David Ellis, On the Sauce at the Green Bar: It can turn a night feral, but absinthe is finally back in fashion

The Hotel Café Royal has dedicated its new menu to absinthe. Somehow it works, says David Ellis
Green Bar Hotel Cafe Royal
Great glass bell: water drips from the taps and fogs the absinthe
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David Ellis @dvh_ellis26 October 2023

There have always been voguish ways to get wrecked, though Yves Saint Laurent’s rule holds firm: fashion fades, style is eternal (and the martini is the LBD of drinks). So what to make of absinthe? Once adored by poets and painters, the last time it was hot, so was eating opium and repealing corn laws.

It is a drink with much the same reputation as dark alleyways; instinct intuits this is not the right path to take. Sometimes twice the strength of vodka, it can turn a night feral. Shoes may go missing — or worse: it’s said Van Gogh lost his ear to it. Google tells me the question most people have about absinthe is whether it’s legal or not.

So, were I to run the five-star Hotel Café Royal, I’m not sure I’d bet the house on the stuff. But both are green, which is a start. And Oscar Wilde, then a Café Royal regular, once asked “what difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?” Granted, he may have been blind drunk. Still, it is a neat fit, and seems to be working: last week, the place was heaving. I can still remember walking in a year back to kill time and the barman saying, with a forlorn look of pleading: “We’re just about to close.”

“But it’s nine o’clock,” I replied. “And my date is still on the phone with her husband.”

Besides, absinthe suits the place. Though not an easy drink to work with — not because of the strength but the aniseed taste — they’ve cleverly subdued it. The femme au café (absinthe, chocolate and tobacco liqueurs, cinnamon, espresso) reads as a hellacious  espresso martini, but in fact is a chocolatey milkshake of a cocktail. These drinks have their audience, though my gang will prefer the Forager (absinthe, Scotch, cognac, mushroom liqueur, bitters), a Vieux Carré of sorts, where the absinthe lands as a mint hit. I don’t normally drop Trebors in my drinks, but I might start. I might.

But forget all that. The thing to do is order two shots for the table — staff decode the list — and watch as a great glass bell comes over with taps in either side. Below these are aristocratic glasses, topped with silver shovels holding sugar cubes. Water drips from the tap, grasping the sugar as it heads to dilute the absinthe, and the green clouds, fog dancing on an unsettled sea.

Drinking like this is a production; there is delay and anticipation and prolonged reward. It requires time. Now, as it happens, we were in a rush, and ran the water not as a leaking tap but a waterfall, and knocked the green back in record time. As I left, I felt the curtain of drunkenness swiftly fall, cloaking me. I didn’t feel too smart, let alone fashionable.

Absinthe from £10. 10 Air Street, W1B 5AB, hotelcaferoyal.com

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