'Old Shanghai on the Bowery' at Madam Geneva and talking ice with Mr. Ueno

Round 2! Tuesday night was "Old Shanghai on the Bowery" at Madam Geneva, the second event in the three-day line up for the New York City Cocktail All-Stars tour.



The cool surprise of the evening was Mr. Ueno showing off some of his ice carving. I cornered him after his time behind the bar to ask him a quick couple of questions (unfortunately, leaving Kenta Goto standing by holding a heavy bucket of ice and things. Sorry about that, Kenta...)

"Ice balls are popular in Japan, but ice companies started making them after they became popular," Mr. Ueno said, but nonetheless as a bit of eye candy, it's still a draw because, "It is something you can't create in your own home."

However, he added, "The main eye candy in a drink is the liquid."

Kenta chimed in, that the carved ice are part of the package of providing an experience for the guest. "People come into his bar looking for this experience."

I couldn't help but notice that Mr. Ueno wielded a small knife when carving the ice from it's base square shape. I asked him about this, since most people (OK, me) are probably more familiar with the ice pick.

"I haven't carved with an ice pick recently...maybe not for the last 10 years," Mr. Ueno answered.

While he still trains young bartenders to start off with an ice pick, he stopped using an ice pick himself because the results can sometimes be a bumpy surface.

As for the knife he uses, it's a folded iron knife, "the same material as a Japanese sword, so it's really sharp, but it also rusts really easily."

This means proper care, and making sure to wipe water off of the knife immediately after use.

Believe it or not, Mr. Ueno made this tool himself. It started off as "15 cm fruit knife," but through eight years of sharpening, he brought it down to its current 4-5 cm length.

Kenta explained that the ice Mr. Ueno uses is frozen about 2-3 days. At least three days being the optimal length of time. In Japan, ice is bought from a vendor who brings in blocks of the stuff.

"After three days there are no bubbles...the ice is harder and clearer and that is the ice he uses," Kenta said.

As Mr. Ueno explained, the ice is so clear that when in the glass, you should be able to see through to the bottom of the glass and read the logo of the bar on the napkin.



Mr. Ueno also shined light onto a diamond shaped ice he carved (it was shaped kind of like an old single cut, or the candy gem in a ringpop). This, he explained is also part of presentation.



"Like how a diamond is cut, the edges have a reflection," Mr. Ueno said, and explaining that with bars usually being dark, it's hard to see how beautiful the ice can be. So he helps demonstrate using a laser pointer or pen light.

A line up of 9 bartenders took turns serving their concoctions to a packed house.

COCKTAIL MENU
JIM MEEHAN
Parkside Fizz: Buddha's Hand vodka, lemon, orgeat syrup, club soda, mint

EBEN FREEMAN
Indochine: Aged rum, Domaine de Canton, pineapple, pastis, lemon bitters

NIKOLAJ BRONDSTED
Gin & Leaf: Vodka, sake, kaffir lime, yuzu, ginger, soda

MISTY KALKOFEN
Delhi Daisy: Tequila, elderflower, lemon, curry simple syrup, aromatic bitters

ALEX DAY
Tunnel Vision: Cachaca, sherry, lime, creme de peche, Angostura bitters

RYAN MAGARIAN
Pepper Smash: Gin, red bell pepper, lemon, mint, honey

HIDETSUGU UENO
Full Bloom: Scotch, cherry blossom liqueur, anisette

MARSHALL ALTIER
Trans Continental Clipper: Five spice Pisco, lemon, house made grenadine, Absinthe rinse

JACKIE PATTERSON
Buckshot: Bourbon, dry vermouth, orchard apricot, orange bitters

The theme of the evening seemed to be "BIG BOLD FLAVAH." Misty's drink had sweet and tangy amped up to an 11. The curry simple syrup added a little something without making the drink taste exactly like curry. Marshall's drink, on the other hand, didn't shy away from its spice base. It totally punches you in the face. The menu said "five spice pisco" but at the time I was getting more of a garam masala feel. I couldn't help but puzzle over this a bit. I finally figured out that when I read the "five spice" I instantly thought of Chinese five spice, but I was totally forgetting about panch phoron. How dumb of me. I need to ask Marshall this the next time I see him or over Facebook or something (or, I don't know, leave a comment. Hint, hint).








Did everyone agree to a dress code beforehand? All the folks scheduled to be behind the bar came in dressed pretty snazzily.

Epilogue: When I left Madam Geneva's I left with the fire of mezcal burning in my belly. Just as I was about to leave I was pulled into doing a shot of mezcal with Misty Kalkofnen, Alex Day and John Deragon.

This made me think. You know, I've been recently playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner on the PS2 (I sometimes like to kick it old school like that), and I'd forgotten how flippin' hard that game was. I couldn't walk even two or three steps before finding myself in a battle.

Wait, wait. I had a point in mentioning this...it waaaassss...oh! OK, so, yea, as I was walking away from Madam Geneva with mezcal heating me all up in my midsection like a boiler, I realized that bar events are like playing a RPG. The more you walk around without a glass in your hand, the more you're just asking to trigger a battle sequence, a.k.a., having a drink put in your hand.

I mean, the way that mezcal encounter went down it would've gone something like this:

Little icon of me wandering around a map, all of the sudden!

