No. 3
Hotel Nacional Riff
HOTEL NACIONAL DE CUBA, HAVANA
Created by Erik Adkins
INGREDIENTS
45 ml (1½ fl oz) Banks 7 Golden Age rum (Barbancourt 8-year-old rum also works well)
25 ml (¾ fl oz) freshly squeezed lime juice
25 ml (¾ fl oz) Small Hand Foods pineapple gum syrup
15 ml (½ fl oz) Rothman & Winter apricot liqueur
small dash of Angostura bitters
lime twist, to garnish
METHOD
Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with a lime twist.
During the 1920s, in the grim days of Prohibition, US bartenders eager to escape the oppressive booze ban opened their own boîtes in Havana. It was amid this vortex of creativity (a time when American Eddie Woelke was credited with inventing the El Presidente cocktail at the Jockey Club – he possibly came up with the rum-based Mary Pickford, too) that Hotel Nacional de Cuba, aimed at tourists from the States, opened in 1930.
Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the New York architects behind projects including the Brooklyn Museum and Columbia University, the Nacional was a stately building with views onto Havana’s harbour and Morro Castle. There were tennis courts, a salt-water swimming pool, and a bar that amplified Havana’s reputation as the ‘Paris of the Caribbean’, with guests like Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. Old-fashioned Cuban elements, such as the tiles, brass and mahogany in the lobby, the lush gardens and, of course, the memorabilia-packed bar, all summon a pre-Castro Havana.
The cocktail of choice – rumoured to have been created for the hotel by its American bartender, Wil P. Taylor – blended white rum with pineapple juice and apricot liqueur, and there have been numerous versions since, including the recipe with gold rum that Charles H. Baker Jr. included in his seminal travelogue-cum-cookbook, The Gentleman’s Companion.
The original recipe – the Hotel Nacional – calls for pineapple juice, but in this riff (known as Hotel Nacional Special C) by Erik Adkins, bar director of The Slanted Door Group in San Francisco, he opts for pineapple gum syrup, imbuing the cocktail with a velvety feel.
SPOTLIGHT:
A NEW KIND OF LUXURY
the culture of mixology
MEET ME IN THE LOBBY
Twenty years ago, a guest might have checked into a ‘luxury hotel’ expecting copious swathes of veined marble in their bathroom, a room-service club sandwich formally presented underneath a silver cloche and a plush terry-cloth robe draped over the king-size bed. This uniform approach to top-tier hospitality worked in the past, but with the terms ‘boutique’ and ‘lifestyle hotel’ constantly bandied about today, the lines are now blurred. Luxury is subtlety; it’s more personalised than ever. That means guests are less concerned with one-size-fits-all grandeur and wrapping themselves in high thread-count sheets than they are with the hotel’s distinct point of view. How is this property impacting the community? How is it different from its neighbour with the equally thronged lobby of laptop-toting day drinkers up the street?
Often, this translates to pared-down (and gentler on the wallet), thoughtfully designed rooms that are bolstered by a strongly defined cultural and culinary ethos that unfurls in its public spaces. The modern-day hotel bar, then, helps contribute to an overall robust mixology scene while redefining luxury for guests who value fun over pretence.
Consider Portland, Oregon. Inside Hotel deLuxe is the Driftwood Room, a holdover from its days as the Regency-style Hotel Mallory. In the 1950s, locals came to the crystal-chandelier-appointed hotel for billiards and cigars. Now, even though it looks lifted from a retro Paramount set with its voluptuous banquettes and ribbed ceiling, the Driftwood Room is ultimately a relaxed joint, where dressed-down couples sneak away for cheeky absinthe-fountain service and happy-hour Champagne cocktails such as the ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ with crème de violette.
Just a few minutes away is Ace Hotel Portland, home to the laidback restaurant and bar Clyde Common. This is where bar manager Jeffrey Morgenthaler (you can also find him around the corner at the subterranean Pépé le Moko), author of Drinking Distilled: A User’s Manual and The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique, first created the still-going-strong ‘Barrel-Aged Negroni’ at the end of 2009. Other cocktails, such as the ‘Southbound Suarez’ (reposado tequila, lime, agave, Becherovka, house-made horchata), keep the mix of visitors and Portlanders seated at the communal tables happy. As Morgenthaler sums it up: ‘We wanted a space that was simple and unadorned, where the food and the drink and the service would shine. We just try to make sure everyone is comfortable and having a great time.’
Everyone is similarly at ease at The Drake Hotel in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood. The property is an incubator of local, national and international art, with a proper performance venue in place, and that creativity extends to the lounge and mural-covered rooftop Sky Yard, where an artistic crew convene over drinks such as the ‘92nd Street’ (Monkey Shoulder Scotch, green Chartreuse, apple sencha tea, green curry leaf and vanilla seltzer).
One of the most masterful examples of unexpected liquor luxury is Broken Shaker, the bar first conceived as a pop-up by Bar Lab’s Gabe Orta and Elad Zvi. The first permanent post arrived in 2012 at Freehand Miami, a low-key hotel with souped-up social hostel vibes and bunk rooms available for packs of friends. Immediately, the beguiling courtyard, which has the air of an off-kilter Alice in Wonderland garden party, filled up with locals and tourists. There are now Broken Shaker bars at Freehand hotels in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and whether it’s for an ‘Apples to Oranges’ (Don Julio reposado tequila, Campari, spiced orange cordial, sparkling cider) sipped on a New-York rooftop or a poolside ‘Neon Nights’ (Vida mezcal, Ancho Verde, Aperol, burnt citrus and togarashi cordial, wood-sorrel tincture, fresh lime juice) at the old Commercial Exchange building in downtown LA, Broken Shaker is always
