The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel is, according to a mysterious collective of drink writers, bartenders and cocktail aficionados, the World’s Best Bar. This prestigious title is administered annually by an entity known as Williams Reed Business Media Ltd, at what Williams Reed Business Media Ltd copywriters describe as “the drinks industry’s most anticipated night of the year”. The same company is responsible for compiling the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants and Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants; its takeover of the World’s 50 Best Bars list, previously the dominion of Agile Media’s Drinks International publication, portends a thrilling new era of Williams Reed Business Media Ltd list-making.
An inventory of the world’s best bars, administered by entities with names like ‘William Reed Business Media Ltd’, is exactly the type of content you might stumble upon on an indeterminate overseas holiday, when your ambition has begun to wane and your tired fingers have mashed out a syntactically incoherent Google query with the word ‘bars’ in it.
When I entered the American Bar in a crumpled jacket in 2017 I didn’t know I was entering the World’s Best Bar. At the time it was merely the World’s Second Best Bar, the 2017 list having not yet been released, and my expectations were accordingly low. Though I was curious to know what, exactly, constitutes a World’s Second Best Bar, my visit had not been premeditated. I had planned to rendezvous with a friend from my hometown that evening, after we discovered we were both travelling in London, but our itineraries—hers more than mine—ultimately defeated us, and I found myself wandering the Strand in something of a despondent air. It was as I passed the Savoy Hotel, on my way nowhere in particular, that I remembered William Reed Business Media Ltd’s list. I knew that, should I choose to walk through those grand doorman-operated doors, I would be throwing a match into my efforts at economy, but in that moment I didn’t care; the warmth and vulgar opulence were drawing me in.
The American Bar, of the Savoy Hotel, of Fairmont Hotels, of FRHI Hotels & Resorts, of AccorHotels, does not need my review. Nor, I’m sure, do any of the bars that grace William Reed Business Media Ltd’s list. I am not, by any stretch, qualified in this arena, and my words will not sway business one way or another. Nevertheless, it may prove instructive for me to extrapolate, from my experience, the types of qualities William Reed Business Media Ltd judges favour. Perhaps it will inspire one of my more entrepreneurial readers—readers?—to start up their own world-renowned cocktail bar.
At the World’s Best Bar you are greeted by an unfailingly professional host who presides at a podium at the top of a dark stairway.
“Are you a guest at the hotel?” the host will enquire.
The host will then direct you, without even appearing to raise an eyebrow at your weather-worn outfit, to an appropriate seat. As you are alone, how about a seat at the bar? You follow the host across the sleek, patterned carpet, past the centrepiece piano, to the elegant white-surfaced bar area, where, before a mirrored display of close-lit bottles, white-jacketed bar staff assemble their tonics.
“Is this your first time with us?” one of the bartenders will ask, placing a leather-bound menu before you on the bar.
The correct answer is No, but you may, like me, answer truthfully, in which case brace yourself.
The menu is expensively produced and about as thick as a quarterly journal. As this is your debut appearance, the bartender will explain, at length, the concept behind it—because you can’t receive the honour of being the World’s Best (or World’s Second Best) Bar without a Concept. The finest drinks, the greatest service, the perfect atmosphere—none of these things will matter if your menu doesn’t tell a story. According to its advertorial, the American Bar’s 2017 concept was “a journey, coast to coast, travelling through the country’s cocktail character and content”. This was no clearer as explained to me by the poor bartender who had to deliver the introductory monologue, but I expect this was at least partly by design: mixologists surely prefer amorphous concepts to specific ones. The most I could tell you is that it had something to do with geography and historic industrial developments. Though you may not believe it possible at the time, you will eventually be released from this dispiriting lecture on the country's cocktail character and afforded an opportunity to select and consume alcohol. The menu, with its elaborate descriptions and handsome greyscale illustrations, presents itself as something of an obstacle, overloading you with so much detail you will find it nearly impossible to make any sort of informed decision. Fortunately the staff at the American Bar are trained for such eventualities and will be available to recommend a drink based on your flavour preferences. In my case I stumped for something with hops in it because apparently my palate is fucking beer.