[Sonya encounters a band from the Order of Booze]

Oh, noooooo! I totally don't have the experience points to get through this AND I'm outnumbered.

[Dram of mezcal thrown!..-10 HP!...+10 STR! +10 MP!]

Because if anything, mezcal would probably boost your magic points/mana and overall strength, but with the unfortunate side effect of taking some health points/stamina, amirite?

I littered glasses all over the bar all evening since I couldn't juggle a drink and a camera. I'd put down a glass, only to have another one thrust in my hand just a couple of minutes later.

I have to admit, it's kind of freakin' awesome.

Eben Freeman brings "Cocktail All-Stars" to New York

or Eben Freeman has a posse



For three nights bartenders from around the world are gathering in New York to show off their stuff.

Last night was the first of these events, "Things Eurasian: Ancient Flavors, Modern Science at The Monday Room in NoLita," held at the Monday Room in Public with a food menu inspired by Asian flavors created for the event by Public's executive chef Brad Farmerie.

I hung around in the in between section of Public's dining area and the Monday room, where the cocktail station was set up.

"The idea was I wanted to show people what I'd been working on," Eben said when how this event came about.

As most of you probably know, Eben's currently based out of Asia at the moment, working with the sort of amalgamate of restaurant/bar consulting, repping and overall creative agency, Mangkut Group. Most of his work is now more along the lines of development and introducing Asia to what's been happening here in the United States with bars and cocktails.

Eben first started doing these All-Star events with Linden Pride in Asia. The first one was in Singapore, and from there to locales like Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, and basically wherever Eben happened to find himself and bringing in others to demonstrate as well.

Just as he brought his style of cocktails to Asia, Eben said he wanted to introduce New York to some styles from other places around the world. He also wanted to get New York acquainted better with bartenders not from city as well as get it reacquainted with people from here as well.

"We tried to bring in some of Boston, some of San Francisco," Eben explained. "We also tried to get some people who don't get the recognition they deserve."

For example, to introduce folks to other Cocktail scenes in Europe besides, say, London or Paris, Nikolaj Brondsted, bar manager for the newly opened MASH Steak House in Copenhagen, Denmark, was brought on board.


Ginger Passion

For the event last night, Nikolaj made two different cocktails. Ginger Passion (vodka, lychee, passionfruit, ginger, lime) and Peach, Plum and Harmony (Bird's Eye chili vodka, peach, plum, umeshu). I noticed vanilla bean pods in his vodka and asked him about this and Nikolaj said that for his chili vodka he usually uses a vanilla flavored vodka as a base because he feels the spiciness works well with the vanilla flavor.



Jackie Patterson from Heaven's Dog and Smuggler's Cover in San Francisco had three drinks on the menu. The Prenup (Buddha's Hand vodka, dry vermouth, whit teal liqueur, lemon and ginger beer), Fleur du Monde (blanco tequila, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, Riesling) and the Spice Trade (aged rum, sweet vermouth, allspice dram and orange bitters).

Eben was mixing up two drinks. The Corn Flip (Hudson New York Corn whiskey, creamed corn milk, egg). The "corn milk" is regular milk infused with canned cream of corn, then strained. When Eben shook the cocktail, he added a shot of creamed corn for additional corn flavor boost. My impression of the drink was that it was kind of like boozy Corn Puffs. The Triad was made with gin, Shaoxing rice wine, elderflower liqueur, lemon and The Bitter Truth's Creole Bitters.



I was not expecting to see owner and bartender of Bar High Five in Tokyo, Mr. Hidetsugu Ueno, and had a little moment where I totally had a little geek freak out on the inside. Mr. Ueno made two drinks for the evening. A shockingly emerald green Japanese Garden (single malt scotch, green tea liqueur and honey) and the peachy, blushy United (aged cachaca, cherry blossom liqueur and grapefruit bitters).

At one point, I bumped into Dave Arnold, head of Culinary Innovation at FCI and beverage mad scientist at large, who was also contributing to the drinks menu that evening.

"We got the Rotavapor going in the other room," I overheard him say.

"Wha...what is this 'Rotavapor'?" I cautiously asked.

"Go on inside and you'll see," Dave answered cryptically.

So I set foot into the Monday Room and talked to Fabian von Hauske who was running the Rotavapor to make habanero tequila. Luckily, it was a familiar contraption, since I'd seen Dave demonstrate it at Tales last year.



So how it works is a mixture of pureed habanero and tequila are put in the Rotavapor. The glass bulb filled with the mixture rotates in a water bath which boils at a constant low temperature (usually around 50-60 degrees Celsius, and specifically 54 degrees Celsius when I looked at the machine that night). Dave told me to touch the glass that the mixture was in to illustrate how the mixture itself was cooler than the water bath it sat in. Dave changed the hardware up a bit to make it suit his distilling purposes, but more or less, before its Arnoldization, it's a contraption used for removal/separation of, um, things using evaporation. The additional distilling "hack" added to the machine helps pull the alcohol from whatever you put in the glass bulb in the water bath area and the resulting habanero tequila has all the floral notes and flavors of habanero with just a hint of heat (and curiously enough, none of the color). All the spiciness remains in the ominously red mixture left in the bulb. It reminded me of how nature usually uses bright colors and patterns to warn you, "Hey, this stuff right here will KILL you if you put it in your mouth!...Or at the very least, make your whole GI area feel all uncomfortable like."

