The Library Bar Lives Up to Its Name

With a bold new literary menu from James Grant

In a small and quirky private venue on the second floor of the Fairmont Royal York, the hotel’s award-winning Director of Mixology – dapper James Grant – was telling a story, with cocktails. It was about his then forthcoming menu for the Library Bar, which has just launched this week. And specifically, of its literary inspirations – all drawn from another story, In the Skin of a Lion, the great 1987 novel by Michael Ondaatje. “This is the menu I’ve been trying to build since I got here,” said Grant,” I’ve been wanting to tell a story about Toronto.”

“This is the menu I’ve been trying to build since I got here. I’ve been wanting to tell a story about Toronto.” James Grant

Before Grant won Diageo World Class Bartender of the Year in 2021, and C100B’s Bartender of the Year 2022, he was an English literature major and creative writing minor at the University of Alberta. Grant felt that Ondaatje’s lyrical account of early Toronto history, when its landmarks were being built by immigrants, was exactly right for his purpose. So he gave a copy to each member of his bartending team and sent them home to read it to see if it touched them – or more pertinently, inspired them at the speed rail.

Even though some of them had not read a book in years, it worked. “I was hoping that what was important to me was not going to be the same as what was everyone else. I was right.” Each bartender came back with a scene that moved them, of which some element could be distilled into a cocktail. Much trial, occasional error and a lot of fine-tuning ensued.

Now, the new menu features First Light, which combines vodka, malt, banana, maple and oat milk to evoke a scene of a boy eating breakfast in a farm house. And a Logger’s Cocktail, with rye whisky and pumpernickel, and Belly of the Beast, with whisky, rum, Metaxa, sea buckthorn and mace, to mark a first encounter with Union Station.

First Light

Logger’s Cocktail

Belly of the Beast

There’s a Missing Millionaire, a Builder, and all told sixteen such cocktails, each thoughtful and clever, and a pleasure to imbibe. And yes, you can still get a Birdbath Martini.