Wednesday Cocktail Adventure: L'Apparamment Cafe

L’Apparemment Café
18, Rue des Coutures St-Gervais
Paris 75003
Tel: 01 48 87 12 22

On some cocktail adventures, we get bad service. On some, we get bad drinks. On some, we get bad prices. And, on some we get the un-holy trinity of all three at once! Welcome to this week’s Wednesday Cocktail Adventure.

I read online that l’Apparemment was more of a salon with board games, a laid back casual atmosphere, good food and drinks and an interesting mix of clientele. I like the sound of that. I arrived to find Matt and Mel already waiting this bar that feels like a cross between a casual cabin in Backwoods, US with the cheap wooden paneled walls and an exotic Casablanca-type expat bar with its low-hanging ceiling fans and ferny plants.

Matt was already waiting for his previously ordered Side Car (listed on the menu) while Mel and I checked out the drinks on offer. L’apparemment offers 11 house creations and 23 ‘classics’ including Manhattans, Blue Moons and Americanos, using a bit of artistic license for some of the recipes.

Booze selection is bare minimum. Gordon’s is their only gin and the other spirits are limited to 2 or 3 low-end choices. This is clearly not the place to come for top shelf brands. I explained how to make my dry martini and Mel took a cool raoul (tequila, grapefruit juice & almond syrup) And, thus began the wait. For each of our drinks, the server had to come back and ask us to repeat our order two to three times. The place was not crowded and we were sitting just a few feet from the bar where the order was being placed. Promised peanuts never came. This wasn’t just standard Parisian indifferent service. I seriously wondered if the guy was high.

My martini was unenthusiastically shaken without ice and arrived cheekily committing just about every martini sin possible: tasteless gin, too much vermouth, big black plastic straw, large chunk of lemon wedge, tall glass and warm temperature. When Matt’s Side Car finally came (quite some time after he ordered it) it was predominately lemon juice.

I didn’t try Mel or Violaine’s drinks, but there was no cocktail joy on anyone’s part. Matt and I agreed that it was the worst Wednesday experience yet: nothing redeeming on a cocktail level whatsoever. Well, unless…is there a word for self-directed Schadenfreude!? We do sometimes enjoy a bit of twisted glee when we discover the really bad cocktails. We should probably see someone about that!

We couldn’t bear the thought of paying another 9.50 Euros for such sub-sub-par drinks. Sure, we’ve paid more, but never for drinks of such appalling quality. So, since it was St Patty’s, we headed over to the Rush Bar and forwent cocktail trials for some serious St Patrick’s Day celebrating instead.