Working with MGN Events we were tasked with overseeing all bar operations as well as fulfilling our part in the excellent Great Gatsby theme. Our show stopper was certainly the Great Gatsby themed bar – otherwise known as our 1920s island bar. Sitting centrally in the marquee, set up in the back garden of the private Cobham residence, the 1920s island bar was busy from the start of the night right through to the end, with our three professional flair bartenders doing a great job of keeping the young guests happy and entertained..
This recent private event was seeking for an 18th birthday party organised in the style of The Great Gatsby and the theme of 1920’s America. The 1920’s was also a new age and era for bars and bartenders with the development of speakeasies. These were secret drinking establishments due to alcohol being outlawed as part of prohibition. It is an era that represents some of the greatest cocktail creations and the dawn of the bartender as we have come to know them today.
With 140 guests in attendance, all mainly around the age of 18, the client also opted for our glassware hire. We have a number of different options for our glassware hire and our client settled with our wide range of high-end polycarbonate glassware to avoid the typical glassware problems that can arise with broken glass.
Alongside our glassware and Great Gatsby themed bar we also prepared a cocktail menu for the event, including a couple of modern classics such as the mojito and cosmopolitan, as well as a favourite from the 1920s in the form of a Raspberry Rickey.
The 1920s have long been remembered as the Roaring Twenties, an age of unprecedented affluence – a time when the United States of America became a new nation: a Ford Model T in every driveway, “Amos n’ Andy” on the radio and the first “talking” motion pictures at the cinema, baseball hero Babe Ruth in the ballpark and celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh on the front page of every newspaper. As a soaring stock market minted millionaires by the thousands, young Americans in the nation’s teeming cities rejected traditional social mores by embracing a modern urban culture of freedom—drinking illegally in speakeasies, dancing provocatively to the Charleston, and listening to the new and very improper rhythms of jazz music.
