Martini of the Week 11: The Orient Bar at the Pera Palace Hotel, Istanbul

Agent Triple P likes Istanbul and it is always a pleasure to return there, as we did last month.  After Canada we think it is the country that we have visited most often. True, Istanbul is hopelessly over-crowded (nearly 14 million people or nearly 20% of the population of Turkey) and can be horribly noisy but the location for this week's (yes, we know we never actually post one a week) Martini, the Pera Palace Hotel, perched overlooking the Golden Horn, is quieter than some places that Triple P has stayed in the city.

The Pera Palace was built in 1892 specifically for travelers on the Orient Express arriving from Paris.  It was the first European hotel in Turkey and the first building, other than Ottoman palaces, to have electric lighting.  It also had the first electric lift in the city which is stil operating today.  It was closed in 2006 for an extensive renovation and reopened about  a year ago. 

Ravioli

They have done an excellent job on it although, sadly, as is often the case these days, the site of the restaurant has been moved from its original grand room to something more contemporary and characterless downstairs.  Nevertheless the food at the new restaurant  is excellent even if the decor is a bit at odds with the more traditional look of the rest of the hotel.  Triple P had splendid ravioli followed by guinea fowl for lunch one day.

Triple P and his companion, B, were sat in the Orient Bar; a great favourite of Ernest Hemingway.  Other famous guests include Ian Fleming, Great Garbo, Jackie Kennedy, Alfred Hitchcock and Sarah Bernhardt.  Famously, of course, Agatha Christie stayed at the hotel and penned Murder on the Orient Express there.  You can even stay in her old room and the restaurant has been re-named Agatha's.

The Orient bar today (or, rather, last month)

The decor of the refurbished bar is a bit relentlessly purple for Triple P's taste but, fortunately, there are enough original elements remaining to still provide a vintage experience.  When we last visited the bar was more yellow and traditional although it was looking a little tired, but the updating has been done well we think. 

 Orient bar about six years ago

In its heyday

The service was truly excellent and the only negative was the slushy jazz/funk muzak.  We are not suggesting that they should have gone twenties retro (or even Richard Rodney Bennett) but something more appropriate to the surroundings would have been nice.

Orient Bar terrace

On the evening Triple P and B were there it had been 27 degrees centigrade and so most people chose to sit out on the new terrace.  This was very nice and, indeed we sat there another night but Triple P wanted to experience the bar proper.  The lighting was engagingly dim and curtains blocked out the bright evening sunlight very effectively, making it seem later than it actually was.

B who was in a particularly expansive mood had a glass of the local (from the Marmara region), and trendily labelled ,Arcadia Suavignon Blanc-Sauvignon Gris.  She drank this in two gulps, justifying herself with a trying day, so we ordered a bottle.  Not as assertive as a New World Sauvignon and, indeed, it showed quite a lot of grapefruit taste.  Not in an English white grapefruit sort of way but in a fruitier red grapefruit sort of way.  Fortunately the grassiness of the Sauvignon Blanc took away what could have been a sweetly cloying aftertaste.  Wine is expensive in Turkey, due to UK-style high taxes, but this was certainly better value than the imported wines.  A normal bottle of French Champagne, for example was over £200 a bottle. 

At this point B berated Triple P for writing wine notes rather than paying her the attention she undoubtedly deserved in her white silk with cerise flowers cocktail dress.  This was certainly a better outfit than the following morning's effort which consisted of some, admittedly fetching, olive green shorts with white trim and a Freddie Mercury teeshirt.  Oh well, it was only for going down to the spa, we suppose.  Still, the elegant public spaces of the hotel suggest something more formal should be worn at all times.

Anyway, Triple P's Martini was gratifyingly cold and made with Absolut vodka.  It only had two olives, rather then rather increasingly prevalent three or even four and B kindly removed the second one.

We finished the evening with a very restorative (Triple P had had to get up at 4.15am to catch his early morning flight from London) cup of truly delicious Turkish tea.  Happily it wasn't full of sugar, as it often is.   Because of his fatigue Triple P retired early (around nine pm) whilst B gave him a demonstration of how harem girls serviced their virtually immobile masters in a series of gyrations which, she claimed, were the origins of belly dancing.

Most diverting!

