Everyone who in in the bar industry, or who simply orbit it as I do, has some vision in their head of the difference between Bartenders and Mixologists. Yes, I know there has also been argument over the term Mixologist in the past. But let’s face it, we’ve all sort of settled on it as a term for craft bartender, at least in the professional context.

Most of the folks I talk with who think about the distinction, do some from the perspective of the Mixologists. It’s who we are, or who we most often are looking at over a bar. When we do talk about Bartenders, it often is in a lightly condescending fashion, as in this tweet of mine recently. The reason for this is simply that all Mixologists are pros. It is in the definition. (Not all are good, but all are over-trained pros.) Where as most Bartenders are not. Most Bartenders are transients, going with temporary employment on their way to somewhere else.

But not all Bartenders are inexperienced amateurs. A small minority are serious pros in their own, different, right. But since there are so vastly more Bartenders than Mixologists, that small minority is likely much larger than the whole body of Mixologists. And some of those pros blog too. And do it entertainingly, with plenty of valuable things to say. I recently highlighted Tales From a Bar as one of these Old Pro Bartender Blogs.

And that was all an over-long introduction to another of these Old Pro blogs, The Truth About Bartending. A recent post, Mixology vs. Bartending, is one of those funny reads I mentioned that has a lot to say.

The post breaks down a lot of the key differences between established professional Mixologists, and established professional Bartenders, both from a customer’s viewpoint, but also as a career choice for each. Each area he breaks down is a very valid point of comparison, and for his non-professional reader of either stripe, he has a good sense of which terms need definition to understand what he’s talking about.

I’ll add that, like CaveMan of the above mentioned Tales From a Bar, “Freddy” blogs anonymously. If you look around at the Old Pro Bartender Blogs, you’ll see that another difference Freddy doesn’t mention is that Mixologists blog under their own name, while Bartenders blog anonymously. Read Freddy’s About page for an in depth list of the practical reasons for this. Then read around his blog for lots more interesting stuff, including his excellent taste in cocktail pundits.

To be clear, I recognize that you can in some cases, and to one degree or another, meld the two species. Take some talent, subject it to enough pressure for 16 years (as of this week), and you get a diamond like this guy.

And lo, in recent days, the king of cocktail blog traffic, Darcy at Art of Drink made an accidental foray into Rule 4 territory. Rule 4 states that you can pump up your own traffic by making controversial statements that rile up other online personalities. They denounce you publicly. And both of you reap the traffic reward as onlookers flock to both your blogs, tumblrs, feeds, or whatever. Happily Fortunately for Darcy, his Rule 4 trigger also employed Rule 5… Rule 5 is at its core: Everybody is interested in boobs.

In this particular case, Darcy tweeted a comment about how he is looking for a bartending job, and wonders if his search would be more fruitful if he got a boob job. He got some blowback… His tale and defense of his musing is summed up at Art of Drink in the post, Bartending and Your Boobs. You should follow the link and read the whole sordid, fascinating tale. (See what I did there? that’s Rule 2 of blogging success. And I went Rule 2 because Darcy went Rules 4 & 5)

Enough blogging about blogging. Darcy’s little contretemps illustrates an interesting question/controversy/fact of life in the bartending world. Like it or not, good looks are remarkably valuable as a professional asset in the bartending world.

To be clear, I am less worried about being pilloried than Darcy is on this subject because

1. I’m older and married, thus giving less of a damn about what other women think
2. I have already written on this subject (humorously) and have established my cred as a believer in the value of skill over looks
3. No one takes me all that seriously. (This is invaluable if you wish to say what you believe in this PC world)

That said, I do wish to make several beliefs perfectly clear at the outset, so any fights I get into will be on the merits, instead of misunderstanding.

This does not just apply to women. Hot is hot, female or male. Everybody objectifies hot people, and everybody avoids ugly people, in circumstances where we don’t know each other. Darcy focused (hey, he’s a guy) on bartenders who went out and purchased their “charismas” from Dr. Feelgood, but the issue remains just as germane when discussing naturally attractive folks as well.

If you are a bartender, the better looking you are, the more drinks you will sell, and the bigger tips you will get, all other things being equal.

But…

Looks will not help you if you suck. The customer will quickly lose interest in gazing into your dreamy eyes or magnificent cleavage if you take forever, get their order wrong, or your Margarita tastes like ass. Or if you shake their goddamn Manhattan….

Being a great bartender, or at least a competent one, is a skill. Most anyone has what it takes, should they care to work at it, to become a decent bartender who will care for customers adequately and be a value to their employer. Smokin’ hot looks are not a skill. If you have them, bully for you. If you don’t, you are not going to get them. (Dr. Feelgood disputes this, and for $10,000 he will endeavor to prove it to you)

As the internet meme goes, this post is useless without pictures, so I shall indulge my juvenile side with a few pictures so that you may have some illustrations of what hot bartenders might look like, you know, in case you are having a hard time with the concept….

