Cocktail Bar List

Unknown. Cocktail Bar List. F Cornaglia & Co: Bombay, India [ca.1930]. 4to (120x180mm) cream printed silver & black stiff card, stapled 15,[]1pp. VG/- lightly soiled, staple started.

UNKNOWN

Cocktail Bar List

Bombay : F Cornaglia & Co, undated circa  1930.

Oblong (120x180mm) cream printed silver & black stiff card wrappers, blue paper, red & brown printed , stapled 15,[1]pp.  Wrappers lightly soiled, staple started.

Federico Peliti (1844 - 1914) was an Italian baker and confectioner, trained in Turin.  When he moved to British India he opened a confectionery business but quickly also became a hotelier, restaurateur, providore and an amateur photographer. Peliti's was the first Italian restaurant in India.  His restaurant in Shimla, Peliti's, was very popular and even mentioned by Rudyard Kipling.

Born in Carignano, Felice Cornaglia had also  trained in Turin as a confectioner. His specialty was sophisticated and finely crafted "architectural cakes".  He followed his cousin, Peliti to India and worked for him in Peliti's various businesses.  When Peliti expanded his restaurants to Shimla and Nainital, Cornaglia worked at the restaurant in Calcutta. Around 1880, Peliti established businesses and a restaurant in Bombay (Mumbai).  On December 22, 1891, a notice appeared on page 4 of The Bombay Gazette announcing that "F Cornaglia was the successor to Federico Peliti, the latter having nothing to do with the Bombay and the Poona business." It was signed by F Cornaglia of 83 Medows Street, Fort, Bombay and 1, Main Street, Camp, Poona (Pune).  F Cornaglia & Co traded successfully in Bombay and Poona until the 1940s.  It was the first European and Italian restaurant in Poona, changing location several times.  Advertisements in the Voice of India in 1902 show F Cornaglia & Co trading as a manufacturing confectioner, a providore (of European foodstuffs) and a wine merchant (holding the vice-regal warrant to supply the Governor of Bombay) as well as a restaurant. Up until World War II,  Cornaglia's in Bombay and Poona were restaurants serving European food, with music and dancing in later years.  


The Bar List contains 164 champagne, absinthe, brandy, whisky, gin and rum cocktails, and 131 long drinks.  Several of the drinks listed were first published in The Savoy Cocktail Book, suggesting the list is from the mid to late 1930s. 

An excellent and scarce ephemeral piece from Anglo-Indian culture in the 1930s.

§  Unrecorded.