WHAT IS GOOD?//PARIS//DRINKS MENU RESEARCH & FRENCH WRITERS//OUGD505

HOTEL MENU RESEARCH 
I have researched into ideas for the menus at the hotel.  I wanted to name the cocktails after something more unusual than just famous Parisian landmarks.  I thought about either French artists or French poets and writers.  I feel this choice could fit with the hotel theme as I don't want it to be commercial and touristy.  The hotel is also meant to be giving the customers a true Parisian culture experience and so learning about the arts and culture of the French would be a good way to incorporate this through branding:

This is the Ampersand Hotel cocktail menu design:

Our cocktails celebrate the creative dexterity of the cream of mankind.
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Taking its cue from our illustrious neighbour, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A),
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our bespoke collection references the visionary artists
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and great thinkers whose works were highlights of the European Grand Tour,
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a rite of passage for generations in
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in search of beauty, culture
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and enlightenment 

I would like to create something similar for the Hotel bearing these writers/poets/artists in mind:

Honoré de Balzac, 1799-1850

Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. One of his most famous works, La Comédie Humaine, was his first real taste of success in the literary world. In fact, his personal life was much more about trying things out and failing than seeing actual success. He is considered by many literary critics as one of the "founding fathers" of realism as La Comédie Humaine was a commentary on all aspects of life. It was a collection of all the works that he penned under his own name. Le Père Goriot is often read in French literature classes as a classic example of realism. The story of King Lear set in 1820's Paris, Le Père Goriot is Balzac's commentary on a society who loves money.

Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619-1655

Cyrano de Bergerac is actually best known for a play that was written about him by Rostand entitledCyrano de Bergerac. The play has been adapted to screen many, many times. The plot is well familiar: Cyrano loves Roxanne, but ends up wooing her using his poetry on behalf of another friend who is less articulate. Rostand apparently embellished the real life characteristics of de Bergerac although apparently he really was a phenomenal swordsmen, and a greatly admired poet. Arguably, his poetry is more well known because of Rostand's play. He also reportedly had an enormously large nose of which he was very proud.

Alexandre Dumas, père 1802-1870

Alexandre Dumas is considered the most widely read French author in history. He is known for historical novels that chronicle the wild adventures of his characters. Dumas was prolific in writing and many of his tales are retold today:

• The Three Musketeers
• The Count of Montecristo
• The Man in the Iron Mask (the last in a series of stories from The Vicomte de Bragelonne.'')
• The Nutcracker (made famous by Tchaikovsky's version as a ballet)

MORE FRENCH WRITERS:

• Molière
• Émile Zola
• Stendhal
• George Sand
• Musset
• Marcel Proust
• Rostand
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Madame de Scudéry
• Stendhal
• Sully-Prudhomme
• Anatole France
• Simone de Beauvoir
• Charles Baudelaire
• Voltaire