Paris • Cocktails • Bars

Baxo
21, rue Juliette Dodu
75010 Paris
01 42 02 99 71

Baxo does not stock any gin. I think that means we pretty much know where this post is going already.

In anticipation of sunny skies and warm evenings, I’m on the hunt for lovely little terraces where I can enjoy my tipples! Having read on their website that they have a terrace, I made this my latest visit. The website version and the real version of this place are not exactly mirror images. Looking online I thought it might be a bit too loungey-chi-chi-neon-glam for my taste. But it also looked sort of cool and I figured – hey! – it might be even better in real life. It’s not.

In the light of day, the clear plastic wanna be stylish orange chairs look cheapish and potentially not very sturdy. The handful of tables on the sidewalk in front of the Baxo looked uninviting and cold. The menu features only vodka, rum & tequila based cocktails at around 8 Euros each.

I ordered the closest thing they had to my standard martini and got a dirty vodka martini off the menu. I was afraid to deviate from the menu because this place already struck me as a spot where the bartenders weren’t going too be too apt with free-styling things. And, I got the worst cocktail of my life. The warm and vile concoction was served in a martini glass complete with two little chips on the lip and finished off with the famous Paris plastic martini straw – even getting excessive and putting in two! WAY too much olive juice. I have no idea who might order this and enjoy it. Granted, I don’t usually order dirty martinis, so just maybe they are supposed to taste this way. (In which case, those of you who DO order them are crazy!) My two drinking partners for the night simply stuck with a glass of wine – one red, the other white. Neither raved about that, either, but, at 4 Euros a glass, there was slightly less financial damage done there.

Seriously, I like to remain positive, but the only good thing I can come up with for this place was the bartender was kind of nice and gave me directions to get to the nearest taxi stand where I could get to a dinner date and eat something to get the taste of that horrid drink out of my mouth!