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Drink Up

The latest places for fancy cocktails.

Bar Nineteen12
Bar Nineteen12
Photo: Alex Berliner/Berliner Studios/BEImages
This is part of our Business Entertaining 2008 special report.

The Beverly Hills Hotel’s Bar Nineteen12 is a clubby room tucked off the lobby, where the mojitos come in bite-size gelatin form and the martinis are served as sorbets or popsicles. Of course, traditional cocktails can be imbibed as well.

Adjacent to the Philippe Starck-designed Katsuya in Hollywood is SBE’s S Bar, a lounge with an Alice in Wonderland vibe and quirky cocktails. Think upside-down lamps, pomegranate-horseradish margaritas, and yellow pepper martinis.A stylish spot for after-work cocktails is the lounge at Paperfish, Joachim Splichal’s new seafood restaurant. The space is decked in mod orange swivel chairs and banquettes, and workers from nearby offices pack in for bar nibbles such as tuna niçoise flat-bread pizza, fried oysters with spicy Thai peanut sauce, and specialty drinks.

Designed to be reminiscent of an old-world French salon, the Green Door is packed with velvet couches, antique chairs, wrought-iron tables, and decorative mirrors. The scene is rather more sophisticated than the typical Hollywood club—and so are the cocktails.

Mixologist Albert Trummer has turned the bar at Fraiche into a must-stop for anyone intrigued by the mystery of absinthe. His creative cocktails are the stuff of legend, but he creates his own blend, supposedly without the storied hallucinogenic effects.