There is already a patron saint of bartenders, St Amand, a seventh-century French monk who acquired credibility by bringing back to life a hanged criminal and parlayed his fame into a life spent founding monasteries. But if ever a replacement figurehead were sought, then the profession could do worse than look to Joe Scialom (above left). These days his name is known only to a few booze aficionados, but from 1937 to 1952 he presided over the Long Bar at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo.
Few remember Shepheard’s either, but a century ago it was one of the most famous stop-overs in the world, the Middle Eastern link in a glittering chain of high-end hospitality stretching from London’s Savoy to the Taj in Bombay, Raffles in Singapore and the Grand Hotel, Khartoum. Shepheard’s streetside terrace was, like Piccadilly or Times Square, a place that everybody dropped by at one time or another. Great Victorians such as Burton, Stanley and General Gordon all strode off for Africa from under its sheltering canopy, while in World War II Noel Coward could narrowly miss seeing Cecil Beaton but run into Josephine Baker on the steps.
Scialom claimed to be born of a Venetian father and a Russian mother but, so he said, was American by adoption — and Scotch by absorption. He worked in white jacket, black bowtie and eight languages, acting as banker, adviser, umpire and father confessor to his clients. During his tenure the Long Bar was known as St Joe’s Parish and he ministered according to a philosophy of “Mix well, but shake politics”.
Scialom claimed that the key to his success was that he looked like everybody’s cousin Joe, whether that was Cousin José, Cousin Giuseppe or Cousin Youssef. But his place in bartending history was secured by the invention of the Suffering Bastard, a potent cocktail born out of wartime rationing that is two dashes Angostura bitters to an ounce each of gin and bourbon, and a teaspoon of lime juice. To this day it continues to be included in all good mixologist manuals. (Scialom’s predecessor at the Long Bar was an Italian named Gasperini and his claim to fame was a cocktail he called the ‘Corpse Reviver’ — shades of St Amand!)
Joe was tending bar a little over 60 years ago on 26 January 1952 when the first Egyptian revolution exploded. Shepheard’s was one of many foreign-owned businesses set on fire by anti-British rioters and it was completely burned to the ground. Scialom escaped the inferno, as he later told a reporter, “slightly ruffled and really annoyed”. He subsequently found work across town at the Semiramis Hotel but after being imprisoned by Nasser during the Suez Crisis of 1956 (Joe was Jewish — the name is pronounced ‘Shalom’) he quit the country.
During Joe’s time at Shepheard’s one of the many guests he befriended was Conrad Hilton, and when he left Egypt the acquaintance was renewed leading to him taking up a job in Puerto Rico at the Caribe Hilton. From there he moved to Cuba and the Havana Hilton, until he was displaced by revolution once again, chased out of the country by the forces of Fidel Castro. He moved to New York and the Waldorf Astoria and travelled frequently opening bars for Hilton hotels including in Paris, Rome and London. Joe’s final job was at Windows on the World in the then-newly opened World Trade Centre before he finally retired to Florida where he lived into his nineties. He passed away in 2004 — not before he’d seen his last bar go up in flames on 9/11.
Grand Hotels of Egypt by Andrew Humphreys is published by The American University in Cairo Press and is distributed in the UK by Eurospan Group.
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