Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel’s Botanist Bar by North America’s 50 Best Bars — Miss Eileen Soo

BOTANIST BAR IN VANCOUVER, CANADA, WINS MICHTER’S ART OF HOSPITALITY AWARD IN THE SECOND ANNUAL NORTH AMERICA’S 50 BEST BARS AWARDS 2023

A beacon of outstanding hospitality in the Pacific Northwest celebrates the region’s vibrant biodiversity and applies it in state-of-the-art, culinary-forward cocktails

Botanist Bar in Vancouver, Canada, has been announced as the winner of the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award, part of the second annual North America’s 50 Best Bars awards 2023. Created to recognize the importance of hospitality in the bar experience, this award is voted for by 260 members of North America’s 50 Best Bars Academy. These industry experts, all based in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, are asked to name the bar where they received the single-best hospitality experience during the voting period.

This is the first in a series of special pre-announced awards in the month leading up to the second annual announcement of North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023, sponsored by Perrier. It will be held at a live awards ceremony taking place at Hacienda Los Picachos in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico on Thursday, May 4, 2023, at 6:30pm CST/8:30pm EDT. This represents the first time the awards ceremony will be staged in Mexico and salutes its presence on the global cocktail scene. North America’s 50 Best Bars, together with market-leading The World’s 50 Best Bars and Asia’s 50 Best Bars, provide consumers with the most reliable list of expert-approved drinking destinations anywhere in the world.

Mark Sansom, Content Director for North America’s 50 Best Bars, says: “The Canadian bar community has forged a culture of exceptional hospitality that Botanist Bar exemplifies. Located at the far Western edge of the continent, the bar welcomes locals and travelers alike, with the bar team giving their all every shift to guarantee a memorable and bespoke experience for each guest. This nurturing approach to hospitality extends to the bar team itself, which enjoys a three-day weekend on average to help maintain a healthy work-life balance. In the cocktail world of cold hands and warm hearts, Botanist Bar is a shining example and a deserved recipient of the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award.”

Botanist Bar, led under the guidance of Creative Beverage Director Grant Sceney and spearheaded by Head Bartender Jeff Savage, is ensconced in the award-winning Botanist restaurant housed in the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel. Inspired by the principles of botany, the bar celebrates the Pacific Northwest’s unique biodiversity in its culinary-forward approach using state-of-the-art techniques. Botanist Bar’s Cocktail Lab, a bartender’s studio stocked with a rotary evaporator, centrifuges and a band saw for size-specific ice sculpting, encourages unbridled creativity and precise, chemist-like executions of its house-made tinctures, shrubs and syrups. Guests are brought into conversations about ingredients and sophisticated processes, layering in intellectual depth to the bar’s unconditional and expansive hospitality.

Savage says: “Winning the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award is a distinct and completely humbling honor. We have cheered from afar watching bars we deeply admire receive this accolade and to be a part of the conversation alongside them is a gift. Hospitality is truly the most important aspect of what we do at Botanist. It’s ingrained in every decision we make. We’re blessed to be in a position to act as an ambassador for Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Oftentimes, we have guests who make our bar their first stop in the country, and we aim to not only show the best of what our little slice of the world has to offer, but to do so in the most welcoming, inclusive manner possible. It’s truly a gift to be recognized as a leading bar in Canada, and to win an award for something so important to us is an experience beyond words.”

Matt Magliocco, Executive Vice President, Michter’s Distillery, says: “Congratulations to Botanist on winning the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award at North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023. Ever since opening, Botanist has earned acclaim throughout Canada as one of the nation’s finest hospitality establishments. Today, it is wonderful to see the Botanist Bar team, led by Creative Beverage Director Grant Sceney and Head Bartender Jeff Savage, receive such well-deserved recognition from peers across North America.”

The second annual edition of North America’s 50 Best Bars, sponsored by Perrier, will be announced on Thursday, May 4, 2023. The countdown of the list of North America’s 50 Best Bars and the awards ceremony will also be broadcast to a global audience who are not able to attend in person, and bar and cocktail lovers will be invited to join through The World’s 50 Best Bars Facebook page and 50 Best Bars TV channel on YouTube.

About North America’s 50 Best Bars

Following the success of The World’s 50 Best Bars, sponsored by Perrier, and the establishment of Asia’s 50 Best Bars in 2016, 50 Best launched North America’s 50 Best Bars, with the first edition of the awards held in New York, N.Y. on June 7, 2022. It shines a much-deserved spotlight on the region as a world-class drinks’ destination and acts as a mouthpiece for the outstanding talent coming through. The inaugural North America’s 50 Best Bars awards ceremony and unveiling of the list provided a unique opportunity to unite bartenders, bar owners, cocktail aficionados and drinks media from all over the region at a captivating celebration of drinks, hospitality, passion and talent. North America’s 50 Best Bars includes voting for bars from Canada, the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean. William Reed, which owns the 50 Best brand, is entirely responsible for the organization of the awards, the voting system and the respective lists.