When making an expensive purchase it is advisable to buy in bulk to, at least optically, achieve some sort of discount. If you’ll allow me a bit of arithmetic: the Martini Service at the Swan Room serves 4-6 (persons or martinis) which the menu denotes “MP” aka Market Price. I muse for a moment about this, tickled by the idea of vodka or gin having a price fluctuation day to day depending on the catch. I imagine a truck rolls up to the back door on Division Street and the bar manager haggles with a booze monger over Belvederes and Plymouths. “I know it was $25.99 per yesterday but those were 750ml and these are a full liter!” Of course they wouldn’t think their customer would drink well and far be it from them to assume your martini preference, dirty or straight, let alone brand. As a matter of chance I shared drinks with the Maitre d’ down the street after her shift. Furthermore, it happened to be her birthday at midnight, so we all counted down and shared birthday shots. She told me the MP is about $130. Given the Manhattan martini standard bearer, Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle Hotel, starts at $28 (and serves 2), I calculate Swan Bar to be similar in theory to a classic American Apparel discount: “buy 5 and get the 6th 15% off.” I ordered the Spicy Goldfinch, a fruity mezcal shaken drink ($24 and served up with a dusting of chili powder) and my friends got a Debutante (gin, Cocchi Rosa, rose) and classic Sazerac. The cocktails were all served up and tasted fine. What, however, certainly must be excellent are the Pommes Frites; which are $18. It has been a few years since I worked at a restaurant so I may have missed some rather dramatic technological advancements in the potato market. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling peckish (I made dinner at home) because for $18 it must surely fill a punchbowl. After observing the table next to us, I can tell you it does not, rather it comes as a small bouquet with only truffle aioli on the side. I am uncertain as to the market price of ketchup.
Swan Room occupies what was the lobby of the first Jewish owned bank in New York City. The bank failed after a run on funds caused by German families pulling out their savings to send home to relatives during World War 1; which means this building has had a lot of experience being vacant. For as long as I’ve lived in this neighborhood it has been under construction to become one sort of luxury hotel or another, so when it finally opened this past summer I was genuinely surprised. I was even more surprised to learn its name, 9 Orchard Hotel, since I always thought of the building as being on Allen and/or Canal Streets. Similar to the Metrograph down the street, it has the feeling of being in a place that used to be something else. Metrograph was an auto body shop, which is why the front entry way is so tall because it was originally a metal roll up tall enough to fit trucks. The Swan Room is lovely enough with a ceiling so high I almost feel rude sitting down. The staff on the night I was there was even a bit on the short side and perhaps further amplified the canopy’s grandeur. It’s full of granite and ornate stone patterns and a few reproduction Ming era Chinese vessels atop the bar. A few battery powered lamps are perched atop the booth tables but the most effective source of light are the ambient LED street lights just outside the massive windows high above you on, in fact, Orchard Street.
My new friend the Maitre d's previous job was at the Chateau Marmont where she had been poached from 2 months prior. Obviously the Chateau is no stranger to celebrity so, in keeping, she informed me Madonna had flown in to grace the Swan Room a week ago. I am reminded which variety of clientele the martini service and frites are meant to attract: visiting business professionals looking to impress, a bevy of downtown socialites on a brand’s sponsorship, local celebs wanting TriBeCa or SoHo without taking a cab, etc. Someone at our impromptu birthday party put it best as “a beautiful choice for where to drink if someone else is paying.” Surely for the coming winter months the Swan Room will be a flutter with curious new guests, some from the rooms upstairs, craning over a tin carafe of 4-6 martinis. When in flight, a group of swans referred to as a wedge, stemming from the shape of their formation in the sky, however, when on the ground, the name for the same group of swans is a bank. A bank of swans. If that was on purpose they are a bit more clever than I thought.