With Hotels With Great Taste<\/strong>, we’re pulling back the curtain for a peek at the \u201cspecial sauce\u201d that hotels use to create memorable, meaningful culinary experiences for their guests.<\/em><\/p>\n I see the hotel bar as a vestigial organ of the travel experience, a holdover from a bygone time when retiring to a wood-paneled room off the lobby and charging a cabernet or a double Scotch, neat, to your room was proof that you were really living<\/em>.<\/p>\n Even as they have begun to shed this stodgy stereotype\u2014spots housed in a Four Seasons and a Courtyard by Marriott are current James Beard Award semi-finalists in the bar categories, for example\u2014\u201ccurrent\u201d and \u201ccool\u201d still aren\u2019t my hotel bar watchwords.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why I was so pleasantly surprised to find a bar project that’s both delicious and of-the-moment at the Rosewood hotel in Munich. Take the stairs down to Bar Montez, and you’ll be treated to one of the most inventive non-alcoholic drink programs I\u2019ve come across anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n Rosewood Munich<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The bar’s moody lights, tufted chairs, deco patterns, and gold accents would have fit right in with the speakeasy craze of the late 2000s and early 2010s. But, when I was there, the jazz trio in the center of the room (an almost-nightly fixture) played in t-shirts and jumped decades in their song selection, transitioning from Gershwin to an instrumental Ed Sheeran. It felt warmly inviting, whether you consider yourself part of the mixology set or are more of a I\u2019ll-just-have-a-vodka-soda type.<\/p>\n That \u201ceveryone\u2019s welcome to be fancy here\u201d vibe anchors the zero-proof drink program too. \u201cWhy did alcohol-free drinks get hidden away on a separate page of the menu for so many years?\u201d muses bar manager Mario Schulz, one of the minds behind the cocktails. \u201cA drink without alcohol [made at a cocktail bar] should be just as normal as any other\u2014without explanations, without special treatment, without labels.\u201d<\/p>\n To that end, Schulz began rolling out paired menu items\u2014an alcoholic and N\/A version of the same drink. Unlike at other bars that attempt something similar, the two cocktails drink almost identically.<\/p>\n Juice made from fresh-pressed apples cooked with thyme and a bit of malic acid packs a gussied-up gin and soda called the \u201cMalicious\u201d with a big one-two punch of tartness and sweetness. The alcohol-free version uses a Bavarian N\/A spirit in place of Hendrick\u2019s, but all the body and flavor of the gin-based cocktail remains intact.<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/assets.bonappetit.com\/photos\/697178427d51ada61ec584c5\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/Bar%2520Montez%2520Drums.jpeg\"\/)
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