I also got to talk with Stephan Berg of The Bitter Truth about a mysterious little box he had with him. It was the prototype packaging for a traveler's set of bitters that would be coming out. Stephan said the idea behind a small kit was for both bartenders and consumers. For the former, the "fun-sized" bottles would make it easier to carry a variety of bitters around and if you've traveled in the company of bartenders before, you've probably witnessed firsthand mysterious vials and small bottles of this and that.





I mentioned it's funny how he should say that, since it reminded me of Damon Dyer and his tiny bottles of stuff that he used to make drinks on the plane ride down to Tales two years ago and Stephan said, it was funny that I should say that, since Damon told him how enthusiastic he was about the idea. Hahahaha, ah, yes...hm...well, I guess you had to be there.

Anyhow, Stephan went on to say that the smaller size provides a way for consumers who are just trying out bitters or stocking their own home bar to own a variety of bitters without being straddled with huge honking bottle that just sort of sits around.

Currently the box just needs a bit more tweaking before being released.

Tales is still months away, but I celebrated it with Saveur

Jan. 2

Interesting facts gleaned from the evening.

1) Punch is delicious. (more of a restatement rather than a discovery)
2) Eben Freeman listens to T.I.

I usually sneak into Tailor right when it opens and run out way before the night really begins for people with real lives, so I'd never really been in the place when there's lots of people in it.

The event was in anticipation of Tales of the Cocktail (coming to a New Orleans near you, June 2009), and to say, "Hey, we're partnered with Saveur now." So it wasn't all bartenders, but a mix of bar folks, brand folks and media types. Don Lee and John Deragon were there, but bailed out early to my indignant cries of "Weeeeeeeeeeak saaaaaaaauuuce." As I squeezed my way to and fro in the crowd I spotted other familiar faces. I was pleased to see that Allen Katz was still sporting his a la souvarov and there was also Tony Conigliaro, whom I hadn't seen since Tales. Even Camper English from the West Coast was in attendance.



I'd brought my friend Marc Almendarez along to take photos for me. Longtime readers may recognize his work from our previous collaboration at a Rhum Clement contest a little while back. The lighting in Tailor is very tricky and I've always had terrible luck taking photographs there and on a more personal level Eben Freeman has been poking fun at my not so stellar photo work. So I decided to prove him wrong...by having a friend take photos for me. Hey, it's a solution of sorts. That place is like expert level, and I am not an expert, so why not borrow the expertise of a friend. And for the record, I am totally capable of taking decent photos. Sometimes.



There were two punches being served for the first part of the evening. The first was Captain Radcliffe's Punch. The recipe comes from a 17th century poem written by and English army captain and as Dave Wondrich called him, a "rake," Alexander Radcliffe. It's made with Ansac VSOP Cognac, Sauternes, freshly grated nutmeg and lemon. The second was the Regent's Punch. Dave explained the punch's origin to the crowd. It was named for George the IV, the 19th century prince regent. While George III was busy being mad, George IV was busy running the country, and this particular punch was his favorite tipple. I don't blame the guy. First, because ruling a country instead of your nutty dad is a tough job that could drive anyone to drink and second, this stuff was delicious.



The plan for the latter half of the evening was a time for folks to talk to Ann Tuennerman about Tales and what to look forward to. Since this portion of the event was to be sponsored by Hendrick's Gin, a gin drink would be necessary. As people were still dipping into the punchbowls I watched Eben at the other end of the bar vigorously shake a small container. I was curious but went back to busily filling my glass with what punch was left before they swapped out drinks. I chatted a bit with Jordana Rothman from Time Out New York who was telling me how she read my blog. I know, I was surprised too. Apparently, people actually read this thing.

I turned around to the bar again after talking with Jordana to see if there was any more of that punch. Troy, who was working behind the bar with Ashley that evening, pushed a small beaker-type vessel in front of me with liquid that looked kind of like beer.

"What's this?" I asked.

Troy said it was the Pimm's Pony. A drink of Eben's from back in the WD-50 days. It was Pimm's, gin, Sprite and a bit of cucumber foam made by shaking some cucumber juice. Cucumber juice? Well, I don't know if extract is the word. That makes it sound like it's from concentrate or something. Juice works, right? I mean, it's just liquid from cucumber. Cucumber water? Anyhow, I then figured out that that's what I saw Eben shaking a couple of minutes before. I also realized that this was supposed to be the gin drink for the "after" party and I'd unofficially started the after party 10 minutes before everyone else. Not that I'm complaining.

I offered Simon Ford a sip from my scientific chalice as I talked to him about his vacation in South America. He couldn't be at the Beard Off because of the trip, but his beard was able to make an appearance sans him, thanks to modern container technology. Just then Eben passed by and overheard Simon ask what was in the Pimm's Pony and Eben gave the list of ingredients and said that the cucumber foam was there to fool you into think it'd be a smooth, soothing drink, only to have it punch you in the gut.

I joked to our food editor Mr. Bret Thorn and his friend Blain Howard that at some point in my life getting handed strange drinks that a lot of times just sort of magically appear at the ready became part of my job. As if to drive this point home, as soon as I finished what was left in the beaker-glass I was nursing, Ashley set down a full-on wine goblet of more Pimm's Pony in front of me.

