Remember the DC Trump hotel’s $100 martini? Well, true to Trump world, there’s something even more shocking that will make you forget the shocking thing that came before, and may numb you to shocking things in the future. The glitzy Benjamin Bar & Lounge in the lobby has upped the ante with a $169 cocktail—now the most expensive in Washington. It contains no liquor. And it comes with a crystal spoon of wine.
For anyone new to the Benjamin Bar’s schtick: it serves really expensive wines by the crystal spoon. It also serves really expensive adult-size cocktails, like the former $100 martini served with caviar and raw oysters that sounds like it was designed for Rich Uncle Pennybags. Mix those two concepts together and you have the Royal Tokaji Cobbler, a drink that’s priced similarly to “extreme cut out” jeans.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bki81EvnYR4/?hl=en&taken-by=trumpwashingtondc
The luxurious-ish blend of sweet Hungarian late harvest wine, fresh citrus, and berries is based on a 19th-century American recipe for a sherry cobbler. What fancies it up isn’t the Royal Tokaji dessert wine, but the Trump hotel’s version of a side-shot: an ounce pour of Essencia by Royal Tokaji, billed as the “richest and rarest” of the Hungarian wines. It’s served in a crystalline spoon so your moneyed mouth isn’t affronted with the harsh taste of silver. A bottle at the hotel bar is $2,250 so would, I mean, wouldn’t, that make it kind of a steal?
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
