The Connaught Bar, London
I’ve been haunting European watering holes for decades but I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a more spectacular drinking establishment than The Connaught Bar. It’s located in the five star Connaught Hotel, London’s most sublime cocoon of luxury. I used to meet friends at the hotel’s lively, clubby and more casual Coburg Bar, which is still there. But the year 2008 brought an alternative. That was when designer David Collins oversaw the construction of the dramatic Connaught Bar, an Art Deco temple to the cocktail and a nod to the hotel’s heyday. Collins was essentially given carte blanche to go over the top, and he did just that, inspired by English and Irish Cubist art of the 1920’s. The result is a place with textured walls of platinum silver leaf on which is laid lilac, pink and pistachio green, a vision of an idealized, highly stylized Irish landscape. There are mirrors galore, low lighting and leather banquettes, a stage set with you at center stage, a throwback to a glorious, dandified 1920’s.
You might well think of “Brideshead Revisited,” and indeed, all the Bright Young Things of today are the habitués. You might go with a drink like Vieux Connaught, made with Ron Zacapa 23 rum, Bulleit Rye, a blend of dry vermouths, Benedictine, saffron smoke, and Angostura and orange bitters. Or go gaga over the limited edition champagnes, spirits and liqueurs. You can even speak with Agostino Perrone, director of mixology at the Connaught Bar, if you want something over the top. But the classic reason to settle in here – apart from the odd celebrity sighting of Gwyneth Paltrow – is to order a drink from their legendary Martini Trolley. It’s martini as sacrament, painstakingly prepared tableside, using made-in-house bitters and vermouths. These martinis are always stirred, never shaken. Little wonder then that The Connaught Bar took home the “World’s Best Bar” award at 2016’s Tales of the Cocktail festival.
Dry Martini and Speakeasy, Barcelona
The concept of Dry Martini and Speakeasy, which opened 30 years ago, might have been dreamt up as a party trick by a Spanish surrealist like Salvador Dali. It starts with a bar called Dry Martini. Hidden in the backroom of this classic cocktail bar is a very small restaurant called Speakeasy. The bar is in the open, quite public, and the restaurant is hidden. Got that?
Speakeasy started as an informal restaurant for bar goers who needed a little sustenance after a few perfectly made martinis too many. A password was even needed to gain entry. No longer password-protected, you can now safely reserve a table at Speakeasy. It’s still charming and has a playful air of mystery, vaguely recalling a romanticized version of New York and Chicago speakeasies during the Prohibition Era. There are just a handful of tables in a handsome setting, with walls of stacked liquor and wines, all backlit.
But for my money, Dry Martini is the main attraction. It’s all about green leather, velvet drapes and brass fittings. There’s a wooden bar and wooden paneling, and it looks and feels like a classic English hotel bar from the 19th century. It began life as a so-called” Martineria”, serving only martinis. It serves other cocktails now, but you will do well to stick to the original, because you will rarely have a tastier one anywhere in the world. The white jacket-clad waiters make an absolutely perfect signature dry gin martini, presented on a silver tray, poured from a shaker right in front of you into a classic martini glass. These guys are masters of the martini art, which is why Dry Martini was singled out as one of the best gin bars in the world by Drinks International. It’s long been considered the best bar in Barcelona, and I like it because you rub shoulders with lots of locals here, not just wide-eyed visitors.
Harry’s New York Bar
Generations of Americans have made a beeline to this venerable watering hole since it opened in 1911 as “The New York Bar.” The first bartender, Harry MacElhone, ended up owning the joint and more than a century later, his family still does. Long a haunt of writers, artists, and expats – Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald drank here, along with other members of the so-called “Lost Generation” of the 1920’s. Harry New York Bar remains quite clubby.
I can still recall the first time I saw the ad for Harry’s in the back pages of the International Herald Tribune, decades ago, long before the internet came along. It gave the bar’s name and in parentheses said “Sank Roo Doe Noo.” Code? Well, sort of. It’s a phonetic pronunciation of the bar’s address, 5 Rue Danou. The ad ran for years in the IHT and it was designed so that a newly arrived Yank in Paris, unfamiliar with the French language but eager to go to the storied Harry’s, could shout it at a taciturn Paris cab driver and get there in a hurry.
Even today, the bar itself is a set director’s dream – think Midnight in Paris — dimly lit, with wooden walls lined with a century’s worth or memorabilia. This is a classy drinking establishment and there’s a piano bar downstairs with red banquettes, a space where Gershwin is said to have penned “An American in Paris.”
In the 1940’s, Harry’s was a favored haunt of British novelist Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. In Casino Royale, in fact, Bond referred to Harry’s as the best place in Paris to get a “solid drink.” Solid drinks are still what to expect here and the food is completely beside the point. Harry’s claims credit for inventing both the Bloody Mary and the Side Car. In this dimly lit bar, the bartenders in white coats will look at you sideways if you ever utter the term “mixologist.” The best advice is to man up and go for one of the preferred tipples: a Manhattan or a dry Martini.
