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Cheers to concept drinking
Jasmine Gardner24 Apr 2009
This is not the first time I have felt as though I've fallen, face first, into my gin and tonic; music lurching around me, the air thick and my head in a fug. This is the first time, though, that everyone else has simultaneously felt the same, and we're in this state intentionally.
This is Alcoholic Architecture, a pop-up drinking experience in Soho where, rather than sip elegantly on your gin and tonic, you inhale it (deeply) from a vaporised cloud, pumped into the room, while wearing a protective boiler suit that covers your clothes and hair to stop them becoming sticky.
The experience of standing around in an alcoholic mist chatting to strangers lasts 45 minutes and for £5 you inhale the equivalent of a single gin and tonic. You can also buy something to sip while you inhale.
Clever sound engineering distorts the music so that as you enter the virtual glass, with its outsized straw and slice of lime, it sounds as though you're at the bottom of a well.
"The alcohol also goes in through your eyeballs," says Sam Bompas, one half of Bompas & Parr, the creators of Alcoholic Architecture and the men ensuring that inhalation will soon be the only way to be seen drinking in the city.
In fact, it seems that standing in a bar with a pint in your hand already amounts to social suicide, and what Bompass describes as London's current "culture of creativity and desire for new experiences" has led to a host of new drinking trends.
Tristan Stephenson is a molecular mixologist for Smirnoff Black who uses Heston Blumenthal-style science to create foams, jellies and caviars (not the fishy kind but liquid filled balls) to add a bit of theatre to his cocktails. "The key is to provide an extra experience. It's not so much about having a different drink but about a different way of serving it," he says.
Tapping into that market is London designer Jay Patel, who has created the Gemini glass - a double-layered cocktail glass that allows the drink to be chilled from the outside. Currently in talks with Selfridges and a long list of London's top bars and hotels, Patel has high hopes of rendering the Martini glass defunct.
In the meantime, Londoners have given up worrying about having the right receptacle for the drink - preferring to quaff cocktails from teacups. Ku Tea Rooms in Soho serves an alternative afternoon tea of cocktails in vintage bone china, accompanied by alcoholic cakes.
"People can secretly have a cocktail in the afternoon, hidden away in a teacup," says day manager Michele Cremona. "It's incredibly popular."
At 1920s bar Last Days of Decadence in Shoreditch, wittily named "cockteas", served hot and in tea pots, are mixed using a tea base. The Complexi-Tea is a blend of chai tea, black sambuca and hazelnut liqueur.
Presumably, slurping is all part of the fun. So, tonight, as you invite colleagues for an after-work beverage, suggest an inhalation, caviar or even cock-teas but whatever you do, don't say: "Fancy a pint?"
Reader views (1)
Do they have a separate inhalation chamber of soft drinks for the designated driver?
- Newfie Girl, Dartmouth, Canada, 24/04/2009 16:19
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