The Cocktail Lab at the Botanist inside the Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver began as a pipe dream.
A year before the restaurant opened in spring 2017, Creative Beverage Director Grant Sceney was asked to submit a wish list of all the equipment he wanted for the forthcoming bar. Wanting to push the envelope but figuring that he wouldn’t get everything he asked for, he made a long list of big-ticket, visionary items.
Contributed by Nevin Martell
To his shock, his list came back with just a check mark on it. Everything had been approved.
“I had to rethink the space I was requesting, because I wasn’t expecting that to happen,” says Sceney, whose aim with his ambitious equipment order was to allow his team to embody inventiveness and show off the two sides of the trade. “Bartenders can be artists or technical types who geek out on the details,” he says. “I wanted a space where they can be as creative as they want, but they can also be very precise when they need to be.”
Candy Cap Magic
Ultimately, the Cocktail Lab was rendered as a peekaboo workshop, just off to the side of the main bar. Curious guests can peer in as bartenders blend art and science to craft some of the most dazzling cocktails of the Pacific Northwest. “People are more and more interested with what bartenders are doing,” says Sceney. “The idea was to allow people to watch without making them a distraction to the bartenders who are trying to do very detailed work. It’s like watching a chef working at the pass.”
The narrow room is packed with the kind of specialty equipment that is more often found in a laboratory. The team uses a refractor to measure sugar content in the house-made syrups. A band saw cuts ice to suit a variety of glassware. And a centrifuge plays a key role in cocktails like the Yes Way, a clever variation on a milk punch. The cocktail starts with milk, which is deliberately curdled. A spin in the centrifuge separates the contents of the cocktail by density and pulls out the whey, which is used as the base. Voila! Milk-less milk punch that still retains the flavor.
Sceney makes sure all that innovation doesn’t get in the way of a positive drinking experience. The drink flavor profiles are purposefully moderated, so they aren’t overly bold. “The food’s flavors are delicate, so we don’t ever want to overwhelm it,” he notes.
Deep Cove
The drink menu reflects the botanical theme, with headings like Flowers & Trees, Fruits & Vegetables, Berries & Vines, and Herb & Spice.
“That came organically,” says Sceney. “When I learned the name of the restaurant, those were the words that kept coming up the most in every book I read about botany.”
Drink presentations are as ambitious as the preparations. Served inside a verdant terrarium, the Candy Cap Magic is designed to evoke the mountains outside of Vancouver. Wild mushrooms are foraged and infused into rye, which is combined with spiced maple syrup and vermouth. The gin-rich Pretty Bird arrives in a bird-shaped glass standing inside a small nest. And the Deep Cove comes in a bespoke glass melted onto a piece of gnarled driftwood. Blue algae adds an electric turquoise tint to the gin-forward mixture accented with sea buckthorn.
The bar team makes as many components as they can, including gin infused with electric daisies, which cause your taste buds to tingle and spurs salivation. Bartenders even went into the wilds to forage for elderflowers to craft a liqueur.
Looking back at the first year of the Cocktail Lab’s existence, Sceney still can’t believe it’s happening. “The program has come together a lot better than I even imagined,” he says.
It’s a reminder that sometimes even the craziest ideas come to fruition.
This article originally ran in HOTELS sister publication, Plate