Best Place to see an Angel

Monday, May. 15, 2006 By BRYAN WALSH

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Normally, the sight of a winged fairy floating several meters above the bar top bearing a bottle of Dom P?gnon would be an excellent signal to stop drinking. But at Singapore's Divine Wine Extraordinaire it means you're just getting started. Situated in the impossibly opulent lobby of the impossibly lavish Parkview Square office building, Divine Wine Extraordinaire manages to be even more baroque than its name suggests. Its centerpiece is a gilded, 12-m-tall wine fridge that rises from behind the bar to the ornate roof of the lobby, covered by gold friezes and?for no apparent reason?paintings of gazelles romping through woods.

If you order one of the 3,000 bottles of wine held at a constant 18°C in the cooler, a server will gamely change into a glittery silver tutu, complete with tiny rainbow wings, and then attach herself to a steel cable that hoists her up and down the cooler's racks until she finds your order of, say, Dog Point Sauvignon Blanc. With the bottle safely stashed in the holster on her hip, she'll be lowered back to your spot by the bar, where you had better reward her with a substantial tip. The whole process, from ordering to opening, takes about 20 minutes, which leaves you plenty of time to sit back and take in the black-and-gold Art Deco fantasy of Parkview Square itself. Gilded statues of Dante, Sun Yat-sen and Salvador Dali stand sentinel at the entrance courtyard, while the tropical evening sky turns purple through soaring panes of glass. There are thick crimson rugs and chandeliers in profusion, plus sofas so plush you could drown in them. Never mind a lone wine angel: squadrons of cherubim would be completely in keeping with a setting as elysian as this.