Attention Must Be Paid

Eric Felten at the WSJ on the sad (and enraging) state of most grand hotel bars:

Once upon a time, hotel bars set the standard for sophisticated drinking, with barmen who were the best in the business. . .Nowadays you're lucky to find a hotel bartender whose vocabulary extends very far beyond Vodka-Tonic. Over the past year and a half, as I traveled around the country, I stopped in at dozens of grand old hotels, incognito, to see if their bars lived up to the tradition. I found a few gems in a sea of expensive mediocrity (punctuated with the occasional fiasco).

Chief among these is this abomination:

Take the young man I found tending bar at Hollywood's brilliantly restored Roosevelt Hotel. He happily told me that he didn't know how to make many drinks at all. When needed, he could always just look something up in the bar book behind the counter. But most of the time he didn't bother to use the book: "If people ask for a drink I don't know," he explained, "I can always kind of make something with sour mix and vodka and they'll be happy." A more eloquent and concise expression of the state of bartending in America you couldn't hope to find.

There's no shame in looking something up, but ignoring the request and faking it with crappy ingredients? That's like being a chef at a restaurant and saying "I don't know how to make Hollandaise sauce, but here's some Velveeta mixed with gravy from a jar."

This hereby serves as advance notice to any bartender who tries to pawn a sour-mix-vodka concoction off on me instead of the drink I've asked for: you will receive an angry complaint from me and you'll be the subject of a discussion with the manager.

Though that may not help; my friend Michael Palmer relates this sad tale of an afternoon almost exactly a year ago at the Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel:

My wife and I got married at the Carlyle and had a drink at the bar later that night. Four years later we went for a classy drink at 1pm, first drink of the day. I asked for an Old-Fashioned, and was given a tiny bit of Scotch over ice, and lots of soda, in a tall Collins glass. No sugar, no orange, no bourbon, no bitters. . .

I said 'I don't think this is an Old-Fashioned". . .to which he said, "Sir, might I suggest when you order from a hotel bar, you know what's in the drink before you order it", with the "might I suggest" remarkably condescending.  He rolled his eyes at my party and walked away. . .I ordered a Manhattan (which was soapy), we paid our $16 per drink tab and left.

The Bemelmans!  As my friend concluded, "they are definitely coasting on their reputation."

This story reminded me that I haven't been to the Bemelmans since Audrey Saunders left to start the Pegu Club.  A return visit is clearly in order.

(hat tip to Anita for the WSJ link.)

Comments

[Alex]

Not Bemelmans! I was there in the summer of last year, and it was one of the best things I did in New York. The drinks were great, and the bartender was one of the finest examples of the profession I've ever met.

[Samantha Harrigan]

I too had an awesome experience at Bemelmans earlier this year. Sad to hear this guy received such bad service, but I had an awesome Carlyle Punch when I visited & the service was impeccable. A little bit on the slow side b/c it was a busy night and they were making everything with TLC but overall a great experience.