Plenty of hotels serve up unusual cocktails, but Raffles hotels have a unique claim on cocktail history: sometime in the 1900s, in its Singapore Hotel, bartender Ngiam Tong Boon created a gin-based cocktail named Singapore Sling, in a hue of proper pink designed to appeal to the hotel's female British clientele.

Or so the story goes, there's debate about whether it was originally called a "Singapore Sling" -- in browsing around today, I found reference to a "Straits Sling" and also a "Gin Sling", neither of which have the same ring. There's also question about whether the original recipe is the one in use today -- for more on this, check out "Dr. Cocktail" Ted Haigh's treatise on the subject in Mixologist: The Journal of the American Cocktail, which goes into depth on the subject. Either way, the Singapore Sling served by thousands at Raffles Singapore today is worth trying at home, see the recipe below.

Also in the East, at Raffles Hotel Le Royal, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the signature drink is a "Femme Fatale". This drink is named after Jacqueline Kennedy, who apparently left a lipstick- stained cocktail glass at the Elephant Bar during her 1967 visit, which was only discovered during the hotel's restoration. (Questions arise: how did they know that it was her glass? And of all the descriptions of Jackie O, is "femme fatale" the first that leaps to mind?) Either way, this is another drink designed to appeal to the ladies.


Raffles "Femme Fatale"
7.5 ml Crème de Fraise
Dash of cognac
Top with Champagne

Serve in a champagne flute with a garnish of rose.



Raffles Singapore Sling

30 ml Gin
15 ml Heering Cherry Brandy
120 ml Pineapple Juice
15 ml Lime Juice
7.5 ml Cointreau
7.5 ml Dom Benedictine
10 ml Grenadine
A Dash of Angostura Bitters
Garnish with a slice of Pineapple and Cherry