Why you’ll want to drink this TIFF cocktail slowly
Hotel ‘experience’ features cognac, caviar, oysters — at $1,000 a pop
Sitting on a sun-soaked patio downtown this week, I dined on a cocktail “experience” that costs more than my monthly rent.
I’m not even going to pretend that I played it cool.
The extravagant drink and snack pairing in front of me is nearly the same price as two round-trip tickets from Toronto to Hong Kong in a recent seat sale. It’s worth more than an iPhone 7 and would have pretty much paid my phone bill for the past eight months.
The $1,000 “Velvet Rope Experience” is the Ritz-Carlton Toronto’s attempt to one-up its $600 cocktail “The 6,” invented by lead bartender Courtney Messam before last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
“We wanted to go a step up from where we were,” Messam said of his team’s effort to top last’s year’s six-ingredient nod to a Manhattan, which was served with an edible gold — yes, actual gold — leaf.
The result this year is an ultra-costly cocktail-seafood combo.
Served with New Brunswick oysters and Acadian wild sturgeon caviar, the Ritz’s latest creation includes an upscale twist on a French 75, deep orange in colour, that features house-infused saffron and hibiscus syrup, and some of the hotel’s fanciest bubbles and cognac. The cherry on top is a caramelized hibiscus flower.
Messam said the value in his latest drink comes from the quality of its component parts — ahem, that $3,300 bottle of Rémy Martin Louis XIII cognac and the $300 bottle of 2009 Louis Roederer Cristal champagne — and from the company it’s shared with.
“You probably wouldn’t sit down with a $1,000 cocktail in your hand like this,” Messam said, gesturing to the drink he just mixed. “But if it’s in an experience you can share with someone, you will probably go for it.”
“The Velvet Rope Experience” is sold exclusively at the Ritz Bar during TIFF (Sept. 7-17) and includes two drinks and six caviar-topped oysters, all prepared to order at the customer’s table.
Do they expect it to be a hot seller? The Ritz sold about 30 of last year’s $600 sipper. Food and beverage manager Brian Morrison hopes the shared component of this year’s $1,000 “experience” will connect with bar guests.
“(A velvet rope) always leads to a party or celebration or something very exclusive, so this is our little sneak peek to let our guests kind of see what’s going on on the other side,” said Morrison, who is gearing up to work his first TIFF this year, after spending four years working in New York City.
“It’s having the best oysters, the best caviar, the best champagne and best cognac all within one experience.”