After pressing pause on its cocktail mixing since mid-March, Vancouver's Botanist Bar, located inside the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel, will finally reopen to the public as of Wednesday, October 7.
The award-winning cocktail bar will see reduced seating capacity at its bartop, but will also offer its full drink menu in the Botanist's main dining room. Classic drinks such as the Botanist’s Martini (pictured above) still grace the cocktail menu as well as plenty of interesting new creations by bar manager and Canada's Bartender of the Year, Jeff Savage, like the One Inch Punch (bergamot gin, genever, dry curacao, tea, citrus, clarified milk, kinome leaf).
Like all bar concepts, things feel a little different now with COVID-19 health and safety protocols in place, but both Savage and the hotel's creative beverage director, Grant Sceney says the entire team is excited to be able to interact with cocktail enthusiasts once again.
"We’re very excited to have Botanist Bar reopen,” says Sceney. “Jeff has been working hard on some new drinks and getting the bar back up and running. It felt like such a unique and now iconic piece of the hotel was missing that has now re-opened. [We] have been getting messages from guests enquiring to when it will be open as they are eager to return and now we can welcome them back in.”
On November 1, Botanist Bar will also launch a new, intimate cocktail and food pairing experience created by Savage and the restaurant's executive chef, Hector Laguna. Offered Wednesdays to Sundays with two seatings a night (5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.) at the VIP table adjacent to the bar, the tasting menu costs $185 a person and will feature five courses of experimental cocktails and innovative cuisine. Advanced reservations are required.
