Bar Review: Le 1802, Hotel Monte Cristo, Paris, France — Liquid Thoughts

Last Visit: Fall 2024

Hotel bars in Paris have had their share of extravagant and opulent examples, one of which we have also visited during our last trip. Yet, Bar 1802 takes a more specialized route, a journey, that leads to (a lot of) Rum and multisensory cocktails (or the attempt, at least).

The Hotel Monte Cristo itself invites with a quieter luxury on the other side of the Seine, in between apartment buildings, with a lot of greenery on the hotel facade. Meanwhile, the bar at street level has the vibe of a cigar salon as well as an old school lobby bar. There is a sense of colonial aesthetics without ever overdoing it with clichés.

What made us curious in the first place was the fact that Bar 1802 is a Rum bar. While Golden Promise does have excellent Rum too (besides the giant whisky collection), here they solely focus on it and present rarities probably not found anywhere else in France.

All the more interesting then, that the menu for signatures is actually much more complex and conceptual and does not rely on Rum alone. For our visit it was all about materials and textures such as porcelain or clay. At first glance, it pleasantly reminded me of Arnds themes from Berlins Curtain Club and Fragrances.

We were happy to see that the service and attention to all guests was personal and yes that is easier on an afternoon when the hotel bar is only having a couple of visitors, but it nevertheless shows a passion for the featured spirit, it's history and drinks. That led us to choose a St. Lucia Single Cask Rum (see the picture below) in addition to our drinks, even though we have already had one at Golden Promise as well.

We could write a whole tasting article on these alone, given the fact that St. Lucia Rums are among our personal all-time favorites. This one was quite dark and dry, with a lot of notes from the casks, maybe a bit too much already.

Porcelain

Porcelain

Ultra smooth drinking experience, mimicking the texture of rougher porcelain with a cereal-ish, milky taste. Here the cup perfectly matches its content. This is a cocktail I would describe as something easy & simple, to get people to care about conceptual mixology without overwhelming the senses with complexity (or alcohol tolerance). There is little trace of rum or the majority of the Japanese ingredients, so there's the question, whether it was intentional or just the result of a heavily rice milk clarified drink.

Eminente Millesime 2012 Old Fashioned

With the head of bar available and such a good selection of rum, going for an Old Fashioned (or Daiquiri or Rum Manhattan or Rum Negroni of course depending on the actual bottling) was the obvious next step. The limited edition Eminente here was priced extremely fairly and served with relatively little sugar, showing that there seems to be a sense of wanting to introduce people to the actual qualities of Rum. A bit short and dry on the backend and lacking complexity (which I attribute to the bottling and not the bartender or technique), this wasn't a bad OF by any means, just left us wanting that next level.

The material menu has beautiful presentation, but lacks depth in flavor or in some cases connection to Rum, even in drinks where a bit of it is used (plenty of Rum from Asia for example might have added the milky texture for the Porcelain). The selection of Rum that sits in the background is not necessarily advertised and relies on the staff presenting it. The website states that there are over 1.000 bottles, also apparently available through an online shop, although at the time of writing that link was broken. Of course, there's an argument that these should be served straight up anyway, but our European bar favorites manage to elevate spirits like that through drinks or aging or special bottlings reliably.

We will look forward to the next menus and maybe in the future the vision will distill in such a way that Bar 1802 establishes itself as a stand-out in Paris. Below you will find the impressions of Robin in his own words as well as his drink descriptions. Cheers

/jf

Wicker

Clay

Wicker

In my opinion, the best drink we had at 1802. Garnished with a little piece of crêpe made with buckwheat honey on top, the honey being also in the drink as a syrup, but using the IPA to dilute it instead of water. This means the drink has no actual fizziness, but is somewhere between dry, bittersweet, but also has that creamy honey-like mouthfeel. The last point is also the reason I don't think it matches the name perfectly, but I can still see the idea with the dry sweetness. Nutty, woody, roasted malt and a bit of honey. Solid drink, although it still left me thinking there was a bit more potential with the cool combo of ingredients.

Clay

The most disappointing one, almost watery on the first sip, very little aroma to be found here, which is almost a miracle reading those ingredients?! The vermouth was basically non-existent, the finish was super bitter, which confused me, because it was neither a mushroom/earthy bitterness from the shiitake or beetroot, nor the herbs from the vermouth, just unpleasant. Only after 10+ minutes and almost getting to room temperature, you got a hint of Paranubes and maybe a bit of sherry in-between the watery mud-like body. I mean sure, you could argue forming actual clay with water reminds you of muddy, bitter, watery notes, but no, just no. That was almost a complete failure.

I just wanted to add some personal thoughts, since this visit hurt and disappointed me a bit, something that happens really rarely even with way worse bars these days, thanks to experience conducting my bar research beforehand, expectation management and so on. Mentioning "expectations": I didn't really "expect" too much from the bar, but seeing the super professional menu, social media content and of course the rum selection and focus, I probably hoped in the back of my mind it could be a quite different, but still interesting "substitute" for my beloved, closed Mabel. An amazing rum bar in the heart of Paris, I will definitely come back to for an "R.I.P." bar article in the future. Not only Mabel, also the Ory Bar in Munich, Germany with its (at least in Germany) famous first "materials" menu, similar to the one in 1802, gave me a reference point.

In the end, 1802 didn't hit the themes of the drinks as perfect as the Ory Bar, but did still ok in that regard, while the actual cocktail intensity, quality, and complexity was really at least one or two leagues below something like Mabel (or Ory). Especially the Clay still annoys me, reading the ingredient list again, I would argue you shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a mixologist for at least 3 months after making this little out of 7 amazing ingredients.

To end this on a positive note: While I stand by my words, it's more of a personal commentary. I agree with John 100%, the service was solid, the potential with the location, the selection of spirits but also ideas & concept is enormous, but there is a lot of work to do. If you're a rum nerd, you should give it a visit anyway (and just ignore the menu). Cheers!

/rds

#58 | Bar 1802, Hotel Monte Cristo, Paris, France

#57 | Liquid Garden, Hamburg, Germany