Yahoo Finance Straight Up: Le Bar Botaniste at Shangri-La Hotel, Paris
While France’s most famous Bonaparte led the French Revolution, his great-nephew had a rather more sedate legacy: botany. Rolande Bonaparte, born in 1858, dedicated his life to science, amassing the world’s largest private plant collection of over a million botanic specimens, which he catalogued and stored in his stately palace on Paris’s Avenue d'Iéna. Today the palace is home to the justifiably grand Shangri-La Hotel, and while the plants may be gone, its bar is a foliage-filled ode to Rolande’s pet passion.
Tucked away behind green drapes and a living wall of plants, Le Bar Botaniste’s theme is subtly referenced with various shades of green: from the pistachio ceiling and striped wallpaper to the forest-hued leather seats and the cucumber and dill-infused drinking water. An opulent gold chandelier and Regency-style furnishings lend the bar the air of a particularly sophisticated library or club-room; somewhere to retreat after dinner for a glass of something stiff.
At the helm behind the black granite, bronze and mahogany bar is Clément Emery: head barman, mixologist extraordinaire and reportedly the only man in the Shangri-La family permitted to keep a moustache (his is an impressively twirly affair, not unlike that sported by Rolande Bonaparte himself). This, along with his leather apron, is a clue that this is no ordinary old-school Parisian hotel bar. Emery has tasked himself with making hotel bars a “thing” in Paris, in the same way that they are in London and New York, and the cocktails at Le Bar Botaniste lead this charge.
To describe the Zacao as a “rum Old Fashioned” would be underselling it hugely: a well-balanced blend of Zacapa rum, vermouth, cocoa-nib syrup and Sichuan peppercorns, it’s served in a hollowed-out cocoa pod with rough chocolate chips and cocoa powder, to sweeten the drink if desired. Similarly impressive is the Genesis: a “French moscow mule” of genepy, lime juice and ginger beer, served on a chocolate-soil dusted wooden log alongside a mound of moss and a sprig of fir. The presentation isn’t a distraction technique: the drink itself is refreshingly tropical, the botanical genepy adding a roundness to the strong ginger flavour.
Elsewhere the menu is similarly focused around herbs, spices and botanically-infused spirits, such as the Iranian black lemon-infused vodka in the Cyrus, a strong aperitif in which it’s mixed with Jean de Lillet. A dusting of Iranian black lemon powder (made from dried limes) adds a gritty, addictively sharp note to every sip.
My favourite was the Bumblebee, a subtle and ever so slightly bitter blend of Martell cognac, lavender honey, lemon and tonka beans, garnished with a crispy honeycomb wafer. The menu features several of these lighter concoctions, designed with female palettes in mind, interspersed with knock-your-socks off drinks, such as the Vanilla Sky (Amarena cherry-infused Bulleit Rye whisky, vanilla, cinnamon and vermouth), which arrives in a wax-sealed flask. “One is good, two or three is not,” Emery warned, and sure enough it’s a sipper, enjoyably rich and unapologetically strong.
Having arrived at the Shangri-La this spring, Emery has big plans for Le Bar Botaniste. The autumn menu (it changes once a year) sees him on a mission to introduce guests to a wider variety of spirits not traditionally used in cocktails, from grappa to mezcal. Given his success in making 19th century botany sexy, it’s one to watch.
Le Bar Botaniste, Shangri-La Paris, 10 Avenue d'Iéna, 75116 Paris, France; shangri-la.com
