We’ve just come home from the HarperCollins New Year Party at the Marriott Hotel. As usual, we got a free welcome drink, really nice food (steak in a haggis crust among other things) and three drink vouchers.
Armed with my vouchers, I went to the the bar which seemed larger than my entire flat.
“Can I have a Tequila Sunrise?” I asked.
“Sorry Sir, but we don’t have that brand of tequila. Do you want a Jose Cuervo instead?” the barmaid asked. (According to her name tag, she was called Louise Watson, but she looked more Indian than British. For some odd reason, all staff at Marriott seem to be carrying name tags with Western names.)
“No, no,” I said. “Tequila Sunrise is a drink, consisting of tequila, orange juice and grenadine.”
At this stage she called her supervisor, whom I told the recipe to again. He hadn’t heard about it either, and he didn’t even know what grenadine was. I patiently explained what it was, but it didn’t ring any bells. He looked through all the bottles, but in the end, he gave up and sold me a tequila with orange juice.
If it had been a cheap pub in the Gorbals, I wouldn’t have been shocked at all by this, but the Marriott is supposedly a four-star hotel, and the bar is huge, but my pet hamster would know more about mixing drinks if I had one!