"Oh, dear," I thought. I was hoping to make an early escape, but as Tony Abou-Ganim once told me, wasting alcohol is a terrible thing. I tried to soldier on through a couple of sips. I ultimately gave up the fight and walked away. If I continued, I would've risked stumbling into work in a disreputable state the next day because the Pimm's Pony definitely had a healthy kick to it not unlike an irate, er, pony.

Tuesdays with Eben pt. 4

or Second Tuesday: Learning that what goes on behind the bar also is about what goes on in a bartender's head and learning that the bartender not only serves up drinks, but his personality

Oct. 21

Note: I apologize for the delayed entries for this series. It's been a little hectic here. I hope to have the rest of the installments for this blog post series wrapping up in a more timely fashion

Tuesday, 2 p.m., once again I was at Tailor. Eben was going to be late, so I was informed I could go downstairs and set up the bar and practice while I waited.

Whoa, wait, what? Set it up? I vaguely remembered that there were some shakers to the right and some jiggers to the left...I was hoping that would be end of setting up. I breathed a sigh of relief when I got downstairs and saw that some guardian angel already had the bar ready to go.

I tried practicing a little (*cough*cramming*cough*), but started looking around the bar in case I would be expected to set it up again. It felt weird as I poked in the nooks and crannies, because even though I had permission to do so, the set up of and the space itself felt really personal and I felt ridiculously out of place. I couldn't help but feel a little bad about gingerly touching and moving things. I felt like Goldilocks messing up something someone had set up just right.

I took a little step back and looked at the bar and thought how nice the sort of symmetry of things were.

"Man, there's a lot going on back here," I thought looking at the sinks, the ice, the different bottles, the dishwasher and all that was usually hidden by the front of the bar.

Then I turned around to look at the shelves lining the wall behind the bar. I'd looked at those very shelves many times before, but now I was actually seeing a pattern. It was so fascinating I hastily sketched it out on my notebook.

Soon Eben showed up.

"Wait, did you do all this?" he asked extremely surprised.

After a brief moral battle I answered sheepishly, "No, it was already like this when I got here."

"I was going to say, I would've been impressed if you did. I wanted to test you on setting the bar up just from the last time."

Very fitting because today's lesson was centered around the bartending mentality and having a limber brain. We'd sort of touched on it in a way talking about filling the gap and things of that nature on the first Tuesday. Today we were going to talk about what was quite possibly my worst enemy, memory.

Memory plays an important part in bartending. One of the more obvious roles it plays is for learning cocktail recipes. But it doesn't just come down to poring over recipes.

Eben said that you have to be somebody who can remember something for the first time because many times you're simply shown how to make a cocktail once, and after that you're expected to execute it in the same way every time you make it.

Eben said that he himself has tried to do a better job of archiving his recipes, but many times, he'll come up with a concept for a drink, then sit around with his bartenders and have they taste it, maybe give some input, and that right then and there is where they learn how to make it.

Memory is also a part of service since you need to keep track of orders through all the craziness that is a night of bar service on top of being able to remember all the recipes to fill these orders. Think about it, how many times have you seen bartenders write down your drink order unless its a table order handed to them by a server? And even then we're talking about fitting in table orders while fielding orders from the bar itself. On top of that while you're filling an order, someone might ask you for an order or cut in to ask for the check. You still have to have the wherewithal to keep track of all of that.

"You need to be somebody who can remember something the first time because a lot of times you'll be shown something and you have to execute it that way...it's one of those unseen things of bartending that people on the other side don't realize."

Eben admitted though that nowadays it's a bit of a different game with the widespread use of credit cards as well as having point-of-sale systems. Even though you have a machine remembering things for you, Eben said it was important to try and keep an ongoing tally in your head for those sitting at the bar. It just helps in providing service. A customer might want guidance when they don't kno needs guidance in where they'd like to go next with there drinking, and you

Credit cards have changed service. For one thing it affects tips. It's harder for bartenders to take home cash tips. Also, for a bar, there are fees and payments can take days to clear.

Another matter of service that memory plays into is customer relationship. Eben said it's important that a bartender is able to remember customers, and not just to remember them so you can say, "Hey, Joe, what's it going to be? An Old Fashioned as usual?"

"It plays into your safety," Eben said because you also need to remember if anything bad has happened with customer.

So how could a novice bartender practice and exercise their brain. I thought maybe I should start playing Brain Age or something, but Eben had a more low tech solution for this.

Create several sheets of paper that have drink orders on them. Place them at random spots on the bar face down. For those of you playing at home, you can just put the papers down on a table or wherever you find yourself practicing. The next step is to flip the pieces of paper over, and like a game of Memory, remember what each "customer's" order is then proceed to make and serve those customers in the order you looked at the pieces of paper. Mix it up. Two at a time, three at a time. Maybe look at five different orders from left to right or like some kind human form of liquor dispensing Simon Says machine, look at them at random and remember to make those drinks in that order.

Bonus level: Include a price with each sheet of paper.