If you want to be a successful bartender as a career, your looks will never be the deciding factor. They may make you successful more quickly, and they might raise your ceiling of success, but you can be Bo Derek and you will never be a successful bartender if you go around serving single malt scotch shaken with ice in a cocktail glass.

Kids, Bo Derek was this amazing looking actress back in the Pleistocene… never mind.

Now that I’ve established a set of opinions upon which I doubt I will be contradicted, let’s get controversial. Darcy, shortly after making the most convincing argument yet in our on-going back and forth about whether Canada is better than the US or (obviously) not, writes this key paragraph:

The choice is always up to women as to how they live their life. For example, this is a job ad for bartenders I saw a few months ago: “wanted: female bartenders, send picture and phone #”. That was literally the complete ad. I thought about dressing up in drag and sending my picture in, but I opted out. The thing is that an ad like this probably did result in a number of responses, and if a person responds to this type of ad they realize that the talent portion of the contest is secondary.

This is exactly right… here in the US, Canada, and a few other, lucky places on Earth. This is not the natural order of things now, or ever in the past. And if we want to preserve this historically anomalous state of affairs, we need to recognize our achievements on this front, and quit acting as if there is some moral equivalence between Western puerility, and the subjugation, open human trafficking, and even gendercide of women in most of the world. I have two young daughters, so this really matters to me.

But I have Sitemeter, and I thus know most of you who read this are fortunate enough to live with me in one of the good neighborhoods on Earth, so lets focus on how to live in our world. Darcy is over-reductive, I think, when he focuses on the ad I reproduced atop this post. Here is another such, longer and more detailed ad that makes the same point. Yes, in the Hooters-esque sub-sector of the hospitality biz, women do need to sort of “tramp themselves out”, but I feel the women who work in these places deserve more respect than they get. To succeed, they still have to have skills, and they have to work hard. A box of hammers with the best boob job on Earth will still fail in short order. (Or, alas, moved to the hostess stand)

But tramping oneself out differs in the professional context. It’s easy to see in the gay bar, where John Goodbody wears tight jeans and a shirt that shows off his chiseled, tanned biceps and pecs, or even at TGI Houligan Tuesday’s, where Jane Juice never sees the need for a bra and apparently has some disability that prevents her from working the buttons on her blouse more than one above her navel. Like these fine professionals:

But having great looks, and using them, will be just as effective, and just as calculated, for a seasoned pro working at a class outfit like a Violet Hour or a Pegu Club. I chose those two because during my last visit to each, neither had any really outstanding lookers, male or female. Other top of the line cocktail bars I’ve visited have had such, and don’t think it doesn’t matter. It is a simple matter of dressing conservatively, but tailoring, um, less so.

This last picture isn’t quite what I mean, but it was hard to find the right picture on the web without resorting to one or two that I took myself, of lady bartenders who might actually read this….

OK, enough with the eye-candy, let’s wrap up.

Um,
That means many of you can stop “reading” here….

The point that Darcy makes, which I agree with, is that in our civilization, no one makes you use your looks. Nor can they dictate how you choose to do it, should you choose to. Only in our ludicrously PC society would anyone equate a natural, automatic increase in your revenue and your earnings with being oppressed….

Similarly, if you got it, you’re an idiot not to use it. How you use it, or how much, is up to you. When choosing between otherwise identical bars, I’m going to the one where Cindy With the Rack works, at least most of the time. I’m not being crass, I’m being honest. In fact, straight as I am, I’m probably going to prefer the bar with they guy who looks like Robert Downey, Jr, over the one with the bartender who looks like Marty Feldman. (Kids, Marty Feldman was a famous… never mind.) You see, attractiveness isn’t just about sex. It’s about being pleasant to simply be facing for a while.

This is the world we live in. It is not going to change much. None of what is at issue here is about right and wrong. It is about practicality. If you are good-looking, use it, it’ll work out well for you and your customers. But don’t forget you still have to work, care, and educate yourself well, or you will not cut it as a bartender. If you look ordinary, fine. Grump about the “unfair” advantage of others, then out-work and -create the pretty people, and you will do better than they. It might be harder at first. As someone who, um, has never gotten a lot of professional advantage from his looks, I sympathize. Any way you cut it, it is the truth, so we might as well laugh about it from time to time. Humor is the natural human mechanism for dealing with truths, especially the slightly uncomfortable ones.

