If Natalie Portman wins best actress at the Oscars for her portrayal of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, there’s a bar in Phnom Penh that will know how to celebrate.
The former first lady visited Cambodia in 1967 and had an honorary cocktail created for her at the capital’s Hotel Le Royal, now owned by Raffles hotels.
Called the femme fatale, it is still on the hotel’s menu as the signature drink in the Elephant Bar. As elegant as you’d expect, it’s a mix of crème de fraise des bois, cognac and champagne, topped with a tropical flower.
When Raffles bought and fully renovated the premises in 1997, they claim to have found the glass she drank from, complete with red-lipstick stain. Poetic licence? Perhaps. But there is no doubt this hotel is filled with history. It has welcomed a whole host of big names, including Charlie Chaplin and W Somerset Maugham, who name-checked the cocktail in his 1920s short story The Letter.
Ngiam Tong Boon, the bartender at the original Raffles Hotel in Singapore, is credited with creating the million-dollar cocktail (a mix of gin, sweet and dry vermouth, pineapple juice, egg white and bitters). But he remains best known for his other creation: the Singapore Sling. Raffles is certainly good at making cocktails, and even better at marketing them.
The Phnom Penh hotel’s other, more sobering, claim to fame is as a residence for reporters during the Vietnam war and the Khmer Rouge era. The Washington Post’s Elizabeth Becker, one of few westerners to have met dictator Pol Pot, stayed at the hotel and calls it a “historic treasure”. “During the war it was our fortress,” she told the Phnom Penh Post. She lived on the top floor, with a fan and cold water, for around $100 a month.
It’s rather pricier today, although the amenities are more luxurious. If in town, you can sample the high-life with a femme fatale (£11) – even if Emma Stone wins for La La Land.
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