2009
Oh you rich people. You get these great ideas, tease us with them for months, get us all geared up for the big unveiling, and then just before the final product is ready and you’re about to present it to the public, you dip it in piss. I’m a metaphor master! Anyway, I’m referring to the bar Lumen at the Ritz-Carlton. They decided they wanted to update it’s stodgy old-man look and modernize things a bit. Wonderful! So they commissioned some artists to make some shiny new upscale fancy-pants art as part of the $20 million renovation. Recessions are for poor people! Then they went a step further, and had their resident mixologist create specialty drinks to be paired with each painting. Great idea! So far so good, right?
Whoops.
Turns out their mixologist didn’t go to any bartending school, but in fact acquired his doctorate from the Fruity Vomit Academy of Diabetic Shock (accreditation pending). Seriously, this guy can’t get enough sickly-sweet artificial fruit flavors into his drinks. LET ME SHOW YOU. First, some of the art that’s about to be abused:
Seas of Europa XXXI by Bob Ichter
Great. Very arty. I am familiar with art and this looks just like it, expectations satisfied. Now for the drink (another subject I’m pretty familiar with). I’ll list out the ingredients, you go get your barf bag:
- Stoli Strawberry vodka
- Watermelon Pucker schnapps
- Cointreau
- Blue curaçao “pearls” (whatever those are)
That is a terrible drink! I don’t know the measurements, but anything more than “none” is a big mistake in this combination. Drinks do not need that much fruit flavor, usually one is plenty. There is more sugar in that drink than you should consume in three weeks. Everything is wrong with it, most self-respecting bartenders wouldn’t have 75% of those liquors*, but he’s got them all, and all in the same drink. It’s like when you were a kid and you went to a restaurant that had a fill-up-your-own-soda station and you made a “suicide” by putting some of each soda into your cup. It was a nasty sugary mess. Even at that age, you knew it was a bad idea…it was called a suicide! You didn’t exactly know what suicide was, but you knew it was bad. This drink should be called “Worse Than Suicide”, because of how this bartender should jump off a bridge. He should jump off of every bridge, just to be sure.
“But DrinkPlannerrrrrrr…” you’re whining to me, “maybe it was just that one drink. MAYBE that particular painting whispered to the barkeep’s tender babysoul in those particular super-fruity brushstrokes and he couldn’t help but be moved in his shuddering loins to pour out a cocktail that is essentially a fist-full of pixie sticks. Cut the guy a break, maybe the other drinks are made with bourbons and gins and infused with the subtle mystery and wonderment the art deserves.” Fair enough. I submit to the jury Exhibit B(arf):
The artist, his art, and a glass full of sick (courtesy ajc.com)
And now, the ingredients:
- Absolut Kurant
- Limoncello
- Blue curaçao (Again? There’s no blue in that painting! Give it a rest!)
- Blueberry and mango purees
Horrible! There’s a third one, but you get the idea. And Ritz-Carlton, part of your $20 million paid for this stomach-churning mistake. You are paying this so-called “mixologist” presumably a lot of money, and this is the kind of crap he’s making? In your name! In a recession! He should be bringing his A-game, not concocting these gut-wrenching abominations made from the blood of a thousand tortured Skittles. Seriously, with actual kickass bars sprouting up all over Atlanta like Craftbar and Beleza and Sasha Petraske’s Drinkshop, you cannot afford to skate by on these lame-ass candy-ass drinks. Get your game up.
The only upside I can see in this is the names of the drinks are exactly the names of the art they are paired with. The above is thankfully named “Evening Bonfire”, but the way these drinks were going I was pretty sure it was going to be changed to “Evening Bonfire Sunsplashatini” or something equally stupid and hacky. Small comfort I suppose, but in a mess this big you gotta take it where you can get it.
via :: The AJC
*Cointreau is the only one you should have, and it is great
5 Responses to “When Art Meets Drink, Get Ready To Puke”
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I nice tall glass of sick is just what I like when staring at big expensive pieces of suck.
Interesting concept but… yeah.
Blue curaçao pearls? Is that blue curaçao caviar? Ok! but, Why?
Not only that painting has no blue but there is no blue in the second drink either… you have to give them credit for that… making a blue curaçao cocktails look 100 % yellow… WOW!
At least he picked up the right size cocktail glass to serve this “Style” of drinkatini.
Beautifully done!
Ha! I totally didn’t think to look at the drink and see that there was no blue in there either. What’s the point of using the blue curaçao then? The non-blue version is just as easily available. Stupid just got stupider.
There is a gentleman in Curacao who lives aside the sea. His eyes are clear as the ocean waters and, like the ocean, he is strong-willed. his name is Bert Knubben.(64) He is on the beach of the BREEZES Holiday Resort and a artisan of the selective “kings” black coral jewellery which he obstinately insist must be written black “koral”. A solid touch, since the initials are his own and on Curacao, he is synonymous with this semiprecious gem which he painstakingly works in his tiny workshop, the KORALART gallery, in concert with his good-looking wife Fennie, on the palm beach of the Breezes Resort Hotel.
That’s the strangest spam I’ve ever recieved