As one of Tolstoy's most trotted out quotes go, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." When you have a pleasant interaction with a customer. It's generally the same. You've helped someone had a good time, get an adequate to good tip for it, maybe even gained a regular. But when things go bad, it can go bad in so many ways. Getting shafted on tip after a long evening with a customer you thought you had a good rapport going with. Getting a drink order wrong or not making a particular cocktail in the style a finicky customer enjoys it. Then how about meeting one of those picky customers where you can't tell if they really have very particular taste buds or just a sadistic desire to see you dance for them behind the bar. Then sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where you need throw somebody out or possibly get five-o involved. As a person selling alcoholic beverages, you have to take responsibility and try to keep things under control because it affects everyone in the room. A customer getting angry at you and storming off without tipping sure can ruin your night, but their loud tirade against you and your establishment also ruins the night for other customers at the bar.

Again, some customers are just bad apples period. Customers can become belligerent or difficult to deal with, and the addition of alcohol to that mix probably doesn't help with some people. However, even without the alcohol, some people just have an attitude. While you might not be witness to one-armed knife fights every night, there are toxic customers. The type who are never satisified and are basically there to take out their day's frustrations out on you.

Eben said, then it comes down to having to figure out how do I deal with this person or do I have to make this person leave. It's not always so easy unless someone's behavior is particularly egregious. And it's not just a matter of grabbing someone and throwing them out because you want to handle the situation as gracefully as possible because you don't want the person blowing up in your bar, nor do you want to deal with getting shanked. You have to gauge for yourself what the proper response is depending on your bar's personality, the comfort of other guests and the safety of you and everyone else in the bar.

Eben told me that Jim Meehan has good "dealing with bad customers" stories by the millions, and this is very true because I've heard some of them firsthand myself (in fact, read about the customer service panel Jim was a part of at Tales this year, here). Eben recounted to me one incident when a customer threw a nut at Jim's head to get his attention. This person got promptly shuffled out of the place. Some might think the reaction to this patron's behavior was a bit much, but think about it. Someone who lacks the basic respect of others enough to show that contempt by throwing something at someone isn't simply boorish, they are a possible liability thanks to their inconsiderate behavior. If you can't be bothered enough to civilly address someone when ordering your drink, how can a bartender guarantee you won't be a brash, obnoxious drunk loudly disregarding everyone else in the bar once you do get your drinks?

"When you've been in the business long enough, one thing you learn is that usually the guy 86'ed from every bar in the city is the first to be at your bar when you open [a new bar] up," Eben said.

Nowadays, Eben said, with a lot of the more upscale joints, you get the bouncers or hosts and hostesses who can regulate incoming traffic to a bar. In a way, a lot of bars are more insulated. That doesn't mean that you can't be on alert.

Eben told me a story about how at Tailor he once spotted a suspicious duo come down to the bar. He felt something was fishy when he saw one of two make a beeline for the bathrooms. At the time, Eben was out from behind the bar, so he was able to observe the other guy's partner sandwich himself between two patrons and slowly begin to fiddle with a female customer's purse that was hanging on the hooks underneath the bar. Eben sent someone to go collect the bathroom dwelling member of the duo while he put himself between the suspicious guy and the lady customer he was about to rip off. Eben tried to warn the lady that she might want to collect her belongings.

"She looked at me and laughed like I was kidding, so I told her again, 'No seriously, you should move your purse.'...I was definitely putting myself in a bad position."

Eben said he takes the safety of his bartenders as well as his customers very seriously and again pointed out that it is a bartender's responsibilty to be aware of such things since he is in fact serving alcohol. Not that this should scare all of you out there into expecting the worst in customer interactions. As a bartender, you may find yourself burdened more with keeping up civil pleasantries than with throwing people out on their ear. "Burdened" might seem like an unfortunate choice of words, but being able to hold a court while doing your job can be a tightrope act for a bartender, and it's just as much an equal mix of natural talent as well as hard work.

Eben said that there was "a loss of the art of conversation in modern bartending." Too many times bartenders get bogged down in the creation of their cocktails that they run the risk of forgetting the human aspect of it.

"Being able to have abbreviated conversations is a skill," Eben said, because it's possible to be too much of a conversationalist. At the end of the evening, you still need to fill out drink orders, not just gab with people. You have to know when, how and how much of a conversation should take place. A bartender could get engrossed in a converstaion with one customer then you can watch as "all the other customers disappear."

According to Eben, the bartender needs to be what he called, "a master of distilled interactions." Especially so in today's cocktail bar climate, where customers want to watch and get involved with what's going on. Some might just say, "Hey, how about that weather we're having?" Other will want to get into a full on discussion with you about what bitters you are using behind the bar even though you might be up to your elbows in orders.

Eben said that the ability to be humble and to have a bit of a self-deprecating wit can go a long way as well. You don't have to be servile, but there's no room for the customer at the bar anyway if your ego's taking up all the seats. It's OK to acknowledge when you do make mistakes and in fact, it can make you more endearing.

"You can't take yourself too seriously," Eben explained. The bartender already exists as a sort of authority and expert behind the bar. Nothing wrong with professionalism or being serious about what you do, but you already cut an intimidating figure behind that bar. When you do make a little mistake and can laugh at yourself about it, everyone can relax. Eben pointed out examples such as Dale DeGroff or Tony Abou-Ganim. Guys at the top of their game that Eben said still managed to be "a total mensch" without any ego.

I could see how this intimidation could bring out several customer responses. Nervous or unfamiliar guests can be easily scared off or soured by the slightest thing. Then again, you might get those that want to knock you down a peg.

