The Grand Prix / Harry's New York Bar

In the vast world of bartending, the name “Harry’s New York Bar” is a synonym for History. Created in Paris in 1911, the almost-hundred-years-old venue is one of the oldest and most famous cocktail bars on the planet.
The concept of setting up an American bar right in the centre of France’s capital city was the brain child of Tod Sloane, a former jockey who opened the then-called “New York Bar” at number 5 Daunou Street in Paris’s 2nd borough. He was helped by a friend of his, Clancey, who already owned bar in Manhattan and who feared the forthcoming Prohibition to such a point that he decided to relocate the bar and all its furniture to Sloane’s new French venue. In 1923, Sloane sold the bar to one of his former bartenders, Harry MacElhone. The new owner added his first name to the front door and Harry’s New York Bar was born.
Beside its very unusual back-story, the bar is mainly famous for being the birthplace of a handful of famous beverages: the Bloody Mary, the Blue Lagoon, the White Lady and many others. Celebrities have always praised the place. Ernest Hemingway was a regular customer, as were Coco Chanel, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart and Ian Fleming. James Bond’s creator as even set some of the action of one of his novels (“For Your Eyes Only”) in the bar. Harry’s staff returned the favor by naming one of their cocktails the ‘James Bond’.
If you step by the bar, you might meet Nicolas Caritte, who has been wearing Harry’s traditional 1910’s white bartender outfit for the past 11 years. After having graduated from hotel management school, where he fell in love with the cocktail world, Nicolas spent seven years working in a hotel. Then, after his military service, he flew to the UK, to improve his English and learn some new tricks. After returning to France, he attended the Pernod Suze Challenge and ended up winning second prize during the finals in Cuba. We he came back, he join Harry’s crew.  “It’s a know-how, a passion, first. Whatever the name people give us, bartenders, mixologists… You’ve got to stay humble, because you’re here to fix the drinks and please the customer. We’re not pharmacists!” he explains.
“Here, we don’t have any cocktail menu. We compose the drinks according to the client’s wishes, his mood. Very often, we’ve got people coming at us saying ‘I want a cocktail based on such liquor’, and we improvise from here. We don’t necessary make classics, it can be just the cocktail of that precise moment, it doesn’t necessary have a name,” he adds.
One little piece of advice to conclude: if you’re looking for the bar while traveling to Paris, just follow the tip that Harry MacElhone gave everyone in an ad he published in The Herald Tribune in 1924: “Just tell the taxi driver ‘Sank Roo Doe Noo (the phonetic version of the bar’s address) and get ready for the worst!”