After a renovation that took four years and cost $400 million, the Ritz Paris has recently reopened its doors — which also means that the hotel’s famous Bar Hemingway is open for business again as well. In addition to Ernest Hemingway, the bar was a favorite haunt of some of Hemingway’s famous contemporaries: Cole Porter would spend up to 9 hours a day at the bar, sometimes composing a tune while he drank.
The bar retains much of its original aesthetic, even after the major renovations. Still there are leather chairs to lounge in, wood paneled walls, antique typewriters, and Hemingway memorabilia. Some curtains are new, some lights are new, but everything else remains largely the same.
The head bartender is Colin Field whose creations have influenced cocktail lovers around the world. One of the most popular drinks at the Bar Hemingway is still the ‘Serendipity’, a Calvados- and Champagne-based drink that Field created in 1994. Since the bar’s reopening, Field has also introduced a new cocktail which he calls “the world’s first clear dry dirty martini.” As Field told Forbes’s Karla Alindahao, the cocktail has “all the taste of olives—slightly salty, absolutely brilliant, and totally clear. Not as if you just washed your hands in it! A superb work of art and a total secret.” Certainly something to travel to Paris for!
