Shaken, not stirred.

It seems some retro drinks, like Manhattans, Gimlets and Sidecars, have never gone away. Then there’s the Harvey Wallbanger.

As the story goes, this time-warp riff on the Screwdriver made with vodka, orange juice and the Italian liqueur Galliano was invented in 1952 by mixologist Donato “Duke” Antone and popularized during the bellbottom era by a savvy Galliano salesman. (Consider: Megan Draper serves Galliano to her New Year’s Eve guests in the Season Six opening episode of Mad Men.)

Captured in a statuesque signature bottle shaped like a telescope, Galliano looks like banana syrup. You don’t see it at many hotel bars, but it’s on display at The Pierre’s TwoE Bar and Lounge this spring during a festival of drinks made with forgotten liqueurs. (more…)

Molecular mixology at the Pierre.

As a fan of New York City’s hotel bars I happily moved into road test mode when Endless Vacation asked me to come up with a sampling of the best of the new.  These six newcomers – and renovated oldies – have the city covered from midtown to Battery Park.

To learn more, read on.

Dresses in the Two E Bar/Lounge by (from left) Angela Gao, Wen Shi, Laura Siegel and Samantha Sleeper.

New York hotels love Spring Fashion Week, unspooling in the dead of winter, for obvious reasons – full rooms, bustling bars, parties in the ballrooms and a sprinkling of glamour. What better way to perk up a slow season?

Historically – even if we’re talking seasons, not decades – this has been the realm of hip boutique hotels, places like Standard High Line, The Empire Hotel, Hudson, Ace, Dream (uptown and downtown) and all the Ws. Most observe with a combination of parties, signature drinks, fashion blogger lounges, pop-up shops, even art students drawing fashion habitués in the lobby.

But this winter brings a Fashion Week surprise: The Pierre, an East Side luxury heavyweight better know for society parties than hipness that’s situated across Central Park from the Lincoln Center fashion tents (but around the corner from Barneys). (more…)

We finally got around to seeing the year’s top fashion documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.  In the spirit of her fabled Why Don’t’ You lists that spiced up an earlier iteration of Harper’s Bazaar, we offer Overnight New York’s Why Don’t You: the NYC Hotel holiday version. Here’s what to see and do at New York hotels while the holidays are still humming.

Take holiday tea at The Peninsula Forget petite fours. The Peninsula New York serves up a special holiday tea that’s as seasonal as Santa (or midnight champagne).  Brightening the pastry plate are bite-size fruit cake, crescent macarons, peppermint chocolate cupcakes and eggnog pecan tarts. A special children’s tea includes snowman marshmallows, peppermint cupcakes and Christmas cookies.

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We’re deep into the season of bright shiny objects. Some of the prettiest, cleverest, liveliest, happiest, wittiest – you get the idea — hang from the branches of New York City’s hotel trees. For a dose of instant cheer, check out our top trees of 2012.

Big Tree — This towering faux fir looks utterly at home in the lobby of the Four Seasons New York. (more…)

Party in the ballroom.

Bill Cunningham, sporting his signature blue jacket, strode in just ahead of us, a Nikon slung around his neck. Proof positive that there was to be no shortage of social glitter at the launch party for Sirio Maccioni’s new Sirio Ristorante at The Pierre last night.

In the hotel foyer a phalanx of Hollywood-cute staffers in white shirts and black ties collected coats and bags. Opposite them a long line of twenty-somethings in black cocktail dresses wielded guest lists as thick as September Vogue and checked off names.

Men in suits and women in stilettos mobbed the Pierre’s mural-lined rotunda, where photographers snapped Tony Bennett, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Martha Stewart and other knowns and lesser-knowns against a white backdrop. Guests poured into the ballroom, a marble staircase up, where no fewer than three open bars awaited. They filled the evening’s raison d’etre, the swanky-sleek Italian restaurant commanding the long ribbon of space most recently occupied by Le Caprice, an outpost of the plush London brasserie that never quite caught on here. (more…)

No surprise Arbitrage was a hit with New York hotel viewers last month. The sleek financial thriller set in Bernie Madoff’s pre-incarceration Manhattan features lavish footage of two New York City hotels, The Pierre and The Plaza and a big kiss to The Sherry-Netherland.

Elsewhere in hotel rooms around the nation and Canada Arbitrage came in fourth (Marvel’s The Avengers is uber-resilient). Here’s the complete list, as always provided by LodgeNet, suppliers of in-room entertainment to 1.6 million hotel rooms in the U.S. and Canada. (more…)

The JP Getty Gimlet

School isn’t a word that leaps to mind when we think of The Pierre. But six times a year the drinks team in the hotel’s Two E bar/lounge cooks up a specialty cocktail menu.  The night the drinks debut, Two E hosts a free mixology class where patrons can stop by, watch the team led by drinks maestro Sachin Hasan in action, and sample the new cocktails. Forget homework, but you can leave with a recipe or two.

You won’t see signs around the hotel touting the classes. But they’re not a secret, either, if you Like the hotel on Facebook.

We stopped by this week to bone up on the latest course — six classic cocktails refashioned for 21^st century tastes.

A row of stylish shot glasses that looked like bud vases dressed the big gold-leaf Two E bar for the occasion.   (more…)

Camera ready: Le Caprice at The Pierre.

You’re out of luck if you wanted to try the Eggs Benedict at  Le Caprice. The Pierre hotel’s gleaming by-the-numbers copy of the popular London brasserie closed earlier this year. (We wonder who got their hands on the gorgeous David Bailey photos of Jean Shrimpton that dressed the walls.)

But you can watch Richard Gere and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, cast as a mercurial pair of financial sharks, power breakfast together at Le Caprice in Arbitrage, (more…)

Ancient trio.

If you’re on top of drinks trends, you know all about barrel-aged cocktails, mixed drinks like Negronis and Old Fashioneds poured into barrels and left for weeks or months to oxidize and absorb flavor and color from their woody casings, much like whiskey and wine.

You also know the trendlet’s history – how Jeffery Morgenthaler, a Portland, Oregon bartender with an avid blog following, sampled a mature Manhattan in London at Tony Conigliaro’s 69 Colebrooke Row bar in 2009 and had a hosanna! moment.

Describing the drink as “sublime and subtle,” he elected to try it at home. But instead of aging a Manhattan in a glass bottle, like Conigliaro, he decided “bigger equals better” and opted for large-batch Negronis in an oak barrel.

The result? Bliss in a barrel. (more…)