portlanders seated at the communal tables happy. As Morgenthaler sums it up: ‘We wanted a space that was simple and unadorned, where the food and the drink and the service would shine. We just try to make sure everyone is comfortable and having a great time.’

  Everyone is similarly at ease at The Drake Hotel in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood. The property is an incubator of local, national and international art, with a proper performance venue in place, and that creativity extends to the lounge and mural-covered rooftop Sky Yard, where an artistic crew convene over drinks such as the ‘92nd Street’ (Monkey Shoulder Scotch, green Chartreuse, apple sencha tea, green curry leaf and vanilla seltzer).

  One of the most masterful examples of unexpected liquor luxury is Broken Shaker, the bar first conceived as a pop-up by Bar Lab’s Gabe Orta and Elad Zvi. The first permanent post arrived in 2012 at Freehand Miami, a low-key hotel with souped-up social hostel vibes and bunk rooms available for packs of friends. Immediately, the beguiling courtyard, which has the air of an off-kilter Alice in Wonderland garden party, filled up with locals and tourists. There are now Broken Shaker bars at Freehand hotels in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and whether it’s for an ‘Apples to Oranges’ (Don Julio reposado tequila, Campari, spiced orange cordial, sparkling cider) sipped on a New-York rooftop or a poolside ‘Neon Nights’ (Vida mezcal, Ancho Verde, Aperol, burnt citrus and togarashi cordial, wood-sorrel tincture, fresh lime juice) at the old Commercial Exchange building in downtown LA, Broken Shaker is always packed.