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Martini of the Week 10: Saigon, Saigon Bar, The Caravelle Hotel, Ho Chi Minh City

During our visit to Asia a couple of months ago we stopped off in Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, as most of the locals still seem to call it. Triple P was staying at another historic hotel there, the Caravelle, but historic for a different reason. Built in 1959 this was the headquarters, during the Vietnam War of the press corps with ABC, NBC and CBS all having their Saigon bureaux there.

Caravelle Hotel in May 1975 shortly after the fall of Saigon

Caravelle Hotel 2011

It was from the Saigon, Saigon bar on the top floor of the Caravelle (then the tallest building in the city) that the press corps watched the North Vietnamese army roll into the city. The hotel is now owned by the Vietnamese Government but if you are imagining some sort of Soviet Intourist look forget it. It is a quite splendid five star hotel that employs some of the prettiest girls Triple P saw in Vietnam and that is saying something!

Caravelle hotel staff wearing the traditional ao dai

The Saigon, Saigon bar is a great place to have a quiet lunch and a Bia Saigon overlooking all the manic traffic below.  In the evening, however, it becomes one of the places to be in HCMC crowded with a mixture of locals, hotel guests and American Vietnam War veterans.

Served by waitresses in fetching off the shoulder red tops it is one of the most characterful bars we have ever visited and must be on any must-visit bars around the world list. It's certainly more attractive than the nearby Rex rooftop bar which has equally strong Vietnam War credentials. They also have a great Cuban band playing from 10.30 on most nights.

Triple P's companion did not join him in HCMC as he was only there one night.  He arrived quite late so took a substantial snack to accompany our Martini.  The Saigon, Saigon Vodka Martini was large and cold (although not quite as cold as Agent Triple P likes).  It was made with standard Smirnoff and had too many olives, however.  Still, one of the better efforts we had in Asia. 

All in all we rate it 6/10

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Martini of the Week 9: The Grand Cafe Royal Exchange

The Royal Exchange Grand Cafe is one of the very few places  where Triple P can stop to recharge at different times during the day.  We have already written about their excellent breakfast but we also regularly go their for a mid-morning cup of tea, lunch, afternoon tea or a drink in the evening.  The latter is less common but we found ourselves in their last week with a young lady from foreign parts and forty-five minutes to kill before a reception.  Given it was well after six we took a Vodka Martini at the oval bar (something Triple P rarely does; we much prefer a table).

The Martini itself was made with Ciroc Vodka: an unusual choice.  Ciroc is made in France from Ugni Blanc and Mauzac Blanc grapes and so, technically, isn't a vodka at all but more properly an Eau de Vie.  Nevertheless it does make a very good Martini indeed.  The Grand Cafe one was nicely chilled and cost £9.95.

We liked it so much we had two, as did our companion who, being on the petite side needed to eat quite a lot of canapes later to help her recover her temporarily skewed equilibrium (or perhaps, as she claimed, it really was her five inche heels).

Altogether, we would give it a 7/10

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Martini of the Week 8: Woobar, W Hotel Taipei

Triple P's companion had already drunk most of it before we took our picture!

The W in Taipei is one of those self-consciously "cool" hotels run by some of the major companies (in this case Starwood) in an effort to be seen as hip and trendy.  This means that things like the labels in the lift need some deciphering.  For example, during my short stay, we decided that "wet" written by a floor button meant the bar.  Indeed it was the right floor but it actually meant the pool.  You get the idea.  Horrendous.

When Triple P was there it had only be open a few weeks and, like most newly opened hotels some things weren't right.  The main problem Triple P had was trying to get anyone in the bar to understand what a Vodka Martini was.  The waitress didn't even understand the word "Martini" on its own.  She had to go and get a colleague to help.  Not really good enough for a five star hotel that is touting itself as the best in the city.

The view from the bar

 

The bar itself overlooked the pool and was rather too high ceilinged to be intimate.  It also blended in to a shop and a lobby so it was a bit like sitting in a corridor and the nasty plastic tables made it feel like a sixties company canteen.  Cosy it wasn't.

 

When Triple P's Martini came it was in a chilled (but not cold) glass with no less than four olives.  Given it was a rather small glass to start with putting in four olives definitely made a small drink appear much bigger than it actually was.  It was made with Stolichnaya but tasted rather weak to Triple P.  Not brilliant so we can only give it 5/10

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Martini of the Week 7: L'Oranger, St James Street

Agent Triple P was in St James Street, the other week, looking for a restaurant and there, across the road was the far from budget L'Oranger.  It's rare that Triple P eats out in the West End in the evening and even rarer in and around Picadilly.