Besides, being too cocky about what you do can actually stagnate you as a bartender if you're someone who wants to continue to grow and improve.

"You should never feel that you got something down or perfected anything," Eben warned, since recipes and variations are out there all the time and something can always be improved on. "You should think, 'I like the way that I make this,' but be open to anything out there or what a customer wants...There's always something to be learned, even if it's learning how not to do something."

Say you go out to another bar and order a drink. You taste it and you think you can do better. Don't stop the smug train of thought right there at Complacentville station. Actually think about what it is you think you could do better. Do the juices taste not so fresh? Is the presentation a little crap? Maybe the drink's just fine. Then what would make it spectacular?

Marie Brizard East Coast competition

(photos at the end)

Nov. 7
I didn't know that Madison Square Garden had that Club area going on. When I first heard about the competition being held there, I imagined it was going to be some caged arena match, which would have been AWESOME. Instead it was held in a sort of steakhouse meets clubhouse setting.

The competition area was set up in a sunken area a couple of steps down from where the main bar was located. In a little dining nook tot he left of the competition area, the contestants were busy making any last minute changes.

Each contestant would have to make a total of six cocktails in 10 minutes. Three of one of the cocktails they submitted and three of another cocktail they created using a secret ingredient they received that day. Besides taste, skill would also be included in the judging process. Contestants went two at a time, each with a judge observing them and their presentation.

Out of the 10 contestants scheduled to compete, nine showed up, so Pichet Ong went first on his own. It came right down to the wire with his two cocktails. The first, his tall drink submission, the Late Night Blush. Even though there were tables filled with numerous drink ingredients, from fresh fruit, to one full of Marie Brizard's product line, contestants could bring whatever they needed to make their cocktails. Pichet brought the mint ice he created for the Late Night Blush. Water, Marie Brizard Creme de Menthe, and mint leaves frozen in a shallow pan were broken up to created the jagged flavored ice pieces.

Ice actually ended up being a pretty big deal for some of the contestants. While a large bowl filled with what looked like your usual catering ice was available, some people lugged in their own ice of varying size.

Some tried to create three cocktails rather than two in the time allotted. Tony Perez of G in Philadelphia and Eben Freeman of New York's Tailor both did exactly that.

One of Eben pulled the Creme de Cacao as his secret ingredient, so he made his South Central that uses a mole tincture.

Dona Maria mole sauce is dissolved in vodka, but the resulting liquid is more of muddy slurry, so a technique called gelatin clarification was used to refine it. You mix gelatin into the liquid you wish to clarify, freeze it, and allow it to drip through cheese cloth. However, for this tincture the freezing process had to be different. Eben told me that Tailor chef Sam Mason pointed out a hitch in his plan: alcohol doesn't really freeze. This ended up only being a minor roadblock since they figured out they could use liquid nitrogen to freeze the mixture for the gelatin clarification process.

The mole tincture has a sesame flavor in the middle and ancho on the finishing, which Eben said are defining characteristics of mole sauce.

Miguel Aranda, bar chef at the Plaza Hotel, and Don Lee of PDT were next. Miguel's two submitted cocktails were named the Clovis and Clotilda, named after the Frankish king and his Burgundian wife. A delightfully nerdtastic naming convention that I can get behind.

Next it was the battle of two tall dudes with the last name of Miller. Even last year's East Coast winner and this year's emcee Tad Carducci called it the "Battle of the Millers." Death and Company's Brian Miller and Megu Midtown's Terence Miller. Brian's Bourbonnais Swizzle used some of the pecan infused bourbon I'd tried before in a hot toddy Phil Ward made for me at Death and Company. I forgot to ask for a taste of the stuff on its own, and I think I will the next time I'm there. According to some eavesdropping I did as they discussed the Bourbonnais, the current pecan-infused bourbon was an improvement from previous version. The improvement was credited to Brian's toasting of the pecans as well as keeping the pecans whole, because I heard Eben say that the breaking of the pecans releases tannins. I dutifully jotted this down for later reference. The perk of eavesdropping on a group of bartenders isn't the idea of hearing some new juicy bit of gossip, it's that they are a naturally talkative and sharing bunch about talking shop and will say things about ingredients, techniques and tools that you wouldn't have thought of asking.

The final pair to go were Jason Cobb from the Brandy Library and Gen Yamamoto from New Jersey's Lounge Zen. Gen's bio info states that he likes using seasonal and local farm produce, and it showed because his table looked a bit like a produce stand with cucumbers and tomatoes.

After a bit of time for the judges to calculate all the scores, everyone got back together to hear who had one. For the online-only Hospitality Award, the winner was Tony Perez.

Eben Freeman was awarded second place, and Don Lee won the first place prize to visit Bordeaux, France and compete in the international competition as part of Team America with the West Coast champ, Jackie Peterson of San Francisco's Zinnia.

The runner-up for the West Coast competition was Joel Baker of Bourbon & Branch, and Sierra Zimei of the Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco took home the Hospitality Award.


Pichet Ong


Tony Perez


Two of Eben Freeman's three cocktails. Sobieski Sorrel Sour on the left and the South Central on the right.


Miguel Aranda


Don Lee operating heavy machinery despite his injury.


"'Blackbeard the Bartender' action figure comes with swizzle kung fu grip action." I mean that in the nicest way possible, because this picture does not do justice to the big burliness of Brian Miller.


