aixcentric

My 2020 diary is looking decidedly bleak with a cancelled holiday in April and lots of empty pages as we enter a period of social isolation; but we can dream, we can plan.  And I am starting a Post Lockdown List.

How does cocktails at the new Harry’s Bar in Cannes sound for starters?

The original in Paris is the oldest cocktail bar in Europe; it was in 1911 that the Scottish Harry MacElhone opened the first Harry’s Bar in Paris, to bring to the French capital the fashion of American “cocktail bars”. Mission accomplished as Harry’s Bar became “Paris’s place to be”, chosen by Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, Coco Chanel and many more American and French celebrities. Now, it is in Cannes that his great grandson, Franz Arthur MacElhone, has chosen to expand.

Harry’s Bar Cannes will cover an area of 127 m2 with a 150 m2 terrace on the wide-open space of Port Canto a newly-developed area abutting La Croissette. (http://www.cannes.com/fr/cadre-de-vie/amenagements-et-travaux-en-cours/port-canto-phase-2-espace-grand-large.html)

The company has made cocktails its speciality: Bloody Mary was allegedly born in there in 1921, White Lady, Monkey Gland and the Blue Lagoon were invented by Harry’s Bar. There are over 300 references of whiskeys and a choice of 400 cocktails made by experienced bartenders.

I doubt its opening date – June 2020 – will be possible, but cocktails in the Cannes sunshine is pencilled in my 2020 ‘Post Lockdown List’.