Beyond the sidecar

‘From the start of the American republic,” David Remnick writes in an introduction to the essays of the wayward critic A.J. Liebling, “the most tantalizing means of indulging a youthful desire for escape and recreation has been the sojourn in Paris.”

Too true, and the primary means of such indulgence, as Liebling knew better than anyone, remain of course drink and food. Paris, more than any other place in the world, affords what Liebling called those “great roundthe-clock gastronomes,” ample opportunity to stretch the limitations of the appetite – and to wash all the inexhaustible cassoulets and langoustes down with the finest wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux while they’re at it. But what might surprise the eager novice eater in Paris is the richness of the city’s cocktail culture, disengaged as it seems from a tradition of haute cuisine and vin de pays. One needn’t lurk exclusively in brasseries to enjoy the best in drink that Paris has to offer. The cocktail bars, astonishingly, are some of the greatest anywhere.

Little Red Door, in Le Marais on the 3rd arrondissement, really has a little red door – but a false one, adjacent to the nearly invisible proper entrance immediately to its left. The justly celebrated speakeasy boasts a rather academic philosophy of drinking: its cocktail program, in its current incarnation, is described beneath an introductory quote from Roland Barthes as “a menu of applied architecture,” the apparent “product of a year spent trying not to think like bartenders” which aspires to be no less than “the reflection of eleven architectural ambitions.” It sounds a bit lofty, but the approach is earnest, and the results unexpectedly playful; it’s the work of bartenders who take their work more seriously than they take themselves. Each of the menu’s 11 cocktails bears the name of an architectural style, and each in some way or another embodies the essence of the form. It’s highconcept and all wickedly fun.

The Brutalism – “challenging, idealistic, and serious,” reads the menu’s learned inscription – is a fine concoction of mezcal, red vermouth, and St. Germain, served in a charcoal-coloured ceramic cup an inch thick all around. It certainly captures the brutal aesthetic: heavy, formidable, cheerless. Crowned with a bouquet of deep-fried baby’s breath (edible, and oddly delicious), it’s a drink that, much like the mid-century brutalist masterworks, almost defies one to admire it. More accessible, and indeed more immediately pleasant, is the Baroque, like its namesake an “exaggeration of the classical order,” in this case composed of rum, fortified wine, and orange liqueur, served in a glass couched in a stunning arrangement of pomegranate flowers. Though perhaps admirers of the architectural theme will find themselves drawn most to the simplest exponent of the conceit: the Minimalism, a twist on scotch and water. “Less is more” indeed.

Just a few blocks away one discovers Candelaria, a charmingly disreputablelooking hole-in-the-wall crowded with interesting people. Candelaria is a secret bar, so secret that, even with its address scrawled on a napkin courtesy of my hotel’s keen concierge, I ferreted about for an eternity in frustration before finding the way in. It’s through the back of a grimy Mexican restaurant whose only customers double as inhospitable doormen – but survive this audition and one enters an authentic old-fashioned cocktail bar whose prohibition-era drinks prove among the city’s best. The atmosphere is smoky-casual, in the classic Parisian sense; it’s ideal for one’s late-night rendezvous with a cherished friend or lover, and also, as your lonesome correspondent found, as good a location as any to linger for an hour or two with a paperback and candlelight. The deep amber sazerac, with its sliver of orange rind resting on the rim of the glass, goes down smooth.

Jacques’ Bar, burrowed into a mezzanine crevice on the second floor of the prestigious Hoxton hotel, does not yet have the reputation of Candelaria or Little Red Door – it’s too recent an addition to the landscape of Parisian cocktail bars, though a worthy destination for anyone thirstily making the rounds. The tiny room, with its small smattering of low tables and intimate arrangement of sofas and chairs, is a marvel of Moroccan-inspired decor (Parquet de Versailles wooden flooring, vivid floral wallpaper) and contemporary French touches, perfect for pre-dinner aperitifs or, in my case, fly-by excursions on the way to and from more pressing cultural events. The sophisticated cocktail program, rich in both original creations and exemplary classics, is leagues better than one expects of hotel-bar drinking, making Jacques’ Bar a place to visit even for those with quarters far away.

A few minutes’ walk from the Hoxton is Copper Bay, the most stylish, modern and decidedly French of the cocktail bars in Paris – also, I suppose not coincidentally, my favourite. The DJ loosed into the room a steady barrage of hip hop (including a fusillade of Toronto rappers), which set the mood; the crowd, elsewhere so consistently bohemian, here seemed younger, edgier, more hip. The bartenders with whom I had the pleasure of speaking were wildly passionate about the art of cocktails: presented with an interested listener, they talked freely and at considerable length about drinks theory and, for instance, what makes French gin better than English for the perfect Gibson martini. One of their representatively weird inventions looked like soy sauce and was served in a shallow ovular bowl, with a piece of wheat fixed to the side. One of their tastiest was topped with a decorative flourish of red and white foam in the shape of the mushroom from Mario Bros. Here, every drink is a joy.

I regret arriving to Le Syndicat Cocktail Club so late that it was past last call and just about closed. Only after ardent pleading and complaints about how far I’d travelled did the bartender permit me to look around for a few minutes and enjoy a single shot of whisky from the rail, neither of which seemed sufficient to form a coherent opinion about one of Paris’ most acclaimed upand-coming bars. Likewise was I remiss to be shut out of David Lynch’s Club Silencio – notoriously difficult to get into on a good night and, when I happened to march up to its doors, closed to the public outright for a mysterious private event.

However, one of the nice things about Paris is that there is always somewhere else to go, and especially somewhere else to eat and drink. One wanders from arrondissement to another, indulging, as Liebling and others have long before, that youthful desire for escape and recreation.