Catching Up with London

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 23:40:14 GMT

Dukes Hotel, London

Yes. It has been a long time since I posted anything here. And yes, when last we met I promised that I would expand further on my recent trip to London, and so I will.

Upon arriving in London, we were whisked away to our hotel (the first of several that we were to stay at during this trip). In this case it was "Dukes".

Dukes Hotel

St. James Place

London, SW1A 1NY

44 (0) 20 7491 4840

http://www.dukeshotel.co.uk

One of the things that I love about the hotels of Europe, is that it is far more common to find quaint/odd little hotels there, then it is here in the US. While they have many of the same large chain hotels that we can now find all over the world, there is also this wonderful little cache of independent hotels which maintain a certain aged grandure about them. It is sort of like comparing the big cain bookstores with a quaint and curious "used" bookstore. Ok, perhaps not quite the same thing, but you get the idea.

London Taxi drivers are very well known for being very good at being able to go directly to any address you give them. An amazing feat to anybody that has experienced the maze of twisty passages that makes up old towns like London, Paris, et. al. Dukes however can prove a little bit of a challenge, for it is located down a single car wide, dead end offshoot, of a little dead end street. Our driver had to take a few stabs at it to finally locate it.

Dukes has two interesting things going for it cocktail-wise. It is said, that it was one of the bartender's at Dukes who helped Ian Flemming come up with the "Vesper" cocktail that was introduced in "Casino Royale". A quick web-search for this information didn't come up with anything, and the bartender there during our stay not only wasn't aware of this, but also didn't know how to make a Vesper. Oh well.

The other intersting thing, is that Dukes is also apparently widely known for their Martini's. So naturally, we all had to give this a try.

Our order started out with the bartender wheeling out a little trolly cart to where we were all seated. "Table Side" service Martini's, now this was interesting. He then produced a nicely chilled cocktail glass, and a little dasher bottle which he dashed ever so gently into the glass (unfortunately this was vermouth, and not orange bitters). He then picked up a bottle of Plymouth Gin, with a thin crust of ice surrounding it, and poured this into the glass, and then added a twist of lemon.

Yes, that's right. At no where during this process did ice and gin ever meet. The bottle of gin was straight from the freezer and into the glass.

I'm sorry, but this does not make a great martini. Ice plays an important roll in making cocktails. It helps to soften the bite of the alcohol, as well as round out the flavors. An "ice-less" martini is about the same as taking a bite of pizza fresh out of the oven, and so hot that it burns the roof of your mouth.

I do realize that there are a lot of folks out there that think cocktails are just about cold alcohol, but there is so much more to it then that. And I was dissapointed to see a fine London Hotel be so clueless as to what a real Martni should be all about.

...now, let's hope I don't take as long to add the next installment of our adventures.

DrinkBoy: Adventures in Mixology: Travel

Catching Up with London