Andrew Stuttaford at National Review noted this weekend the passing of one of the classic bars in Manhattan, the former speakeasy Bill’s Gay Nineties Restaurant and Piano Bar. (That’s Speakeasy as in, Large Men Will Break Your Legs If You Work For The Cops, not Speakeasy as in, Dude, You Get To Go All Maxwell Smart On The Phonebooth In Back Of The Hotdog Shop!) In so doing, he makes mention of a great essay by George Orwell in which he describes what is, for Orwell, the perfect English Pub. George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, kiddies. They are two books you used to have to read, but usually don’t any more because, well, they don’t want you to read them anymore.

The Moon Under Water, the pub Orwell describes, is a fantasy, simply Orwell’s description of what a Pub should be, or ought to have been in wartime England. It is a lovely piece of writing, and while it would likely not be (as Andrew suggests) the perfect American bar, there is much here to chew on. I’m going to highlight a few of the elements that Orwell imagined in his perfect pub that I think ought to be universal, and a few that perhaps don’t work across time or ocean.
Also, it’s a chance to quote Orwell and generally class up the writing around here a bit.

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.

He opens by noting that the Moon is easy to get to, but is neither hip nor happening. Assholes need not apply. I think you can certainly agree that a great bar should be generally free of rowdy assholes. Unless you are a rowdy asshole, of course. In such case we can take comfort in the likelihood that you don’t read this blog, and the near certainty you don’t read Orwell….

In the Moon Under Water it is always quiet enough to talk. The house possesses neither a radio nor a piano, and even on Christmas Eve and such occasions the singing that happens is of a decorous kind.

Mega-Dittos, Rush, er, George. Nightclubs should have loud music. Pickup joints in general should have deafening music. There is no reason in places like that to risk your personality taking away from whatever attractiveness alcohol has bequeathed you. There will be time enough in the morning to discover what a crashing bore you’ve hooked up with, right? But a good bar should make socialization easy. Either with friends, or with complete strangers. If you cannot solve the Problems of the World with a drinking companion known five years or five minutes in a bar, it is simply not a great bar.
In America today, by the way, this means no TV… anywhere in the bar. Nothing sucks the life out of conversation faster than the flickering idiot box. Sports bars need TVs, but beyond that, keep one in the back and wheel it out for people to listen to in the event we declare war, or Elvis returns.

They are particular about their drinking vessels at the Moon Under Water, and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass. Apart from glass and pewter mugs, they have some of those pleasant strawberry-pink china ones which are now seldom seen in London. China mugs went out about 30 years ago, because most people like their drink to be transparent, but in my opinion beer tastes better out of china.

First, I did not know this about china and beer. I intend to try it and see. Anyone else in America use china? Any bars?
This and other comments in the piece show that an English pub, at least of Orwell’s day, was about beer. Here, cocktails are much more the focus, whether you mean the extravagant concoctions of the discerning booze nerd, or the sea of Jack and Cokes and Kangaroo Cocktails in more mainstream joints. And even for customers who don’t actively notice it, drinking vessels matter. The size, heft, and quality of glasses lend more to the quality of the drinking experience than most customers, or bar owners for that matter, realize.
And care of those vessels matters too, though Orwell neglects to mention it. A dirty, water-spotted glass puts me off almost instantly. And you best have built up a veritable sea of good times with me in the past if you want me to ever darken your door again should my glass, or those of any of my party, sports even a trace of lipstick.

Orwell speaks of the Moon’s garden, a family friendly environment.

Many as are the virtues of the Moon Under Water, I think that the garden is its best feature, because it allows whole families to go there instead of Mum having to stay at home and mind the baby while Dad goes out alone.

He is more open to the presence of children, at least on the periphery, than I am, or think Americans in general are with our bars. But his main thrust here is that wives drink with their husbands in his mythical perfect pub. I also think this is a huge deal. A bar whose customer base is too much one sex or the other is dreary for every day drinking. Yes, a boys’ or girls’ club is refreshing from time to time, and frankly, we need more of them in these politically correct times. But a really good general purpose bar ought to mirror one’s community and civilization. Further, a great bar should have a solid leavening of couples in its crowd at all times. And not just dates and hookups in progress, but husbands and wives out meeting other husbands and wives. Such atmosphere is healthy and robust, and offers all involved a richer, fuller evening out.

Not all of his suggestions, though are that great, at least to me.

The barmaids know most of their customers by name, and take a personal interest in everyone. They are all middle-aged women—two of them have their hair dyed in quite surprising shades—and they call everyone ‘dear,’ irrespective of age or sex. (‘Dear,’ not ‘Ducky’: pubs where the barmaid calls you ‘ducky’ always have a disagreeable raffish atmosphere.)

Some of this is awesome. Regulars expect and deserve to be known and recognized as such, and newcomers likewise deserve to be taken interest in. But I am not a fan of the motherly or fatherly aura in my bartenders or servers. Likewise, I’m not advocating the whole “breastaurant” concept for this either. But if given my druthers, I’d rather the bartenders and servers be attractive, and perhaps just a bit younger than the clientele… so long as they don’t act like it.

