The Hottest Show in Town: Crazy Paris Cabaret at Pink Champagne

Three weeks ago, Hvar's most charismatic wine maker Andro Tomić came over for a coffee at Total Hvar HQ in Café Splendid in Jelsa. He was wide-eyed about an amazing evening's entertainment he had discovered in Hvar Town.

On his routine social business one evening, friends pulled him to one side and up an alley and down into the basement of a place he had never been in before. It took him a while to adjust his eyes to the pink neon lights, but what happened afterwards was one of the best evenings he had had in a while, and he was still buzzing the next morning.   

Welcome to Pink Champagne - Hvar's newest and, dare I say it, hottest club, with a difference. No Full Moon parties here, no drunken teenagers or British princes falling into swimming pools, but something rather genteel which fills a gap in the late night social scene on the island.  

Pink Champagne, whose owners include the hugely successful Hula Hula among their other business interests, opened last year for 40 days in the season, but its real opening is this year, and they have brought with them a star-studded cast to offer some of the world's best cabaret and burlesque on a nightly basis. 

The club, discreetly situated at the back of the old town, to the right of the bus station, offers a spectacular cabaret act with dancers from France, Australia and England, who perform in the very best locations in the world. The club starts shortly after midnight and lasts for between 80 and 100 minutes and, as the pictures here show, it is quite a spectacle. 

I visited the club for the first time last week to have a look around before it opened for the evening. Expensively and stylishly furnished, I was struck by the fact that the owners had indeed found a niche in the Hvar night scene. Plenty of satisfied diners want to move on to somewhere a little more sophisticated to continue the evening's fun, and the prospect of late night discos or fighting for cocktails in crowded bars may not appeal.  

Pink Champagne appears to meet that need. I was expecting the prices of the drinks to be outrageous, but they are more than reasonable, given the quality of show on offer, and the exclusive surroundings. I am taking The Boss to the show tonight, to see it for the first time, and will report back.  

And, should there be any doubt in the quality of the lineup, I will be interviewing Lada Redstar for Google News this evening before the show. See her in action here, with her winning routine for the London Burlesque Games in May. 

It promises to be quite a night.