Mumbai, India
It was a brief lesson on the history of air and sea transport as we sipped on some picturesque cocktails at the 022 bar at Hotel Trident, BKC. 022 celebrates ‘The Golden Age of Travel’ through a cocktail promotion which runs this month.
It was late 19th and early 20th century and the need for speed had arrived with the title of ‘Blue Riband’ an unofficial award which went to ships which crossed the Atlantic within a certain time frame. We started off with a jazzy blue cocktail of the same name on an overcast afternoon. However Olympic the lead ship of the White star trio couldn’t manage to win the accolade, it was big & luxurious and outlived the other two liners of the trio being the Titanic and Britannic. These were all Transatlantic cruises and the first ship to be named the Transatlantic was a iron hulled ship with sails, originally called the Mercey it was sold to the White star co in 1908. Seriously a big piece of history and we slowly took in every piece of information that bartender Nniraj had to give whilst sipping on some silky cocktails named after some of the liners.
The next phase of travel came in when the Wright brother gave wings to their flight of fancy and had the first demo of a powered flight in 1908 much to their critic’s astonishment just like our cocktail ‘Flights of Fancy’ which saw a audacious mix of cocoa, pineapple juice and smoky Red Label whisky. I loved it. We ended our afternoon with a Red Arrow named after the Royal Air Force Aerobatic team and which exists even today!
The plot was great, the cocktails were exquisite and went very with Chef Batra’s Masala Idlis, would have been epic if we could have relived the days with more Gin, brandy and whisky than a plain white spirit.
Cheers!
P.S: Go here for more pictures!
Indian Gourmand 
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