New Delhi: Toni Morrison’s Beloved — the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel about the trauma of slavery — has been interpreted as a cocktail at The Library Bar in The Leela Palace New Delhi. Named after the novel, the drink blends gin, sake, and mezcal, over a house-distilled rhubarb base with a saline edge, and is served with a parmesan cracker on the side.
In the new chapter of “Literary of Mixology”, The Library Bar is intertwining literature and mixology, and will have eight drinks built around a specific book and its author.
At a special preview on Tuesday, Atul Tiwari, Hotel Manager at The Leela Palace, said the menu was under construction for over two years.
“It’s a result of the 60-odd bar takeovers we have done in that time. It’s everything we have learned from our travels, behind the bar, and how much we have grown, distilled into one menu. I can confidently say this menu is the face of how far India’s cocktail scene has come,” he told ThePrint, two days ahead of the new menu’s formal launch.
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely are among the seven other novels to have made their way to the bar menu.
At first glance, Tiwari looks composed, the kind of calm that comes from more than two decades in hospitality leadership. But mention wine or cocktails, and that composure gives way. The consultant-speak drops away, and a far more animated version of him takes over. After all, his heart lies at the bar.
It is no surprise then, that Tiwari is the man credited with pulling The Library Bar back from the brink. As recently as January 2023, this was a hotel bar with little to show for itself. Today, it has arguably become to Delhi what The Connaught Bar is to London. It is the only hotel bar in India to have carved out a reputation on international rankings like Asia’s 30 Best Bars. The Leela’s newer Bengaluru outpost, ZLB 23, has had its own standout run, but there is something special about a bar which spent a decade in obscurity before clawing its way back into relevance.
Having scripted that comeback, The Library Bar is now entering its second chapter, which Tiwari describes “the best one” yet.
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Frozen tomatoes, truffles, pandan and more
The menu opens with Forever and a Day, inspired by Anthony Horowitz’s 2018 James Bond novel. Like Bond himself, the low-alcohol cocktail is elegant on the surface and quietly complex. It combines banana-infused gin, elderflower, Chardonnay and citrus, rounded off with rosemary milk clarification, and some curry leaf oil to finish.
“This is the drink you want to start with. It’s easy on your palette, and prepares it for further drinks on the menu, which are a little bolder,” said Tiwari, adding that coconut is one of his favourite flavours.
Coconut-flavoured drinks are hardly rare across Delhi-NCR, but they tend lean too heavily either on the alcohol or the coconut itself. At The Library Bar, Tiwari finally offers a middle ground.
Infinite Jest, inspired by David Foster Wallace’s novel, translates the book’s density into a marriage between pandan vodka and coconut, featuring ripe pineapple and bright citrus, clarified with milk for a clean, velvety drink.
The Library Bar’s presentation runs neat and clean. There is no theatrical smoke or over the top garnishes. That said, two cocktails, in particular, stand out — one because it comes with what looks like an entire tomato in the glass, and another because one would not expect to find a Caribbean-style tikki cocktail in a place as sophisticated as this.
Cosmos, inspired by Carl Sagan’s book of the same name, is a botanical drink built on rosemary-infused gin, tequila, mastiha, tomato water and elderflower. Instead of ice cubes, the drink is served with frozen tomatoes. But what stands out in Cosmos is how it uses rosemary. Usually, rosemary in a drink is for the nose, in Cosmos the flavour is felt on the palette.
Then there is Kon-Tiki, inspired by Thor Heyerdahl’s famous expedition. Made with aged rum, Metaxa, pineapple, passionfruit, citrus and homemade falernum, it is a tropical drink with more depth than the first sip suggests.
The menu also caters to the ongoing rage around picantes. But, The Agony and the Ecstasy, named after Irving Stone’s novel on Michelangelo, isn’t the conventional picante. It takes the flavour, the spice, and the sourness a notch higher. It layers Tequila blanco with lychee distillate, fresh lime and a habanero-saffron tincture, before topping it with a mango-chilli foam that balances heat, fruit and spice.
And, for those who like their whisky cocktails classic and strong, there is Farewell, My Lovely, channeling Raymond Chandler’s noir world through truffle-fat-washed rye whiskey, Fernet Branca, sweet vermouth and chocolate bitters. It’s rich, heavy and built to linger.
“The pricing is at par with the market, the starting price here is ₹1,375,” Tiwari said. Now, pricing at a standalone cocktail bar touches ₹1,200 and at five star hotels, it even touches ₹2,000. “We have a sweet spot,” he added.
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Comeback from the grave
The Library Bar has quietly occupied its corner inside The Leela New Delhi for more than 14 years. When Tiwari returned to the brand after a four-year gap in 2023, he decided that it needed more than a cosmetic refresh. It needed reinvention.
“This bar was seen as something only for boring, wealthy people, the older generation, and deep pockets only. There was also this idea that Leela only served expensive whisky and rare cognacs,” Tiwari recalled.
Protected by the hotel’s own walls and reputation, the bar had simply never been forced to evolve.
“One should never forget that the walls that protect you also end up restricting you,” he said.
What is less obvious from the outside is how deliberately Tiwari paced the turnaround. For the first two years, he launched a cocktail program and then didn’t touch it until now.
Instead, the early work went into rebuilding the foundations, upgrading the functionality of the bar, installing a better sound system, investing in bar essentials and equipment such as a roto evaporator, and centrifuging machine. While centrifuges are commonly associated with separating blood plasma in laboratories, behind the bar they are used to clarify juices without heat or gelatin, isolate fruit flavours, and extract essential oils from herbs and spices.
“The initial money was barely Rs 5 lakh,” said Tiwari, who smartly split the expenses ensuring that it doesn’t cause a sudden blow.
The first cocktail menu of The Library Bar was launched just as tequila was finally having its moment in India and the country’s modern cocktail culture was taking shape. This was ahead of the current wave of celebrated bars such as Boilermaker and Outrigger.
Tiwari sensed early on that cocktail culture was about to arrive in India with a bang. When it finally did, The Library Bar savoured the fruits of their hard work.
Its annual turnover doubled from Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore in 2023, before doubling again over the next two years.
With the literary menu marking its most ambitious reinvention yet, Tiwari says that the next goal is bigger: cementing a spot not just among India’s best, but consistently inside Asia’s top bars.
“International expansion of the ‘Literary of Mixology’ is definitely on the table,” he added.
(Edited by Janaki Pande)