One moment Gaby Scanlon was out with her friends celebrating her 18th birthday
in a wine bar in Lancaster city centre, showing off the watch she’d been
given. The next, she was in Lancaster Royal Infirmary, having her stomach
removed.
There are plenty of sixth-formers who wake up feeling the worse for wear after
celebrating this milestone, but Gaby’s horrendous incident was not because
she had drunk too much. It was because of what she had drunk: liquid
nitrogen.
The police and the bar owners are still trying to work out exactly what
happened, and there is no suggestion that anyone has broken any laws.
However, Gaby’s accident has thrown the spotlight on the increasingly
sophisticated world of cocktail bars. The era of simple piña coladas and
vodka tonics has been replaced by molecular mixology, where foams, sprays,
jellies and smoking drinks have become all the rage. Martini glasses and
highballs are now passé – shots are drunk out of test tubes, gin and
elderflower tonics served out of steaming tea pots.
“It really took off about two or three years ago, and the dry-ice effect is
exciting,” says Tatiana Mercer, who runs a bar blog, BarChick.
“It’s brought the sense of theatre into bars, in the way that Heston
Blumenthal did with restaurants. But I had no idea it was potentially
dangerous.”
Gaby’s night out was at a pretty basic bar in the university town. Famed for
its generous portions of nachos, even this hang-out has taken up the trend
of liquid nitrogen, a chemical many of us will remember from childhood
science lessons – being handled by a diffident teacher wearing goggles.
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