There’s a New Book in the Library.
How appropriate that the Library Bar‘s new cocktail menu is also a book, a charmingly fanciful retelling of the history of the iconic room.
James Grant, Beverage Director at the Fairmont Royal York Toronto, had a bestseller with last year’s menu, its drinks created as a witty homage to Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion. He had no idea how to follow it up until he met Hazel Rutherford. Now in her nineties, Ms. Rutherford had been a regular patron when the space was literally the hotel’s library and remembered its transformation into a bar in 1971.
Now Grant has turned her memories into a short story, with colourful pictures in the style of Ludwig Bemelmans by two Edmonton artists known as Artello. It’s no coincidence that some of the portraits look like members of Grant’s current team, or that the main protagonist is a bookish librarian from western Canada who transforms into a bartender — Grant studied English Literature before entering the drinks business.
There are also 18 original cocktails, each one metaphorically related to a twist in the plot. For example, the librarian’s first glimpse of the hotel’s grandiose lobby inspires the New Digs, an intricate braid of leather-aged VSOP Cognac, Canadian whisky, Bénédictine, vermouth and bitters that will thrill Manhattan lovers. The Last Edit layers two Negronis in the same glass – a green one (tequila, mint, gentiane), floating above a white one (mezcal, coconut, cacao, Cocchi Americano); stir them together to create a third.
Michael Ondaatje is dropping by this week to raise a final toast to last year’s menu. Ms. Rutherford has promised to visit to welcome the new. She will surely be delighted to see how well the Library Bar has handled the last 55 years.
–James Chatto
Photo Credit: Rick O’Brien
Library Bar | 100 Front St W, Toronto, ON
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