PARTIERS TOAST OPENING OF GRAND TRUMP HOTEL
At the first kickoff party for what is now the Trump International Hotel, Holborn Group principal Simon Lim poured Champagne all night long.
As partiers tossed it back, Diana Krall sat at the piano to play tunes such as Frim Fram Sauce. That was 2005, and the Arthur Erickson-designed building at Georgia and Bute Street was to house a 147-room Ritz-Carlton. But the economy tanked, Ritz-Carlton took a hike and, in 2009, Trump signed on.
Current Holborn head Joo Kim Tiah took over and the hotel opened for real Tuesday with a party in its ballroom, Drai’s nightclub and Hong-Kong-based Mott 32 restaurant. There was real Champagne, too, but it came later on in the form of a 12-litre bottle of Moet Imperial that could have given sommelier Robert Stelmachuk a hernia as he tossed it around.
No Ms. Krall, this time, but rather an all-too-common deejay who made conversation a challenge for some in the ballroom. Nonetheless, some had plenty to say.
Finance-biz fellow Cary Pinkowski said he and wife Katya were at Mott 32 a week ago “for one of the best meals I ever had.” It included smoked cod that all but knocked him out. He’ll doubtless be mighty impressed in five months’ time when Katya delivers the couple’s first baby, a girl.
Thai House chain owner Desmond Chen, who attended with wife Peachy, endorsed Pinkowski’s rating. “It was expensive but very good,” he said of Mott 32, “and the juicy dumpling was something I’ve never had anywhere else.”
Faubourg restaurant owner Franck Point said the breakfast croissants served to hotel guests and residents are just right. No surprise there as he supplies them. Point arrived with Le Crocodile owner Michel Jacob, who hadn’t dined at Mott 32. Things are better for him, though, as Joo Kim Tiah comes to his place often for frog legs with foie gras.
The latter cruised around with friend Ken Hsieh, the global and Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra conductor in whose Tokyo apartment he sometimes stays. He’s also a professional-level drummer, Hsieh said, but has yet to play a gig around town. That shouldn’t be hard to arrange now that his hotel is open.
Two chaps with a professional interest in the $360-million, 63-floor tower were LMA Steel Group coprincipal Ivan Harmatny and Whitewater Concrete owner Kyle Smith who supplied the steelwork and formwork “three weeks ahead of schedule,” Harmatny said.
Still, despite the initial misstep and a longer development time that Holborn expected, the tower is up, occupied and fully running. Regarding architect Erickson, Lim said: “Arthur should be on our skyline.” And so he is.