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News
Parisian wine bar serves booze in baby bottles
At least two bars in Paris appear to be serving wine and cocktails in baby bottles in what is being described as a “hipster fad too far” but may have originated as a simple case of tax avoidance.
Wine in baby bottles – latest hipster trend or simple French tax dodging? Photo credit: Ashley Thompson
Cereal cafes, food served on shovels, from plant pots, on a shoe, the “hipster” penchant for serving food and drink in bizarre and occasionally inconvenient ways continues to defy belief but the news that baby bottles are being used to serve liquor is a new one.
As reported by The Telegraph, Instagrammer “theothernicryan” snapped a photo showing adults in a bar near Montmartre drinking from baby bottles.
“A little restaurant full of people drinking actual drinks from baby bottles,” he wrote. “Stuff of nightmares this. Imagine meeting your mates and getting there late and not knowing what the restaurant was all about and seeing all your adult friends drinking like babies and just carrying on like it was completely normal.”
A little digging by the Telegraph discovered it was the “Refuge des Fondus” bar which serves its “lowest-end table wine” in baby bottles.
An “Intelligent Travel” blog post on National Geographic as far back as 2008 suggests that, despite seeming to be the latest achingly cool drinking vessel for Parisians that smoke their Gauloises inside their Gitanes, it is actually a, “clever little shortcut to getting around the mandated tax Parisian restaurants face when serving wine out of the slightly more traditional stemmed glass.”
Even if it is, the idea has been taken up, ironically or otherwise, rather more recently by another bar – Le Zéro de Conduite – where cocktails are served to “those who forgot to grow up”, in baby bottles at €16 a pop and €6 per refill. Which sounds much more “on-trend”.
“theothernicryan” added it reminded of a scene from the 2005 Channel 4 comedy show “Nathan Barley”, which included this scene entitled: “The rise of the idiot” – way ahead of its time.