The opposite gorgeous showpiece on the bar is the gathering of glassware, which Alesch and Standefer spent years researching whereas stocking their retailer. Via the years, workers had acquired requests from prospects to check out the costly glassware in the identical method they’ll the dishes at La Mercerie, however on the restaurant, it was too troublesome to serve drinks in fragile, hand-wash-only glasses that would probably break in a busy restaurant setting.
“The most important thought was for folks to have the ability to expertise this artisanal glassware and to additionally strive the drinks from the glassware, which is type of a part of the fetish of a bar anyway,” says Standefer, who provides that the best way you maintain a glass if you drink out of it’s totally different than the best way you’d maintain it to have a look at in a retailer. “And to study who the artists are and what and the way they make one thing.”
Picture: Gentl & Hyers
Picture: Gentl & Hyers
Versus most bars which may use glassware impressed by the drink (in the event that they even take into consideration the glassware in any respect), Standefer and Alesch introduced their favourite glasses—from heritage manufacturers to younger, up-and-coming artists—to La Mercerie’s director Aaron Thorp, who then devised a cocktail menu impressed by the glassware. The result’s a good menu of creative drinks with shocking combos, all served in a number of the most unbelievable artworks you’ve ever seen.
There’s additionally a choice of wines and uncommon Champagnes. In the event you order some wine, you’ll get to decide on your glass or flute from a number of distinctive choices. Even the liquor on show is fastidiously chosen primarily based on appears, like hard-to-find bottles that Thorp has collected, together with a classic Voiron Chartreuse from the Nineteen Sixties.
As for the blended drinks, every of the eight cocktails is served in a distinct handmade glass, with the menu displaying a paragraph concerning the glass artisan alongside every drink description.
The impossibly skinny coupe glass made by J. & L. Lobmeyr, a six-generation family-owned glassmaker in Vienna, is the receptacle for the Guild Bar Martini, made with three gins and two vermouths. It’s served with a beneficiant serving to of olives piled contained in the attractive Lobmeyr Sweet Dish III, with a curvaceous silver decide by Georg Jensen alongside. That’s proper: you possibly can pile in as many olives in your martini as you want.
