America has made its choice. while not all of us are impressed with the thought of Donald Trump as our next president, the whole process has got me thinking about America’s political backstory and its place in the bars and taverns of a nation not always united by modern methods of communication. I know one of the first rules of the barroom has become “no…
I had a rough Monday before work last week. A package came to my house with the incorrect order in it and, during the unnecessarily long customer service call, which overlapped with my bike ride to work, I got a flat tyre. I am a creature of habit and I start every week with a hamburger lunch at Peter Luger (home of one of New…
Rematch!!! Beeyatch!!! just happened. Again. In all its magnificently sloppy glass breaking, Zombie swizzling, blender spewing, Daiquiri spilling glory. What started out as a dick measuring contest between two drunken Brits has spread to at least four of the seven continents. Giuseppe Gonzalez of Suffolk Arms in New York City has been instrumental in it’s growth. Paul Mant and Tim Stones were the original…
You’re at work two hours early. After prepping five or six solid ingredients and at least that many liquid ones, you feel you can start your shift. You’ve put on your apron and supplied yourself with side towels. You’ve used a Robot-Coupe, a hand blender, a chinois, cheese cloth and a knife. Your station is tight and you feel fully prepared. You will spend the…
ICE. FROZEN WATER. SIMPLE. THE LEAST important ingredient in your cocktail. Used to be an afterthought – grab a bag at the corner store. Now it’s at the forefront of everyone’s drinking mind. Smoked ice. Branded ice. Flavoured ice. Coloured ice. Ice as a performance element in your drink. There has been a serious ice renaissance in the cocktail world over the past 15 years…
EGO. SELF ESTEEM. The conscious mind. What defines us as unique personalities. One of the most important tools a bartender has and one of the greatest potential pitfalls in our careers and guest interactions. Aligning our egos with reality can be one of the most productive learning experiences we can have. At base we serve, but some of us let ego get in the way…
WE LIVE IN A STRANGE NEW WORLD WHERE the currency of success isn’t always monetary. It seems to be just as important these days to have 5,000 ‘friends’ on Facebook, or at least that many Instagram followers. I’m not sure when these social networks started to be such a large part of professional life, and I might be too old to really succeed at…
SOUS VIDE. IT TRANSLATES TO ‘UNDER VACUUM’ and is the term widely used for cooking food very slowly in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag in a temperature-controlled water bath. The technology was developed at the end of the 18th century, but first used in the modern culinary world at Restaurant Troisgros in France. As bars and kitchens are closely related, this technology and technique has left…
I CAN STILL REMEMBER sitting on a beach in Oaxaca 11 or 12 years ago. An old man carrying a stained canvas shoulder bag walked up to me: “Señor. Quiere mezcal?” I said yes and he pulled out a repurposed Coca-Cola bottle with a cork jammed in its mouth. The liquid inside was clear and looked slightly heavy and viscous. I…
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Except there used to be, everywhere there was a concentration of bar rooms or saloons in nineteenth-century America. Especially in locales where there was intense competition for customers, such as New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, Chicago and New Orleans. Of course, the origin of the phrase lies in the fact that one was obliged to…
