23 Aug 2015 New London bar where you can imbibe via an alcoholic cloud
A new pop-up bar in London makes imbibing easier than ever. Created by “culinary wizards” Bompas & Parr, the installation features a room filled with a gin and tonic mist that gives guests that boozy buzz with a few deep breaths.
A funny thing happens when you inhale alcohol: You get drunk. Depending how much alcohol is in the vapour and how much vapour is in the air, the rate at which a pleasant buzz creeps over you can be much faster or much slower than throwing back three shots of tequila.
But let’s say you find yourself in a room that happens to be filled with a sweet mist that smells like a delicious gin and tonic that’s mixed at a ratio of 1 part alcohol to 3 parts tonic. How long until you’re feeling it?
“An hour is approximately the equivalent of one drink,” says Sam Bompas. “A strong one.”
Bompas knows his boozy mist. He’s one half of Bompas & Parr, a team of culinary wizards best known for crafting wild sensory experiences like chocolate rock-climbing walls and jumbo Jell-O moulds.
Their work is hedonism defined—it has no purpose beyond introducing you to a new sensation. For the past six years, Bompas and Harry Parr have been working with scientists to perfect getting drunk on vapour. They recently opened a pop-up in London where you can—you guessed it—inhale your intoxicant. The name of this bar, Alcoholic Architecture, is a nod to the fact that you’re breathing in alcohol on a room-sized scale.
Alcoholic Architecture is in a Victorian building next to a cathedral that used to be a monastery where monks made some badass booze. Bompas describes the bar’s vibe as “neon Miami meets monastery.” They serve cocktails from human skull—a real one.
As they enter, imbibers don a plastic poncho and enter a misting chamber. Bompas & Parr’s mixture isn’t a gin and tonic, really. It’s a mix of gin—alcohol, water, and aromatic molecules from botanicals like juniper—and a bit of quinine, the bitter part of tonic water. (Tonic’s other ingredients didn’t make the cut—sugar’s too sticky and citrus had, Bompas says, too many allergens.)
As bar-goers lounge about, they’re encouraged to breathe deeply, drawing in the smoky taste of the frankincense-infused gin.
The air inside Alcoholic Architecture is at 140 percent humidity; the booze droplets waft around in a dense fog. Visibility is less than three feet.
“It’s a little like a masquerade,” Bompas says. “It’s also great for hooking up.” That humidity probably also helps people inside perceive the booze. As Bompas points out, one of the reasons food tastes bland on airplanes is the dry cabin air. That and the lower pressure kill people’s ability to smell and taste. And that mist probably also helps carry the vapour into a person’s body.
Bompas & Parr didn’t invent the act of inhaling booze. Humans have experimented with novel ways of getting drunk for as long as they’ve been getting drunk. Inhalation, it turns out, is an extremely efficient approach…..