Gen Yamamoto

Blue Blazer Mix-Off at Pegu Club

(videos near the end of this post)

Oct. 27

"...90 percent of the reason I'm here is because I want to see fire," I said to Alex Day as I nursed a Whiskey Smash.

The setting? Pegu Club. Six contenders were set to duel in their mastery of the most basic of elements required for human life. Fire and alcohol.

To kick off Slow Food NYC's first annual "Slow Drink Week," Audrey Saunders was hosting the launch reception at Pegu. Slow Foods NYC announced last week that several restaurants and bars in the city would be participating this week with their own menu of "slow" cocktails.

Pegu was serving its own list of slow cocktails that evening with a list of hors d’oeuvres.

(Part of the proceeds from Slow Drink Week, as well as the ticket sale for the opening reception, will go to benefit Slow Food NYC's Harvest Time Program, including Good Food Education, a Youth Farmstand, and Edible Schoolyards at schools in East Harlem and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

For a list of participating locations and dates provided by Slow Food NYC, click here.)

Earlier in the evening I greeted Eben Freeman, Alex Day and Joaquin Simo at the door of Pegu as we got ready to enter. I was asked how my cocktail education with Eben was going. I answered that it wasn't going too bad, but practicing with the shaker wasn't going too well because, "it sounds like nothing."

"It's all right as long as it sounds like a good nothing," Eben said with a smile.

Wait, was he just messing with me or did he just drop some kind of Yoda-like aphorism that I needed to get to be the best cocktail shaker EVER? I decided to go with the former to make it easier for everyone involved.

Upstairs the crowd was pretty big, but it wasn't too packed, which was nice. Pinballing around I found myself bumping into folks like John Deragon, Phil Ward, Jim Kearns, Don Lee and Naren Young. I spotted Dale DeGroff in his snazzy red jacket and Dave Wondrich's top hat teetered around in the crowd.

Now that I was feeling better, I figured I could slowly wade back into drinking, but was still mildly worried about my body taking terrible offense to that. I sipped at a French Pearl that went unclaimed. Just then Gary Regan walked by me and cryptically warned, "You behave yourself now."

Though I knew he said that independently of what I was debating in my head, I couldn't help but reluctantly put down the half-empty glass.

After a few words from Audrey Saunders and the drawing of straws, the Blue Blazer Mix-Off started with Dave Wondrich and Jim Meehan. They went for a historical and patriotic theme with their presentation of Jerry Thomas' Spread Eagle Punch. The liquid was Blue Blazerfied then poured into glasses with a gelatin (I didn't catch what was in it, if anybody could let me know what was in the gelatin, that'd be awesome).

The second group to go was Gary Regan and Phil Ward. The two warned that they had not practiced their Blue Blazer beforehand, but had a "special ingredient" on hand that they said was a tip of the hat to Eben Freeman. After a couple of false starts, Phil fortified the mixture a bit more and Eben jumped in to offer the service of a blow torch.



The third team was Dale DeGroff and Kenta Goto. With a recipe concocted by Kenta with the help of Audrey, Dale showed off his liquid fire taming skills as Kenta added some (literal) flare to the presentation by tossing cinnamon powder into the line of fire to create sparks. Instantly, the place was filled with the scent of what seemed like apple pie. The drink was then poured into cored apple halves.

Though these were the three teams announced to compete, Audrey announced yet another surprise team that would be participating.



Johnny Iuzzini and Dave Arnold tried their hand at competing with a more of a "scientific" approach. Dave utilized a kinda sorta technically illegal ingredient of a 120 proof tea-infused vodka of sorts for a Blue Blazer twist on a tea and lemonade drink. Then using a hypodermic needle, the liquid was shot from across the bar into a caraffe/pitcher held by Johnny Iuzzini. His forearm caught on fire. And while it was insanely cool to watch, it did smell like burnt hair at the bar.

But before I go on, I'd like to apologize for my unsteady camera hand and lack of lighting. I'm still not used to capturing video and it was dark in that bar to better capture the flames. Kind of lame excuses, but what can you do. Hey, I'm the one providing a service here with a video for those who couldn't attend. Also, this is a hardy drinking group. There might be some blue language. Maybe not R, but perhaps a PG level. If salty language is not your thing...I really don't know what to tell you.



I didn't stick around to see who ultimately won, because in my mind everyone's a winner...or something like that. Instead I headed over to Death and Company to bug Alex Day (he had to leave in the middle of the Blue Blazer Mix-Off to start his shift) and Thomas Waugh for a bit. I tried to get a head start on trying some new drinks for when the menu update rolls around. Out of the couple I tried, Thomas' Strange Brew won me over. With gin, pineapple juice, lemon juice and falernum it didn't seem like the usual drink I'd go for unless I was in the mood for something light. However, Thomas topped it with a bit of Hop Devil IPA that gave it a hoppy kick. I have to say, the guys at Death and Co. have been doing a pretty decent job of helping me get over my fear of sweet drinks.

Tuesdays with Eben pt. 3

or First Tuesday: Shaking, the end of the first Tuesday

I had been "ting, ting, ting" -ing the glass for a while, moving my straw back and forth in an empty glass. The fingers did cramp up a bit a couple of times, but it was starting to get less uncomfortable than when I first started out. I even practiced a bit more of pouring. Having no real counter space in my small apartment, I wanted to use the space and time I had as much as possible.

