Booker’s Manhattan

The Brown Palace has been open for business every day since it debuted in 1892. I haven't been around quite that long, but since I was a child, I've always loved the grandeur of the old hotel. As a little girl, I looked forward to our annual ladies' holiday outing for tea in the lobby, an excuse to dress in a frilly dress and act like a grownup. When I was a little older, I'd occasionally go downtown on Saturday with my father to help him "work" at his 17th Street law office, making him enormous paper-clip necklaces and biding my time until we got to my favorite part of the day, when we'd get together with his friends at a meeting of the King Bees, their "charitable" club. Their primary haunt was Trader Vic's in the long-gone Cosmopolitan Hotel, but when they wanted to smoke a cigar and drink Scotch, we'd go to the Brown Palace. And even though today I'm repulsed by the smell of cigarette smoke, I can't help but love the memories that cigar smoke evokes. Every time I enter the Churchill Bar, the concentrated aroma of cigars brings back happy thoughts of my dad. I recall my father and his cronies sitting on the leather couches and chairs, smoking cigars, laughing and telling amusing stories about one another, an occasional profanity slipping through their carefully chosen words and my father putting his hands over my ears, telling me not to repeat that word and definitely not to tell my mother that I'd heard it. I remember how I always imagined the day when I would be old enough to sit in the bar, sipping a cocktail from a martini glass while my lawyer/oilman/lobbyist/politician husband smoked cigars with his friends. Although I missed on the husband, I was right on the money about the kind of people this bar attracts — and they look even better after a Booker's Manhattan ($12.50), made with Booker's bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters, and served in a superb presentation. The martini glass, complete with cherry, is set down before you, and then comes a silver bowl full of ice, with a carafe of martini resting gently in the center. In a town where I'm constantly looking for what's new, it's nice to be able to return to a place filled with old memories.