Much like a restaurant review, wellness is subjective. And to be frank, what makes many people feel well, in particular when they’re easing into the idea of spending $195 on 32 ounces of meat, is booze. But when Alex Ekbatani opened the Ette Hotel in 2022, they didn’t serve any.
Ette, which is an acronym for “earthy, true, timeless and elegant,” was conceived as a wellness hotel, Ekbatani tells me, and so, zero-alcohol it was. As such, he hired one of the world’s foremost mixologists from Amsterdam to curate an array of elaborate, showstopper mocktails that were widely publicized around town, including in the Orlando Sentinel . Customers were permitted to bring their own wines (sans corkage fee) and even their own spirits, but our server noted with an amusing and skillful improv of a guest cradling an imaginary bottle, many of them felt weird about it.
Others who showed up eager to sample items like chef Akira Back’s signature AB tuna pizza flat-out left after hearing they couldn’t get a drink. And so, when the bar went native roughly two months ago, business, he told us, definitely picked up. This pleases me.
Sushi Yama’s AYCE to-order is a fresh meal for a great deal | Review Because I paid $28 for a Negroni at the Tampa Edition hotel a few months ago — admittedly not without a quick flash of nausea — and for $4 less at the Ette, my Moonchild cocktail ( now with tequila!! ) featured a spectacle that saw our small table literally draped with rolling, ench.
