Bar menus are tricky affairs. First, you need to choose your direction. Are you going with stone-cold classics, tiki, innovative, molecular? The bars we, and probably you, love most are the ones that stick to one thing and f*cking slay it. Trump’s new hotel in DC has opened with little fanfare and much derision. Its bar, aptly called the Benjamin Bar and Lounge (it’s in the Old Post Office, Benny Franklin started the postal system), has a very terse menu of post-office-related concoctions that will tantalize your palate and totally max out your AMEX. (The bar and lounge also sells very, very expensive wine by the spoonful, if you want to feel extra classy.)
At the top of the menu we have the namesake cocktail, The Benjamin, that will set you back a cool…wait for it…Benjamin. It’s a mix of rye whiskey, potato and wheat vodka that’s topped with an oyster and caviar. It might be nice, though it really seems like an opportunity to blend whiskey and vodka rye was missed…
The rest of the menu will run you 20 dollars per cocktail and includes The Benjamin Bar’s version of an old-fashioned, as well as their take on punches and flips. The drinks are all pretty straight forward, albeit, probably a little on the needlessly advanced side (how many times do you willingly order a cocktail with black rum and scotch?). Overall, the menu looks like it’s trying to be innovative, but it ends up looking like a pretty sparse, expensive set of mediocre classics. We give it an ‘ehh.’
(Via The Daily Beast)
