Well, as if that whole penis restaurant thing wasn’t enough, Eric Felten reports that the state of drinks in hotel bars is, well, on the whole dire.
I’ve never had a Sidecar; my only association with it is that it was Auntie Mame’s eye-opener after a night of boozing with the literati of Prohibition-era New York. It was when her nephew Patrick displayed to his trustee his bartending abilities learned while making Sidecars for Auntie Mame and her actress friend Vera that he got shipped off to boarding school. Of the Americano I have no knowledge whatsoever. I do like Campari and various things, but I’ve never had the mixture he talks about.
(Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever even had sweet vermouth.)
Felten tested grand old and high-end hotels in New York, DC, Palm Beach, Dallas, Chicago, LA and San Francisco. (All on the Journal’s nickel. Damn, I want this man’s job.) New York scored the highest, & the rest basically pretty much tanked.
He only mentions the Mayflower in DC. I wonder if he went to the Willard, which has a rich history in both politics and booze—symbiotic pursuits if any ever existed. (I used to join a group of regulars on Christmas afternoon at the Round Robin bar; they were a quite diverse collection of characters and the bartender took pix each year and distributed them to us the next. She always swore she’d not be around by the next Christmas, but she was.) It’s a classy joint, with classy drinks to match, although of course I was drinking champagne.
In general Felten found the hotels' ambiance better than the bartending capacities. He doesn’t mention age as a factor, but from his descriptions most of the staff he encountered would appear to be under 35, and utterly disinterested in the craft of mixing drinks. Showmanship?—yes. Snagging big tips?—absolutely. Making classic cocktails?—not so much.
One excuse he got for no Americano (at the Top of the Mark, if you please) was that the recipe wasn’t in their computer.
That pretty much sums it up.
This is really quite sad, considering that you pay a premium of at least 100% for any food or drink item when you buy it in a hotel instead of the open economy. Not all of that overage should be for the atmosphere; you should be able to get a drink as tony as the environment.
I myself have salted away enough to have a drink in the bar of the Hotel del Coronado. And, one summer while waiting tables at the O club at Norfolk Naval Station, I literally saved up my coins (I could not believe what cheap bastards naval officers are) to treat a friend to a liqueur at the Williamsburg Inn after a performance of Much Ado about Nothing at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival at William & Mary. You’re paying for the whole package—atmosphere, service and good drinks; and you should get them, whether it’s chump change for you or a week’s tips.
Well—here’s what you can do: test all the hotel bars in your area. See what you find. & then let us know. You’ll be doing the country a big favor.
1 comment:
My SO likes to order Sidecars in bars of all stripes, sending the barbacks scurrying off to their files of recipe cards. She seemed satisfied with the performance of the Hotel Monaco in downtown DC.
I think she'd be thrilled if the drink arrived with a sneering remark about Walter Winchell.
And then--alack!--there was the fully-fitted restaurant bar that could not produce a Manhattan.
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