Beijing Boyce

Last night, I reported that Trader Vic’s in Beijing has pulled the equivalent of getting a divorce during a honeymoon and closed its doors barely two months after opening. Peter Wright, regular contributor to this site’s sibling blog, Grape Wall of China, reports that Trader Vic’s in Shanghai also shut up shop last Friday. Interestingly, a late December post  - “Trader Vic’s to close?” - on The Shanghaiist stated:

Trader Vic’s Shanghai is very likely to close down on January 31st, barely 13 months after opening its doors. Poor market research, choice of a very questionable location of extravagant size and arrogant attitude of the Abu Dhabi-based franchise operators are the main reasons why this USD5 million investment will go down the proverbial drain. Frankies, in the same building and opened by the same franchisees, will apparently also go the way of the dodo, but its death knell will occur on 31st December.

The Shanghaiist later included an “update” that stated that the director of sales and marketing of Shanghai Golden Sands F&B Management Ltd. requested the story be removed. Stated The Shanghaiist: “He also threatened legal action. The author of the post stands by his story, and says his sources included current employees of Trader Vic’s. In his comment below, the Shanghai Golden Sands F&B Management Ltd. spokesman said: “It is absolutely not true the [sic] any of our restaurants are going to close in the future.”

Well, you can’t win them all.

In what should be required reading for those bringing restaurant and bar concepts to China, The Shanghaiist article details what went wrong and why. Live and learn, or better yet if you are pouring your hard-earned cash into a bar or restaurant, learn and live.

Many people have tales of a five hundred or thousand dollar shot of booze, but these tend to involve the consequences of having an over-the-edge-pushing drink that left them so blitzed they lost a wallet full of money or fell in a public water fountain and ruined an expensive suit.

I wonder how many of them have paid that much for the shot itself.

Such opportunities exist in Beijing for those strong of bill clip - at The Ritz-Carlton Bar. The bar stocks a dozen or so vintages of Macallan single malt from the 1950s to 1970s. A 40 ML shot of the 1950 is RMB5000, while the 1952 and 1954 are RMB4500 and RMB4800 respectively. Things get cheaper as you time-travel to the 1960s and 1970s, although no shot is less than RMB2000. Plan to get a second job to finance your drinking if you can’t resist sampling the single malts here.

By the way, I get the feeling that a slightly older vintage of single malt will appear on the scene, say, when 1949: The Hidden City opens.

The Ritz-Carlton Bar is a sedate place, one to talk in or to quietly sip a drink as you contemplate why your wine bar is going down the drain (shameless plug for my upcoming three-part post, “So, you want to open a wine bar”). Dark wood, tans, mahogany, dried mustard and other blood-pressure reducing colors govern, with hints of pool table felt green, fall leaves, and fuchsia. The long narrow bar is illuminated by ambient lighting and scattered candles, although some bigger fixtures remind me of suspended gold-plated tires with back-lit hub cabs.

The Cellar Rat described the place as “Charleston-esque, like a private member’s club in Mayfair, refined and calming, but borderline-sleep inducing. (He also called the staff uniforms “frumpy” and said he would prefer simple, classy outfits, such as those found in Aria or Redmoon.)

At the cheaper end of the menu, a 12-year-old Glenfiddich is RMB 70, while beer starts at RMB 50 per bottle for Tsing Dao, Budweiser, Guinness and Carlsberg.

The bartender, Angelo, is a friendly and informative soul.

Note: In such an upscale spot, the drinks menu would best forgo informing patrons that fruit juices “provide energy to the energy-deficient, protect the immune system” and assist a “flagging libido”, or that beer is “produced by the fermentation of sugars derived from starch-based material.” It just doesn’t fit the scene.