The grained woodwork, the ornamental mirrors behind the bar, the cast-iron fireplaces, the florid ceiling stained dark yellow by tobacco-smoke, the stuffed bull’s head over the mantelpiece — everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century.

Yes, I really like a good bar that has a well-maintained but lived-in feel. And true, nothing makes a space feel more “lived-in” than yellow nicotine stains. But I do not personally like the smell of cigarettes; not when they are being smoked, and especially not when they were smoked 18 years earlier. That said, the perfect bar can allow cigarette smoking. It just won’t be my hangout. Bars should absolutely be allowed to allow smoking. As a business decision, most of them should not. But that should be their choice. A perfect bar for the smoker is one that allows smoking, and non-smokers should just go elsewhere. And vice-versa.
A great bar is filled with happy people, and smokers who can’t are not, and non-smokers who essentially must are not either.

There is more, and the piece is well-worth reading just for the atmosphere it evokes. It is nice to see that Orwell could paint a luxurious fantasy idyll just as well as he could a hideous, plausible nightmare. What else do you think a perfect bar should boast?

Hey! Your droids. We don’t serve their kind here.

The proper response to this sort of bigotry is of course to open your own joint so cool that it siphons off that bastard’s customers until he goes broke and ends up drowning his sorrows in a paper bag-wrapped bottle of MD-D2 in an alley alongside bantha-less sand people. Don’t think that’s a workable plan? Not so fast.

Hi.

Welcome to BarBot 2012, the annual exhibition of efforts (serious and not-so) to bring the Singularity to the bar scene, where robots are welcome since they own the joint. It was held this last weekend in San Francisco. I didn’t write about it in advance because I didn’t know about it in advance. I, drink-writer of assorted weirdness, got no press release. I’m not saying I get no press-releases at all. I am always appraised of the latest developments in flavored vodkas for instance, often in triplicate. But the iron-clad rule of PR seems to be Don’t Tell Doug About the Stuff He Can Actually Use.

You seem troubled. May I offer you a drink?

Erm, sure. Thanks. Anyway, Barbot is an annual fundraiser to raise money and publicity for the RoboGames in April. Designers showcase all manner of robotic drink-serving technology, ranging from proto-practical to “That had to have been designed while being over-served by a previous model.”

May I help you find a seat?

No thanks. I’ll just mingle.
There isn’t a lot of detailed info on each of the exhibits/participants. Many seem to be sort of one trick ponys, like this design that as far as I can tell produces only these cool dry ice-garnished Cosmopolitans. I must say, this particular method of dispensing drinks is not one I hope will be emulated by many human bartenders.

Ahhhhhhhh… There. May I offer you a delicious Cosmopolitan, sir?

Uh, no thanks.
The other end of the spectrum is Drink Making Unit 2.0, from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. I’m sure they are a subsidiary of Doofenshmirtz Evil, Inc., but am having a hard time finding the link.

Powered by mp3skull.com

The enemy of the platypus is… a Manhattan.

If you don’t have kids, you will get none of that humor. Rent some kids so you can watch Phineas and Ferb, Vol. 7.

Anyway, DMU 2.0 appears to be a more serious examination of the methods possible for creating a real robot bartender. Last year’s model used breast pumps to fill the drink. This year they have gotten more zen, and more accurate, with the deer chaser methodology to see above. With this, you could actually make some decent drinks, with a few enhancements, such as having the deer chasers be of varying size and be on a rotating rack to get them to the right ingredients.

It even has a spiffy little inventory controller that keeps track of what you pour, as seen here:

May I offer you a delicious Kahlua and Red Bull?

Please, EMSL, get a real mixologist on staff. I’m not sure anything you can make out of those ingredients will make me happy.

Of course, modern bar trends do seem to have penetrated the DrinkBot scene this year.

I wear the mustache ironically.

I’m sure you do.

Even more in tune with modern craft bartender mores, I understand that plasma balls are the tattoos of Robot body modification.

That’ll be $18.50, please.

Yup, some things you can definitely program.

Still, I think we are a long way from any of these machines putting any serious dent in the ranks of bartenders. Here are a bunch more pictures from Make, I don’t see ears on any of the robots, so there is one function at least of a human bartender that they haven’t incorporated yet. And we are a long way indeed from being threatened with a robot who has the flexibility and creativity to compete with us.

Hello. I. Make. The. Best. Amaretto. Sour. In. The. World.…

Oh no!

