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One at The Hazelton Hotel

116 Yorkville Ave., Toronto

416-961-9600

http://www.thehazeltonhotel.com

There is no bar quite like an upscale hotel bar, with its smoky - well, okay, memories of smoky - promises of chic transcontinental flirting and a well-appointed suite just a key card away.

And while you might be in a fight for your life to get a reservation at the restaurant, a bev at the bar in Mark McEwan's One at the Hazelton Hotel is a more easily attained pleasure. Don't, however, wear your scruffy runners. It just wouldn't go with the chic clientele, or Yabu Pushelberg's elegant design, which manages to evoke both old-school clubbiness (dark wood floors, low lights) and airy modernism (shapely charcoal furniture, groovy lamps).

"How do I put this?" general manager Tim Salmon says with a smile of the moneyed thirtysomething and fortysomething crowd, including a healthy splash of visiting celebs and sports stars thrown in for good measure. "You don't come here for a Canadian."

But what you do come to the bar at One for is a clever cocktail and martini list whose prices aren't actually as outrageous as one might fear. If you pass over the expensive rums, cognacs and Scotches that sit primly on the bar's top shelves, martinis and cocktails don't top $15.25.

And the one to have is called, naturally, the One.

"It's a little different than your standard cocktails that are overjuiced," says the One's creator, mixologist Roman Halitsky. "The Triple Sec adds a little bit of sweetness and the pineapple and the cinnamon complement each other really well. It just seemed perfect for when we opened at the end of August and people were drinking one after another on the patio. And it's not something you can order off the shelf because we infuse the vodka ourselves."

The One Martini

2 ounces pear and apple-infused vodka with cinnamon and cloves

½ ounce lemon juice

½ ounce Triple Sec

2 ounces pineapple juice

Shake over ice, strain into

a martini glass and garnish with

a gooseberry.