Credit: Line Athens
Another recent first for Athens is Avra Bar, a high-end hotel bar as posh as any you’d find in New York or London. Located deep within the luxurious Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel, which is about an hour outside Athens (and yet still part of the city), Avra is all mirrors and marble and light, and looks out onto the Saronic Gulf. It reads and feels like a watering hole for the 1 percent. However, anyone may visit and sample the drinks found inside its thick book of a menu, which is firmly rooted in international classics, both old (Martinez, Sherry Cobbler) and new (Penicillin, Paper Plane). Each drink is accompanied by a story connecting the drink to a personal experience of one of the bartenders.
Athens cocktail culture is a party culture regardless of the space. This is not a city for studied, quiet cocktail dens. The wave of warm hospitality is constant and is matched by the happy hedonism of those being served.
Aesthetically speaking, however, Avra Bar is an anomaly. Most of the best Athens bars are small, snug, and nimble on their feet. The Bar in Front of the Bar is so ethereal it almost doesn’t exist as a business, but rather as an extension of the street. It is composed of air, light, a bit of building material, and some LED screens that flash slogans like “We serve humans, too” and “Streets are the new family.” The menu changes daily and draws on local, seasonal ingredients.
The Bar in Front of the Bar is so famous that it’s easy to overlook the actual bar it is in front of. That is called Rumble in the Jungle. And, yes, it is named after the famous 1974 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The outdoor bar was actually intended as a pop-up, serving drinks while construction on Rumble continued. But it proved too popular to scrap, so now the owners have two bars at the same address.
Rumble’s interior is the opposite of the minimalist outer bar — all lush, verdant colors and neon, a hidden, cocoon-like drinking oasis. Otherwise, however, the energy inside Rumble mirrors that found outside. The only difference is the crowd is enclosed by four walls. Athens cocktail culture is a party culture regardless of the space. This is not a city for studied, quiet cocktail dens. The wave of warm hospitality is constant and is matched by the happy hedonism of those being served. (The Athens Bar Show, which I attended, may be the most bacchanalian of all cocktail conventions. There were seminars and tastings, to be sure, but it was easy to forget about them amid the non-stop revelry.)
It was at Rumble that I had the most memorable drink of my stay, a rich clarified milk punch named, with wonderful simplicity, After Dinner. The drink was inspired by famed Spanish pastry chef Jordi Roca. It is made of Bulleit Bourbon, Coal Ila Scotch, ice cream, and “cigar,” which is actually a distillate of toasted barley infused with cigar smoke. A large clear cube acted as a raft for a single dark cherry, which was handpicked in July and cooked with caramel, brandy, and bourbon. The cocktail drank as advertised; it was a perfect after-dinner drink.
Against this citywide backdrop of creativity and conviviality, it was perhaps not surprising that the least impressive stop of my stay was The Clumsies. For many years, The Clumsies was the only Athens cocktail bar to receive global attention. When I visited, however, the atmosphere was subdued and the service disinterested.
But that sort of gradual transformation often happens in white-hot cocktail cities like Athens. As exciting new bars open at a rapid clip, early pioneers fade into the background. It is, in its way, a sure sign of a rapidly exploding scene.
The current menu at The Clumsies, by the way, is called Happy Accidents. Among the drinks I tried was the Forgetting the Umbrella, made of Cardhu 12-year-old single malt, nori, peach mirin, edamame, and prickly pear wine. It was raining that day and, yes, I had forgotten the umbrella, so the cocktail seemed like a natural choice. And it was on that day that I discovered that Barro Negro was just down the street. A happy accident indeed. It wouldn’t be the last.
Source link : https://vinepair.com/articles/athens-greece-cocktail-culture/
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Publish date : 2024-01-09 08:00:00
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