Very recently, New York Times writer Tim Murphy penned an article entitled Mixing Drinks, Adding Class that simply took my breath away. It is genuinely difficult to cram this much casual douchebaggery, from so many sources, into one article. Even the Washington Post, in this age of media lockstep, felt compelled to take a swing at this piece. (They miss for the most part, but I’ll get to that.) What makes this particular collection of pretentiousness worth my time to write about however, is that its central piece of advice is completely sound.
It hurts me to hear advice I agree with, given for reasons that are utter horsecrap. It undermines the chance that people will listen to it and take it to heart when they should.
[UPDATE: I'm not alone in my opinions of this piece. I've embedded a bunch of links at the bottom of the post who share some or all of my position here.]

The article details a party given by a Claudia Argiro, in her tiny Brooklyn apartment, for about two dozen friends. She served a punch and an eggnog. And she hired a bartender for about two hundred beans, plus tip, to stand in a corner of the room and ladle out said punch and eggnog.
This is all simple enough. And as I’ll get to below, more than reasonable.

But then the discussion begins about the reasons why she hired poor Eric Villani to stand in the corner and be a charming, automatic spoon.
Oh. My. God.
Are there often puff pieces in the Times that make people all over the country want to fly to New York, just to shake some sense into the subjects mentioned therein?

The article is wall-to-wall idiocy, and you should read the whole thing yourself to really “appreciate” it, but I’ll pull a few quotes to whet your appetite. Here’s the epicenter quote, from Dustin Terry, who has now replaced The Situation as the biggest douchebag to make his home on Long Island:

“In my opinion, if you don’t have a bartender at your party, you’re a loser,” said Dustin Terry, who lives a floor below Ms. Argiro and said his job was to get models and Saudi royalty into hot clubs. “The bartender brings class and sophistication.”

“If you can’t afford to hire a bartender,” he added, “you shouldn’t be having a party.”

I find it hard to like Claudia, just because she invited Dustin to her party. She gets what she deserves though, I guess, since “Mr. Terry” raids her private liquor cabinet without permission later in the party because he wants something stronger than what she chose to serve. If the bartender brings class and sophistication, why hasn’t he served any to this clown?
There is a lot going on in Dustin’s attitude. And while it isn’t spoken so uglily by anyone else interviewed for the article, it is shared by every last one of them, including it seems, the author. The purpose behind having the bartender, this (hopefully) professional person, is as a prop or accessory that says something about the host, and the guests.

On the face of it, they all want the bartender there to say they have arrived.

“I’m an adult now, living by myself, and this is my sh-bam, my moment,” said Ms. Argiro, who runs a clothing boutique nearby called Charlie and Sam.

(By the way, see what I did there, NYT? I added a link to her business. Here I am slamming the snot out of this poor woman, who I’m guessing is a heckuva nice person in most ways, and I still take time to add a link to your quote that you should have put there yourselves.)

You see, thirty-something New Yorkers, if you are having to think of ways to say, “I have arrived!” then you haven’t. You are an arriviste. People who have actually Arrived will see you instantly for the poser you are. And the sad thing is, Claudia has clearly really arrived. She has a nice home, and is a solid, middle-class shopkeeper. An American entrepreneur. America was built and is refreshed by people who have achieved as she has.
Live your life the way that makes sense for you, not the way you think people expect you to live your life, and everyone will know you’ve actually arrived. As it is, I’m not sure which is more laughable, the 17 year-old who shouts, “I’m a grown-up!” to his parents, or the 33 year-old who asks, “I’m a grown-up, right?” to her friends. (Not to mention how pathetic a society we have become when any thirty-something is not automatically assumed to have grown up some time ago!)

The thrust of the article, as with all trend pieces like it of course, is not to inform the world that Claudia Argiro has grown up, but that this is how more and more folks like her are announcing their alleged maturity.
I say “alleged” because there is a second layer of immature stupidity discussed in the article. It doesn’t apply to Claudia’s party, but clearly, lots of these bartender-hiring hosts have absolutely not grown up.

Such gigs can also carry minor humiliations that may not be so common at larger, more formal affairs…. David Shiovitz, who … sends out Columbia University undergraduates and graduate students, said that, were his bartenders asked, say, to strip or dance, “They have the right to say, ‘That’s not in my contract,’ ” he said.

“They have the right to say?!?!” The fact that this sort of treatment clearly happens often enough that they talk about it in the article, and that there is such a rote way of responding to it is appalling.
Look, I’ve got no beef with having a stripper at your party, if that’s the way you roll. Just hire an actual stripper. And invite me if you like. But if you ask a professional bartender, or a professional anyone other than a Professional Clothing-Removal Engineer to dance on the table or remove their clothes, then no one will ever believe you have arrived or grown up.

I’ve one last piece of snark, this for the guests of parties like this.

Another guest, Eric Carson, 32, a stock trader who lives in nearby Greenpoint, agreed that the bartender added class. “I feel very sophisticated at this party,” he said. “And I usually feel like a complete dirt bag.”

