Tea at Trianon: NYC’s Best Speakeasies and Hidden Cocktail Bars

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, March 22, 2020

NYC’s Best Speakeasies and Hidden Cocktail Bars

Places to visit after the plague subsides. From the New York Post:

In the back of HALL — the popular Japanese café and cocktail bar in Manhattan’s Flatiron district — is an unmarked door that opens onto a secret world: Odo, the kaiseki (multiple-course) restaurant of Hiroki Odo, who was formerly head chef of the Michelin-starred restaurant Kajitsu. Serving nine courses, from an amuse-bouche of uni with caviar to sushi to sake ice cream, for $200 (not including drinks, tax or tip), the backroom spot is consistently packed. But walk past the restrooms of Odo to a sliding door, and you’ll find an even more exclusive place: The Backroom, a members-only club devoted to hard-to-find Japanese whiskey — like a 20-year Kujira Ryukyu or Yamazakura 963 from 2002. Chef Odo keeps the eight-seat room open until the wee hours for his friends in the food industry and other A-list insiders — a highly controlled list that’s kept strictly confidential — and it’s he who decides who gets to taste the rare spirits.

“It’s tough to find as substantial of a selection of Japanese whiskeys as you do [at Odo],” journalist and whiskey and spirits expert Liza Weisstuch told The Post of the collection served up by whiskey master Jordan David Smith, formerly of Le Coucou and Atomix. And whiskey is all that matters here — as evidenced by the spartan walls, dim lighting and wood plank tables. “It’s almost as though the minimalism is a trick to make sure you focus on the whiskey,” said Weisstuch. (Read more.)