Hotel du Vin
Ship Street, Brighton, Sussex BN1 1AD
01273 718588
A fashionable cocktail bar in Brighton? Are you sure?
Quite sure. Despite being the spiritual home of the Skanky Chic DJ Bar, Brighton has developed some glossier, more upmarket aspirations to accompany its ever-growing celebrity ranks. And this bar is a focus for the whole style revolution. The Hotel du Vin at Brighton is the latest addition to a hip mini hotel chain. It's a 37-room, expensive, well-conceived, boutique production, located on the junction of Ship Street and the sea front. It's a startling shade of blue grey, but apart from that, it's very well styled. Cocktail Girl, who happily whiled away her penniless, down-at-heel student years in Brighton, has become rather dismissive of the town recently. It simply isn't luxe and, well, cocktail enough. But the du Vin scene is definitely promising.
But surely this is just another one of those boring hotel bars?
No, actually, it's lovely. A big, open plan effort, with copious modern and antique leather sofas, big mahogany cubes for tables, sparse, and exposed brickwork for walls. A couple of vast seagull puppets dangle from the ceiling (sounds odd, looks OK), teak bookshelves hold back-gammon sets and battered paperbacks which the punters actually read. The bar itself is a divine, modern concoction, glass and leather, stocked with copious obscure liquors and promising amounts of champagne, and staffed by pretty people. The upstairs balcony houses a cigar gallery with billiard table. There's an outside decked-up terrace too, which Cocktail Girl presumes would be ace, if only it wasn't March.
Back-track to the pretty staff again...
They are gorgeous, but in an understated way; charming but not obsequious. They work for a chain, but there's not a corporate bone in any part of their divine bodies. They make a mean Petal de Rose (gin, lychee and cream) , too, although Cocktail Girl can only stomach so much cream, and reverted to wine quite quickly.) They also flirt with each other, as you would, if you were as good looking as they all are.
Who goes there?
The hippest factions of Brighton society are here, obviously - stylist types in cropped combats and vintage Westwood pirate boots etc, the richer, cooler elements of the art school crowd - but you've also got your hotel residents, many of whom are du Vin groupies who travel about from one hotel to the next. AND you've got your eccentric local colour. Cocktail Girl hooked up with a refined 50-something poet, who was smoking a cheroot.
Did you pull, then?
No, he was obviously gay. But any fool with a bit of lip gloss can pull a straight man; charming a savagely discriminating camp poet is a far greater achievement.
Celebrity count?
Cocktail Girl thought she saw the actress who plays Hayley off of Coronation Street, but that was it. Still, who needs celebs when you've got a lively, intellectually stimulating, handsome bunch of people to fraternise with? I mean, really?
· What could be more appealing than to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight (ends 16 March) with both chocolate and booze? Dan Wilks, the Sanderson hotel's cocktail expert, and Divine Fairtrade Chocolate got together to create the ultimate drink - a delicious alcoholic chocolate cocktail. But don't feel guilty as you order another: the Divinitini is made with fairly traded Divine milk chocolate. The farmers are paid a fair price for their beans, so you get to feel smug with every sip.
Divinitini
4 cubes of melted Divine milk chocolate
1 slice of orange
dash of Grand Marnier
dash of dark creme de cacao
1 oz Wyborowa orange vodka
1 oz pure vodka
Garnish: purple pansy
Melt Divine milk chocolate, then shake it together with Wyborova orange and pure vodka, Grand Marnier, cr¿me de cacao and a crushed slice of orange before serving in a chilled martini glass. Alternatively order a Divinitini at the bar. It is available, for £7.50 a pop, in the Purple Bar; Sanderson Hotel, London, W1.www.sandersonlondon.com
Divine chocolate is widely available from most supermarkets and Oxfam. Go to www.divinechocolate.com for your nearest stockist.