Dude, if you need a bartender there to keep you from being offensive in the home of one of your friends, and if a bartender is all it takes to keep you from being a dirtbag, you need to stay home. That, or, I dunno, learn to grow up yourself.

Now, as I said, Washington Post writer Jason Wilson (author of Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits) responded with an article entitled Cocktail parties don’t require hired help, but guests deserve more than jug wine. (Note to the Post: You capitalize titles.) Jason joins me in disdain for Mr. Terry, wondering, “Do models have a hard time getting into clubs?” Beyond that, he mostly misses the real mark here. He concentrates on Claudia’s offered libations. He notes that you don’t need a bartender for naught but pouring punch. But his main complaint is that if you are having a cocktail party, you should serve cocktails. And he wants the kind of cocktails that would satisfy Jason Wilson, or Doug Winship for that matter, and not leave us raising our supercilious eyebrows. He further notes that your average Columbia grad student doing temp bartending for less than the price of a single textbook is unlikely to be able to produce Pegus, Sazeracs, or perhaps even a decent Martini.
But most parties will not be populated by Jason or me (this is sad for us, but there you go). Even in today’s cocktail resurgence, most parties, even on the Upper West Side, will have few if any guests who would recognize Pegus, Sazeracs, or perhaps even a decent Martini.

Now, after all that abuse laid on Tim Murphy, his hapless interview subjects, and most of New York City apparently, for believing that you should hire a bartender for your private parties, may I finish with some advice?

Hire a bartender for your party.

Yes, hire a bartender for your party. Don’t do it because you think your guests will be impressed. Don’t invite guests who will think a bartender is the equivalent of big boy pants, for that matter. I’ve had perhaps two parties of my own in the last fifteen years where I didn’t hire at least a bartender, and both were simply too small. I provide entertainment at cocktail parties for a living. I’ve been to many hundreds of them over the years. Good bartenders are always worth the money.
As I see it, you have three options if you intend to offer drinks to your guests at your party. You can hire a bartender, you can set up a self-service drinks station, or you can mix and serve your cocktails yourself.

I hire a bartender because I like parties, and I see no reason why I should not enjoy my own. The Times article touches on a few of the good reasons to hire staff for your event, but misses a few others. I’m going to outline most of the good reasons to hire someone. You’ll note that few relate to benefiting your guests, at least directly. Your bartender works for you, for your benefit.

First, your bartender saves you from serving your guests, unless you want to. You can have conversations that last as long as you want. You can talk to the guests you want to, and avoid those you want to. In short, you can enjoy your job as host.
Jason Wilson’s WaPo article is skeptical that your bartender will be able to produce drinks that are up to the standards of, well, Jason. To be fair, I have pretty high standards about the drinks I want my guests to enjoy too. Your standards are your own, but it doesn’t matter that much for the purposes of this discussion, except to note that if you want your guests have real cocktails, the most elegant of self-serve presentations is out.

If you hire a college student who at most has waiting tables on his resumé, then indeed, you won’t have the option of serving the finest in the cocktailian art. (Again, depending on you or your friends, this may not matter) If you hire a pro from a caterer or professional staff agency like I sometimes do, you will have more to work with.
I maintain good relationships with a variety of professional, full-time bartenders, however. (This will surprise no regular reader.) Depending on your bartender, and the date of your party, you may well be able to hire one of them to work your event. No agency fees means more money for them, which they deserve.
Chances are, you won’t be hiring Dale DeGroff, so even the pro will likely not know all your fancy cocktailista drinks. This is still no problem. I create a nice cocktail menu for each party, with about 8 to 10 cocktails on offer. (Here’s what I had last time.) Any moderately experienced pro can use a cheat sheet you provide to produce these well. You make your joint feel like Clover Club, and you have great control.

Second, your bartender will keep the drinks area (at least) clean. Few things are worse than the wreckage of your home the morning after a party. Cups, bottle, napkins, etc are scattered everywhere. Dishes and glassware need to be cleaned. A good bartender will keep this mess to an absolute minimum. If we are having more than 30 guests, I add a server in addition to the bartender. They move around the house, keeping things clean as the party goes on.
If you aren’t at least a little hungover after hosting a cocktail party, you are doing it wrong. I vastly prefer, when experiencing The Morning After, going out for brunch and Bloody Marys over dragging a Hefty bag around the house, collecting napkins, cups, and bottles.
Additionally, if you are employing your full arsenal of glassware, and a wide menu of cocktails, chances are some dishes will have to be done during the party. I find it quite hard to be a charming host when I have dishpan hands, don’t you, darling?