When your drink arrives, it does not arrive alone. It will be accompanied by a bespoke cocktail stand designed around the drink’s theme—in reality, some ghastly object vomited up by a 3D printer—and an additional monologue from your tireless bartender. Mine arrived inside a miniature lantern of some description and included silver leaf and egg white foam—but you’d complain if they didn’t go all out at this price. What the geographic or historical significance of my drink was, I couldn’t tell you, but I vividly recall staring into the bartender’s eyes, sensing the cumulative effect these recitations were having on her soul and attempting to convey with my expression the sentiment, It's OK, you don’t have to do this. I’m just here to have a fancy overpriced drink. I don’t need the lore—really.
Truth be told, the drink was fine. Not ‘18 pounds fine’, exactly, but certainly not unpleasant. I do not wish to instil the impression in the reader—reader?—that this was in any way a dud operation. If AccorHotels is concerned enough with its reputation to post fraudulent TripAdvisor reviews, it’s hardly going to allow London’s longest-surviving American-style cocktail bar to be marred by sloppy execution. It would be fair to say, then, that the World’s Best Bar is easy to mock but difficult to fault. There were some unsavoury elements in attendance—guests of the hotel and people who had decided, without self-consciousness or irony, to drink there—but we shared neither glance nor word; and though the old world glamour of the bar’s interior wasn't really to my tastes, it at least fuelled the fantasy that I was not just another sucker lured in by Williams Reed Business Media Ltd.
Unless my experience was an aberration, the one thing for which the American Bar truly deserves a measure of scorn is its function as a piano bar. When I arrived, I had merely to contend with the sound system, the music from which was so unobtrusive, I have retained no memory of it. But at some stage in the evening it was replaced by a live performance at the piano, courtesy of a husky-voiced American who had been imported in for the occasion. Fatally, inexorably, he began his journey through the Great American Songbook. Whichever of its selections had not already been damaged beyond repair by ubiquity were dealt fatal blows by the American's husky, hoary, hacky renditions. I have a great deal of admiration for the songwriters involved in the Great American Songbook; I don’t care for all of the songs, necessarily, but I can respect the craft that went into them. Nevertheless, I would not hesitate to cast the entire volume into the fire to be spared another witless rendition by charlatans in cocktail bars.
The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel may be some people’s idea of a great bar—specifically Williams Reed Business Media Ltd’s stock of drink writers, bartenders and cocktail aficionados—but it is not mine. The bars I favour tend towards the Japanese model: small owner-operated joints in which the interests and idiosyncrasies of the owner are integrated into the design. I think of G7 in Nishi-Ogikubo, with its clean, bright interior matching its owner’s preference for pristine jazz-pop, every element assembled just so, and I think of the Flamingo Café & Bar in Osaka, its small counter overflowing with mismatched curios. Places like these are a world away from the corporate tastefulness on display at the American Bar. A good bar, moreover, should contain a mixture of emotions: joy and conviviality intermingling with wistfulness and sadness. A bar’s Don Birnam may be destroying his own life, but he is playing a critical role in the microcosm of the bar. He is reminding the other patrons of the dark. He is reminding them of suffering. Of disease. Of class. Of poverty. Of vague existential despair. He is a warning of how bad it can truly get. There but for the grace of God— And he knows that there are no good bars or bad bars or best bars. There are only bars. And anyone who thinks differently, anyone who believes there is a sad, fucked-up romance to insobriety, is a fool.
The American Bar, being an upscale hotel bar, does its best to obscure this sadness. People aren’t slumping down from their suites at the Savoy to prop up the bar. Perhaps an errant lost-weekender has stumbled in once or twice, but I doubt it; there are more cost-effective routes to oblivion. Instead of Don Birnam, the World’s Best Bar had me, an RFC pilot gazing into the void of his notebook.