The Great Outdoors

The Peninsula Wants You Drinking on Its Rooftop (After All These Years)

Prepare for the party
Prepare for the party Photo: The Peninsula

If the cabanas at The Peninsula could talk, we would have been thrown in jail ages ago. This spread of twelve luxury tents surrounds the hotel’s rooftop pool, overlooking the city’s south while serving drinks and nibbles high above the grind. But unless you’ve had a visiting sugar-parent come to town or are rolling with Lloyd Blankfein’s gang, you’ve probably been kept at a distance from the guests here, who have had the area completely to themselves, rabble-free, for all of these years. Well, it’s time to let the bacchanal begin, as this Beverly Hills grande dame hotel is finally opening the cabanas to the masses for a daily, four-hour cocktail party.

Starting next Tuesday, The Peninsula will open the cabanas to non-hotel guests from 5:00 to 9:00 P.M., potentially unhinging the doors for a rush of flotation device-surfing, booze-swilling, Kardashian-worshipping, fit and tan Biff Malibus and Skippers. Okay, it probably won’t become The Roosevelt’s pool scene anytime too soon, as reservations start at $195 for six people, but the occasion does mark the introduction of a new cocktail menu here, with sixteen-dollar drinks that include a white peach and pear martini, a speckled jalapeno margarita, frozen lemonade, and a pomegranate mojito.

There is food to fuel your late-night cabana sessions, too, with a new menu of poolside-appropriate hotel eats like Dungeness crab cakes with mango-papaya relish, grilled steak quesadillas, and an ahi tuna chop-chop with herbs from the rooftop garden, with prices sometimes lower than the cocktails and maxing out at $20. Figure in parking and the $20 you’ll have to give the security guard to let you keep the cabana’s zipper closed and you’re looking at a pricey, but very exclusive, private fete of your own.

Check out the full cocktails menu below and reserve your own Peninsula cabana at 310-975-2855.

The Peninsula Beverly Hills
“Cabana Cocktails”
Daily from 5:00-9:00 P.M.
Signature Drinks are $16

MENU

Pomegranate Mojito
Bacardi Rum, Mint, Pomegranate and Citrus Juice, Blended and Strained over ice with Citrus Foam

Frozen Lemonade
Ultimat Vodka, Cointreau & Fresh Citrus Juices, Blended with Ice and Pickled Lemon Rind

White Peach & Pear Martini
Grey Goose La Poire, White Peach Purée & Fresh Basil

Speckled Jalapeño Margarita
Patron Reposado Tequila with fresh Citrus Juices and Grand Marnier, Muddled with a Thin Slice of Jalapeño

Blackberry Caipirinha
10 Cane Rum, Muddled Blackberries, Thyme, Lemon Juice and Cane sugar

Twenty
Zaya 12 yr Rum, Bacardi 8yr Rum, Lemon Juice, Lychee Puree, Blackberries & Ginger

The Peninsula Wants You Drinking on Its Rooftop (After All These Years)