Grand Old Hotels Take the Bar Exam

The Wall Street Journal ^ | December 6, 2008 | Eric Felten

[EveningStar]

"It's funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel," Ernest Hemingway has Jake Barnes say to Brett Ashley in "The Sun Also Rises." They are sipping nice icy Martinis at the bar of the Palace Hotel in Madrid and marveling at the elegant professionalism of bartenders. "Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more," Brett says, and Jake agrees: "No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice."

If only that were still true. Once upon a time, hotel bars set the standard for sophisticated drinking, with barmen who were the best in the business. Jack Williams, who was the head bartender at Chicago's Palmer House before Prohibition and then at Washington's Mayflower Hotel after repeal, claimed a repertoire of over 3,000 drinks. 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).

[Beowulf9]

The bar has the most beautiful 1800’s antique bar, in Mahogoney I believe, wing chairs and the most beautiful old grandfather clock I’ve ever seen. It is a lovely secluded spot in the place. Seems like you could really relax in there, and it makes me think they prob serve a good drink.