Botanist Bar sits on the second floor of the Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver, reached via a grand staircase from the hotel lobby. The space is lush and plant-filled, with natural wood, stone, and botanical installations throughout – four distinct areas, including a TASCHEN Library lounge and a Garden Room, connected by a shared botanical thread. The Cocktail Lab, a glass-enclosed workspace adjacent to the main bar, is visible throughout service, with the rotovap, centrifuge, and specialist equipment in use and on show. When Botanist opened, dedicated bar labs of this kind were unusual – most bars were still sharing borrowed kitchen space.

The menu is organised into three terroir categories – Mountain and Meadow, Coastal and Tropical, and Orchard and Field – each reflecting a different Pacific Northwest ecosystem. Brand names do not appear on the cocktail menu, only the spirit category, ensuring guests order based on flavour rather than label recognition. Foraged ingredients are used with specificity: candy cap mushrooms replace maple syrup in the Beekeeper for their shared flavour profile; sea asparagus stands in for olives in the Marine Martini, delivering the same crisp, saline quality through an unfamiliar ingredient. Japanese whisky is fat-washed with foie gras for the Duck Duck Goose. The bar also produces a house vermouth, a Botane tincture of lemon balm, elderflower, and spruce, and a range of seasonal syrups and cordials – sugar content measured with a refractometer, citrus juiced and dated daily.

Four Lab cocktails sit apart from the main menu, each exploring a theme through multi-sensory presentation and a food pairing from the executive chef. The current series takes the water cycle as its subject – Raincouver arrives with a floating edible raincloud of cherry blossom and green tea, while Earths Energy is served in an electrically charged glass that lights up on touch, with a frozen chamomile ice puck at the base that melts slowly as the drink is enjoyed. On ordering from the Lab menu, guests receive a Negroni pâte de fruit and a small glass of non-alcoholic spumante to cleanse the palate. The spirit-free programme is treated with the same ambition as the alcoholic menu – the bar hosted Canada’s first non-alcoholic bar competition in 2024.

Orbisk AI tracks and weighs all food waste across the bar and kitchen, with quarterly reduction targets set and reviewed by the team. A root-to-stem approach runs through both programmes – citrus peels used for garnishes, oleo saccharum, and infusions; herb stems folded into syrups. Composting handles what cannot be repurposed. Ice machines are air-cooled rather than water-cooled, and on-site Vivreau filtration supplies all water served and used in cocktails. The bar participates in Fairmont’s hotel-wide goal to divert more than half of all waste from landfill.

The local sourcing extends to the people behind the produce. Sole Food Farms, one of the bar’s suppliers, employs predominantly homeless and struggling individuals – a relationship that reflects the same values that shape the ingredient choices throughout the menu.

The experience is shaped from arrival – guests are greeted by name, with the team researching each reservation in advance and maintaining detailed profiles covering dietary restrictions, allergies, seating preferences, and past visits. At the bar, fermented vegetables arrive before the first order is taken. The TASCHEN Library seating area offers curated art and design books to browse, and a bespoke cedar and fir scent moves through the space. Lighting dims progressively as the evening develops, music shifting from jazz and bossa nova in the earlier hours through to downtempo and nu-jazz as service deepens into the night. Guests leave with a Mexican shortbread cookie made from the executive chef’s grandmother’s recipe – a small, personal close to the evening.