Still, L'Oranger was a very attractive looking restaurant; although quite aggressively French, which is not our usual choice.  The food, by Dordogne-trained chef  Laurent Michel (previously Chef de Partie at the Three Michelin Star restaurant Taillevent), is elegantly presented but traditional seasonal French (with a Provencal twist) cooking and none the worse for that. Service is by traditionally uniformed French waiters; something of a rarity in London. 

What more traditional thing to have in a traditional French restaurant than Tournedos Rossini.  In fact, this was the very first main course Triple P had when he first took a young lady out to dinner, at the restaurant La Sorbonne in Oxford, where the chef was one Raymond Blanc who has now gone on to stratospheric heights.  So, as ever, when partaking of this particular and, today, increasingly politically incorrect, dish we thought about K and indeed, the subsequent enormous fight with C with whom we were also supposed to be going to this particular restaurant first.  Fortunately, both parties literally kissed and made up with each other as well, as Triple P.

L'Oranger got into the press late last year when a Latvian gentleman was arrested after trying to escape without paying his £1.000 bill (yes, running up a bill like that (for two, in this case) at L'Oranger is quite feasible!).

The Martini itself was, very classic.  Stirred and with one olive (hooray) but in an unchilled glass (boo).  Not cold enough for Triple P's liking but nice and strong so  scores 6/10.

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Martini of the Week 6: Palazzo Donizetti, Istanbul

Agent Triple P, dring his recent trip to Istanbul, had a vodka Martinis at the bar of the Hotel Palazzo Donizetti.  A boutique five star hotel that opened in the autumn of last year it didn't have a restaurant but did have a proper bar or, rather, it was set up to look like an English pub, which made it less than enticing for Triple P.

The lobby of the Palazzo Donizetti;  The bar is through the doors on the right

Earlier in the evening, when we had popped our head into the place they were playing music that was too loud.  When he went in much later, however, it had calmed down a bit and so we took a Martini at the bar with a couple of travelling companions.  The Martini was properly made but they used the bits of ice in the glass technique to chill the glass which never really works properly.  However, they did ensure there was only one olive in the drink!

Still, not a bad effort and probably worthy of a 6/10.

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Martini of the Week 5: Ulus 29, Istanbul

Triple P had this week's Martini at the hyper-trendy Ulus 29 nightclub, restaurant and bar in Isatanbul last week.  Triple P had been there before but on that occasion it was a boring business dinner.  This time, however, we went with our particular friend B (once our somewhat clueless taxi drive had found the place - it is a bit tucked away).

The view from Ulus

The key thing about the place, of course, is the location; sitting high overlooking the Bosphorous Bridge to Asia.  Well, that and the food, which is excellent.  And the service which is also excellent.  And all the attractive Turkish women there.

But what is their Martini like?  The answer is large, cold and strong.  It suffered from two olives too many but otherwise was a very good effort indeed.  B had one of their strawberry Martinis in the bar before we sat down which was also very good, she said.  All in all a nice place to spend the evening if you are ever in Istanbul.

Overall 7/10.

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Martini of the Week 4: Ambassador Bar, Swissôtel, Ankara

Triple P has been in Turkey this week and although he has visited Ankara many times he has not stayed in the Swissôtel before as he usually stays in either the Sheraton or the Hilton.

The Swissôtel is comparatively new and opened in April 2006. It is a perfectly pleasant business hotel but has no real distinct character.  The Ambassador bar is rather good, apart from the fact it had an enormous projection TV showing football which certainly isn't what Triple P wants in a bar.  TVs in bars should be banned!  However, we managed to position ourselves in such a way that it was invisible behind a number of large pillars. 

At night, the lighting is nicely subdued and the service was excellent.  Triple P remembers waiting more than twenty minutes to get served in the Sheraton Ankara once.  The lovely waitress (goodness, there are some beautiful women in Turkey!) was over very swiftly and we ordered a Vodka Martini.  When it came it was rather disappointing.  The glass hadn't been chilled and there was lemon peel in it rather than an olive.  If Triple P is feeling particularly louche he may go for a twist of lime but never lemon.  We think that lemon is an abomination in drinks; it just makes the contents of the glass taste like it has been inadequately rinsed after being washed so that you can still taste the washing up liquid.  It was, however, reasonably strong; unlike the Martinis Triple P has had in the Gulf, for example, which often taste mainly of vermouth.

Altogether then it gets 5/10.

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