Bar at the Plaza Athénée in Paris
Shake It Up
By Tony Turnbull
From
martini lollies to jellied cosmopolitans, Thierry Hernandez’s
experiments are transforming cocktail hour While
Heston Blumenthal has been experimenting with his snail porridge
beside the Thames in Bray, and Ferran Adrià has been
conjuring up Rice Krispies paella and parmesan ice-cream in
the hills of Spain, molecular gastronomy of a very different
order has been going on in the chicest arrondissement of Paris.
In
the ice-cool bar of the Plaza Athénée hotel, hard
by the designer boutiques of the 8th, Thierry Hernandez is expanding
the minds of his customers with apple martini lollies and bubble-gum
piña coladas.
When
the 39-year-old bar director invents a cocktail, the bar world’s
bloodshot eyes open wide and internet chatrooms are abuzz trying
to work out how he’s done it. For he doesn’t just
get creative with the usual stock of light and dark spirits.
He distorts the laws of science to play with our idea of what
a cocktail should be. Take
that martini lolly, for example. It arrives in its own ice-bucket,
looking like the treat you’d buy your nephew on a sunny
day. But one lick and you realise it is a martini on a stick.
Not an icy, vaguely alcoholic sorbet, but pure martini. Yet
as we know, alcohol doesn’t freeze. “Ah, that is
the big question,” says Hernandez. “How do you make
alcohol like that? If you chilled vodka to about -30C it might
freeze, but in a regular freezer it just goes viscous. And after
20 seconds outside it would melt. What you have here is a regular
martini with one simple addition – not a chemical, something
natural – which alters the freezing point of the alcohol.
It took a year to perfect, and only my head barman and I know
the secret.”
Or
what about his Jellyshots – six cubes of coloured jelly
on a frosted oval plate, each equivalent in alcohol to a single
sip? There’s a tricolour of B52 (Grand Marnier, Baileys
and Kahlua) plus whatever he has made that day – cosmopolitans,
apple martinis…. “It’s a pure gimmick, albeit
one that took four months to develop, but now we serve 20-30
plates before dinner every day.”
On
the surface, the Plaza Athénée is an unlikely
laboratory. With its wood panelling, Louis XVish stools and
Murano chandeliers, it is more moneyed Euro-chic than it is
experimental. “Paris doesn’t have a bar culture
in the way, say, London does,” says Hernandez. “There
are maybe only five or six designer bars in the whole of Paris,
compared with hundreds in London or New York. There you just
have to open your doors at 5.30pm and the place will be packed
until closing time. They go because they love bars. Here it
is different, they tend to go for a reason – a birthday,
a celebration. That’s why I’ve had to be more creative,
to create a bar culture from scratch and show people new things
to bring them here.”
There
are ten pages of regular drinks and cocktails to choose from,
but Hernandez estimates that his “concept” drinks
account for 20 per cent of orders. “Obviously we will
mix any cocktail you want, but people like a talking point.”
For them there’s the DIY, which looks like two test tubes,
the larger one filled with vodka, fruit and liqueur, and the
small one a fruit-infused vodka shot. “Men like to mix
it into the drink to make it stronger; women give it to their
husbands or friends.” Or the 3D, for three densities –
one part jellied vodka, with bubblegum and raspberries in it,
milk infused with more bubblegum, and finally a milk foam with
a fruit pastille on top. Maybe
not for everyone, that one, but Hernandez is at pains to point
out that most of his concepts are merely regular drinks presented
differently.
“The ideas always start visually, the taste is regular.
We mix regular cordials, regular spirits. The black truffle
martini is probably the most outrageous combination we do.”
So
pomme purée and tomato ketchup shots are normal? “Ah
yes, I think I was going through a slightly crazy phase,”
he smiles, referring to his Hot and Chips – a shot of
potato purée with vodka and olive oil, or ketchup with
vodka, basil and melon liqueur. “We’re not doing
that one now. It was too time-consuming to prepare.”
Instead,
he is working on a way of encasing alcohol inside tiny fruit-flavoured
balls that will explode on the tongue – much as Blumenthal
(of whom Hernandez has never heard) and Adrià (of whom
he certainly has) create balls of grass in Earl Grey or “caviar”
made of apples.
He’s
also considering powdered cocktails, where you suck a powder
through a straw, then spray alcohol into your mouth. “I
haven’t found good enough powders yet.” And
the drink of which he is most proud? Surprisingly, it is a non-alcoholic
Flower Power, made from a secret white flower and topped with
oxgygenated water. “It is light, not too sweet, and I
bet you’ll never guess what the flower is,” he says.
We’ll
all get a chance soon, as it is to be sold in Harrods. But given
the ingredients he admits to in some of his drinks, I think
his money’s safe.
The Bar du Plaza Athénée is more than a novelty,
it is a mine of innovations, worthy of the new millennium. In
this balance between classicism and fashion night, Luigi Colombetti,
Thierry Hernandez and their team guarantee the legendary Plaza
service and suggest you Rose Royale cocktail, a mixing of raspberry
and champagne.
