Sarova Stanley Spinner
EXCHANGE BAR AT SAROVA STANLEY, NAIROBI, KENYA
INGREDIENTS
30 ml (1 fl oz) Martini extra dry vermouth
30 ml (1 fl oz) Campari
30 ml (1 fl oz) gin
30 ml (1 fl oz) Cointreau
pared orange zest, to garnish
METHOD
Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake. Strain into a Martini glass over a large ice cube and garnish with the orange zest.
Nairobi’s evolution from ramshackle swamp territory to African metropolis was propelled by construction of the railway, kicking off in 1896 in the then Kenyan capital of Mombasa. By 1902, Nairobi had gradually developed and so Mayence Bent began operating a boarding house for railway employees, feeding guests with produce from her husband’s farm. When the Great Fire of Victoria Street destroyed the building, the undeterred Bent moved to a new location and opened the two-story Stanley, the city’s first hotel, where one could ooh and ahh at Mount Kilimanjaro from the veranda. Now part of Kenya’s Sarova Hotels & Resorts, the Stanley does an impressive job of remembering the past – one marked by visits from Frank Sinatra, then-Princess Elizabeth and Ernest Hemingway – by keeping such elements as the black-and-white floor in the lobby up to snuff. Awash with red leather and mahogany, the Exchange Bar, then called Long Bar, is the former headquarters of Nairobi’s first stock exchange, founded in 1954. Under the woven palm fans suspended from the ceiling, now it’s loads of business travellers who converse over rum coladas and banana daiquiris.
The traditional three-equal-parts approach to a Negroni is vivified by the presence of Cointreau in this cocktail, leading to flavours reminiscent of an Aperol Spritz – sans the bubbles.
SPOTLIGHT:
SAFARI
for the love of nature’s happy hour
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
At Royal Chundu Island Lodge, in Katambora, Zambia, guests spend their days on a boat safari, floating across the Zambezi River and scoping out elephants, hippos, waterbuck and crocodiles. They also make time for excursions to Victoria Falls, walk through baobab trees, go tiger fishing, and wake up early for sunrise cruises. When those activities all come to a rest, when darkness will soon shroud the sky, folks will gather at the River Lodge before dinner takes place around the fire for one last burst of saturated colour. Most of them will be holding a gin and tonic.
African sunsets are a sight to behold every evening, tinting the sky in a collision of deep red and orange hues. The ritual of the sundowner, sipping while marvelling at the sun dipping and vanishing, can be traced back to 19th-century Africa, when British officers, exhausted from a long day in the bush, would revive with a cooling, dusk-time nip of gin. Since those colonial days, the quenching pastime has evolved. The drink is largely a gin and tonic now, and it’s an essential component of any African holiday, particularly contemplative safaris.
Safari accommodations are not like typical hotels, and their bars are small and well-edited; these are not the places to try new-fangled mezcal drinks with homemade tinctures. Most drinks served here are straightforward and satisfying, woven into all-inclusive packages. Some of them, like the camps and lodges operated by the sustainable-minded Singita in South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Rwanda, have field guides who are ready to ply guests with gin and tonics from the fully stashed cooler boxes on their vehicles. In Africa, there isn’t a dramatic interior to look forward to come happy hour, but the landscape. Even the most brilliant of designers cannot compete with quaffing a cocktail as a giraffe streaks by.
Guests at Singita Kwitonda Lodge, at the edge of Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, can unwind with a chilled whisky in their private heated plunge pool after a dusty gorilla trek, just as at Royal Malewane, in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park, tented, lantern-lit bush dinners are preceded by an alfresco sampling of the hotel’s massive whisky collection.
The sundowner, then, is a colossal yet simple reminder that travelling is an unparallelled opportunity to celebrate, and deepen a connection with, Mother Nature.
No. 34
Passion Fruit Gin Cocktail
THE TRAVELLERS BAR AT THE ROYAL LIVINGSTONE VICTORIA FALLS ZAMBIA HOTEL BY ANANTARA, LIVINGSTONE, ZAMBIA
INGREDIENTS
50 ml (1¾ fl oz) dry gin (the bar uses Mundambi, specially made for the hotel by South Africa’s New Harbour Distillery)
25 ml (¾ fl oz) triple sec
2¼ teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
5 ml (1 teaspoon) passion fruit purée
2 drops of Angostura bitters
pared lemon zest, to garnish
METHOD
Combine all the ingredients except the bitters in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake well. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice, then add the Angostura bitters and garnish with lemon zest.
In the mid-19th century, David Livingstone, the Scottish physician, missionary and explorer of southern and central Africa, was apparently the first European to come across a waterfall on the Zambezi River, at the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. It was called Mosi-oa-Tunya (‘The Smoke That Thunders’) in the local Lozi language, but Livingstone, ever the loyal Brit, decided to name it for Queen Victoria. Considered the largest waterfall in the world, Victoria Falls is certainly a marvellous sight. Imagine, then, waking up to a whirring ceiling fan in your creamy, Colonial-style suite, breakfasting on the veranda, and then trotting over to this cascading spectacle in just five minutes. At the resort, located within Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, it always appears as if you are on safari. Wildlife freely roams the grounds, so it’s perfectly plausible that you’ll be gobsmacked by a moseying zebra as you finish the remains of a cappuccino. Before a dinner aboard the old-timey locomotive that chugs its way through the Zambezi River Valley, partake of a gin sundowner in The Travellers Bar. Throbbing with guests on stitched leather chairs, it has live piano music that will woo you into returning for a cheeky bedtime send-off.
No. 35
Rose Ginvino
THE WILLASTON BAR AT THE SILO HOTEL, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
INGREDIENTS
50 ml (1¾ fl oz)