Both of those items were mentioned in passing as benefits, rather then reasons for hiring a bartender in the Times. Alone, they are really enough, but there’s more. A bartender serves as a gatekeeper to your booze. (Unless you invite Dustin Terry. But if you do, that’s you own lack of wisdom.)
The mere fact that you have a bartender, no matter how competent, will regulate the flow of booze at your party. At the start, and during any rush, he’ll slow down how fast drinks go out. When things are slow, guests get their cocktails faster than they would through hunting you down or even serving themselves. Overall, when compared to a self-service bar, your guests will drink a measurably smaller amount of social lubricant, without ever noticing.
This doesn’t mean you get to be cheap! Serve better booze.
A good bartender will help you out as gatekeeper in other ways as well. If you have a guest or two that you know is prone to having more than is good for him, or her, let your bartender be your friend and early warning system. I’m not suggesting that a private event bartender ought to be cutting off guests, that’s your job. But they can give you a heads up if heavy weather is brewing. Contrary to Eric Carson’s belief, Claudia’s bartender probably didn’t keep him from being a “dirtbag”. But he might have helped her ensure Eric got home safely.

Finally, it’s worth having your bartender hang around for a bit after the guests leave. Perhaps offer him a drink before he goes. It’s a nice way to decompress, and you get the benefit of a set of sober recollections from the event. You may get a few good stories of things that happened away from you at your party. Or you may find out about some things that went wrong that you can correct before you do all this again.
A good cocktail party should not be a once in a lifetime thing. It should be a once in a while thing, so do everything you can to do it better next time than you did the last. Hire a bartender, and you’ll be going a long way toward making both this party, and the next, better than it would otherwise have been.

I notice that I am not alone in my visceral reaction to the New York Times piece that sparked this post. Here are some of the more entertaining shots:

Curbed New York: “What is it with the people of Williamsburg and their troubling habit of saying dumb things to New York Times reporters?”

Meg In Brooklyn intends to try to balance out Eric Carson’s new-found clean-baggedness.

The Gloss goes perhaps a tad overboard to follow this hot, emerging trend. If you read only one of these, read this one.

Gothamist: “You are a worthless P.O.S. if you don’t hire a bartender for your house party, say people who own catering companies and two random douchebags.”

BlackBook gives us a (sadly) somewhat approving insight into what the actual business is that Dustin Terry and partner Matt Assante have with Saudi Royals and hot models.

Bar Stool Sports: “Serious question, is Dustin Terry the biggest douchebag we have ever posted?” Probably.

Had I been at this year’s Tales of the Cocktail, one panel I’d have been interested in was the one on intellectual property rights and cocktail creation. It was lead by mixology superstar Eben Freeman, along with a copyright lawyer and an official from the US Trademark Office. The panel discussed the value of innovations in the world of mixology, and how, if possible, to protect and/or monetize that value.
Eben is one of the true innovators behind the mahogany in the world today. He’s a legitimate master of promoting himself and the craft of bartending as well. And he’s one pissed off camper.
Eben’s concerns run from simple pirating of his recipes, to the co-opting of his inventions, such as “fat washing”. (Fat washing is the disgusting-sounding but yummy-making process of infusing fat-based flavors such as bacon into spirits) His complaints run from a simple desire to be compensated for his ideas in some way, to a more parochial desire to prevent other young spirits professionals from using his ideas to advance their own careers.

I heard nothing of this issue or this presentation until Gaz Regan started a Facebook discussion on it. (Update: Gaz has posted an extended open letter on this subject. It is very zen… and very Gaz.) But the stone that hit the water and started the ripples was an Atlantic article entitled The Era of Copyrighted Cocktails? Those ripples have spread all over the place, and well beyond the Cocktailosphere. I’m going to stick my oar in because I care about the craft, and because as a writer, I care deeply about intellectual property rights.
I’m also sticking in my oar because, while I admire Eben and his work a lot, I apparently can’t help but bash him on this blog (as noted just in my last post, which I swear I’d written before I started in on this). He brings up real concerns and an important issue here, but much of the damage he claims is belied by the evidence, at least as regards him personally. And his complaints reveal a guild-like mindset that is the sort of thing that leaves me spitting nails.
(more…)

The first round of the Chopped Mixology Competition is in the books, and a good time was had by all. The contestants all put together a series of great offerings, leaving a lot of difficulty for the judges. The winner of the first preliminary round, who will move on to the final on July 12th, was Cris from M at Miranova, but not without some drama along the way.

Cris Dehlavi, the first round winner, from M at Mirnova

I had not previously been to Mozaik, and I’ve got a second post about it coming next. For right now, I’ll just say that it is a swank joint, and is laid out pretty well for a contest like this one. With the walls wide open to the street, the atmosphere is wonderful. The sound system took a little while to get dialed in, but ended up working pretty well, which is both damned hard and damned important for an event like this.

Jason Davis of Mynt Ultralounge

Each night works as follows: There are three rounds of drinks created. For each round, the bartenders are presented with a sealed basket of ingredients. They must use all these ingredients to create four identical cocktails in twenty minutes, using the rest of the bar’s resources as they wish. They present their cocktails to the judges, who ask questions. After the judges have tried all the drinks, they score them according to a rubric that I’ll detail later on. The lowest scoring bartender is chopped. The remaining contestants return for the next round.

Lindsay Konkel of Haiku Poetic Food and Art

The first round was scored only to keep the format even, because the fourth contestant was a last-minute substitution. He was actually the guy who chose most of the secret ingredients earlier in the day. Under the circumstances it would have been unfair for him to keep going, a fact that was borne out by his actually being the highest scorer in the first round. The result was that Cris, who would other wise have been chopped first, stayed in the contest.

“McLovin”, Chopped’s good-natured and talented, (and unauthorized) final contestant

The final round came down to Lindsay and Cris, and ingredients included caramel macchiato ice cream and Russell’s Reserve Rye Whiskey. Both contestants put together very good offerings, and the judges required a lot of time and discussion to render their decision.

Judges (L to R): Ben Zenitsky of Columbus Monthly, Madlogic of Local Night Scene, and Amber Fox of Black Olive restaurant

Brandon revealed the judge’s decision after each round by lifting a champagne bucket to reveal the drink of the bartender who was to be chopped. The only hiccup of the night came at the final reveal, when I was not sure whether it was the winner or loser who was being exposed! Regardless, as I said at the beginning, Cris was the narrow winner, and I’m glad I didn’t have to choose this week, as Lindsay’s drink was equally good.
The next round will be Monday, June 21st, at Mozaik at 8:00PM. Come on down, have some inexpensive drinks, some great food, and cheer on next week’s batch of bartenders vying not to be… chopped!

Good advice on how to pay for your drinks. Hint: Making life easier for your bartender will leave you less parched….

My longer term readers know I am a fan of Gary Regan, one of America’s, and thus one of the world’s, preeminent bartenders. He, um, sends me to the Moon at times. Lots of folks claim American has no cuisine, but that is false. We have the Cocktail. If you want the best sauces, you go to France. If you want the best, most innovative drinks, you come to America’s shores. You can find great sauces and cocktails elsewhere of course, but I feel I’m on solid rather than jingoistic ground when I make that generalization.
Anyway, Gaz has just written a column for SFGate entitled, How to be a Superstar Bartender. The wisdom he imparts is wonderful and specific. You should read it, whichever side of the mahogany you frequent. I’ll leave his specific recommendations for you to read there, and steal only this introductory piece of wisdom:

Before we begin, know this: If you believe that you know what you’re doing, and if you can pull it off without apology, you’re 90 percent there.

All that said, Gaz’s is not the only school of thought out there. Whilst I would never publicly disagree with him, the owners of the Patriot Saloon in Tribeca apparently do…

Found on Eater, via Asylum. It’s a little early in the week for Rule 5 blogging, but I’m just giving you ample time to imagine the applicants for yourself. (Alternatively, you could head over to the Patriot Saloon and take a few pics of the successful applicants, then send the to me for publication here….)

I’ve gotten some details about the the drinks created at the Columbus Iron Bartender competition that I wrote up before. That post was little long to update with all this, so I’m doing a separate post. Here is what I have:

Brandon Bowsher of Martini Park
Jack Ginger Fresh

I used the pecan and apricot infused jack daniels, then made an infused simple syrup with the ginger root and fresh sliced pears. In addition I used whole fresh pineapple and muddled it to a fine pulp and then added fresh mint leaves into the remaining juice. I used a a little Tuaca and amaretto as well.
I also squeezed two fresh limes to help balance the sweetness.
And for the rim I used agave nectar and Grand Marnier, slightly warmed and placed on the rim of the martini glass to hold on fresh toasted, grated almonds, and an orange twist garnish.

Zak Renzetti-Voit of Black Olive
Pineapple Upside-down Ginger

I made a ginger simple syrup and muddled it with mint & cucumber. I added Hendricks Gin (infused w/ cucumber & rose petals) and dashed with Rhubarb bitters and a splash of soda. The kicker was the glass – I chopped the top off of a pineapple, hollowed it out, turned it upside down and stood it on its spiky top. So, it basically looked like an edible martini glass. It was delicious, but very refreshing.

(By the way, I’ve never seen anyone make a pineapple drinking vessel this way. Is it common in the Tiki world, or did Zak do something special here?)

Mike Vehlber of Hyde Park
Ginger Blood Orange Manhattan
I haven’t heard back from Mike yet. Hopefully this is just a placeholder paragraph until he gets me some information. The drink sounded pretty elegantly simple in construction

Cris Dehlavi of M at Miranova (Winner)

There you go, folks! They were all great. Now all you Columbus folks, go visit these guys and tell them I sent you.