Eben came back downstairs and it was time to learn about shaking. We were starting off with a cobbler shaker. Eben said this while some would think it a bit old fashioned, this was good for getting the basic motions down.

He told me to hold out my left hand, palm up, and place the cobbler shaker, cap-side down facing towards me (fig. 1). Then I was to place my right hand on top of the shaker. My thumb on the cap and the rest of my fingers around the body of the shaker. Sort of like how you'd hold a football (fig. 2). The thumb's just there to make sure the cap stays in place, but not pressing down too hard or else, Eben warned, I'd end up jamming the cap and it'd get stuck since the shaker expands and contracts according to temperature.




In fact, that finicky tightening and loosening of a cobbler shaker also meant Eben had to show me how to close one. Cap on, OK, got it. But the top half of the shaker? Eben said not to just jam it on straight on, but to roll it on (not twisting it on like a bottle cap mind you). You didn't need to press down hard to make sure it was sealed or anything. Start at one point of the rim and just lightly roll it into a close position.

"I'm not teaching you the hard shake," Eben told me and I nodded. Instead, he explained to me how he was trying to explain to me the Japanese mindset of shaking. The idea of how you manipulate the ice in your shaker and thinking about the drink rather than just shaking away with brute force. It was similar to the the talk he gave at Tales after he was asked about the hard shake at a seminar.

Eben looked at the shaker in my hands. He handed me a different sized shaker, and said, "You have small hands."

I frowned wondering if this would he a handicap to my nonexistent bartending career, but Eben said, "Start off with a smaller one then work up."

I nodded. With ice and water in the shakers, now we were ready. To start off, I had to loosen up my wrists. With the shaker in my hand, I was instructed lift my arms up to around shoulder height with my elbows out (fig. 1). Once there, Eben told me to sort of "toss" the shaker forward using only my wrists. He told me to do that and try to hit three different points in front of me while doing that, but to not move my arms (fig. 2).



As I practiced this Eben told me that once I got the hang of this I could start to shake it. Starting off slow he began began to build up speed. He told me to listen to what sounds the shaker was making. I concentrated hard to hear how the ice moved and Eben did it several times. He said that if you do this right, your ice is hitting four different points in the shaker, and you can feel that.

I tried to follow along, but while I could definitely hear what Eben was talking about when he was doing it, I was a little rhythm/tone deaf when it came to the shaker in my own two hands.

After struggling to try and copy the exact noises he was making with the shaker, I said, "I think I get it, but it's hard making it sound just like that."

"You'll find your own rhythm," Eben reassured me. People figure out a rhythm that works for them he said. It wasn't that I had to do it exactly the same way he does it; this was just a basic stepping stone I needed to be more conscious of how I was moving the contents of the shaker.

Again I was left to my own devices to practice. I did the three points exercise a couple of times, but my arms started to get tired. I was starting to think maybe I could create a bartender workout plan. Hire famed infomercial spokesperson Billy Mays to be all, "Hi, Billy Mays here for Bartendercise! Are you a fitness junkie with another monkey on your back called 'a drinking problem'? Are you tired of weights and home exercise machines that you work on for hours with little to no results and definitely no booze at the end of it? Ever noticed the guns on your bartender? Wonder how that happened? Well, wonder no more!"

As I practiced I talked a little bit to Ludo, the relatively new guy, and found out he used to work at Opia, which is a stone's throw away from our office in Midtown. Eben jokingly told him to keep an eye out on me so I didn't steal anything. I tried my best to keep out of the way of folks were trying to set up the bar.

I practiced the shaking as much as I could, but soon my hands were freezing and itchy. I moved back to practicing jiggering and stirring as I read Eben's copy of The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks by David A. Embury that was on the bar. I was pretty engrossed in the part about brown spirits when Eben came back.

"All right, you need to stop or you're going to drive yourself insane," he said noticing that I was stoically "ting-ting-ting"-ing the a mixing glass.

He grabbed two different sized shakers and put rice in one of them. Wait a sec, I thought, Alex Day told me about this.

"You can practice hearing the rhythm at home with this," Eben said. I could of course use ice and water, but ice melts. Rice is a decent substitute so that you had a bit of weight in the shaker and could still practicing the listening part of it.

Again he said, I need to find a rhythm of my own. Even though I had been taught all these rules and exercises, I wasn't as overwhelmed as I was before. I got the idea that I wasn't learning that his way was the only way, I was more or less learning foundations to help put me on the path to being thoughtful about how drinks are made.

With a lot of the NRN staff out for MUFSO the following week, I knew I couldn't take a half day off the following Tuesday, and Eben was headed out of the country for a Mojito of the Future event the Tuesday after that one, so we agreed to reschedule the second Tuesday as soon as possible.

"I'll practice during the missing weeks." I said.

"Well, I expect you be like a ninja by the time we meet again," Eben answered.

"Oh man, because I really needed the pressure."

Eben chuckled but then got serious and said, "Really, though. You need to practice if you want to learn this. It's all about how much you want to do it."

---

Oct. 24

"Practice makes practice," Phil Ward, the guy who can stir four drinks at one time, told me when I made my visit to Death and Company on Wednesday.

Damn, I was expecting a different answer. Everyone had been saying practice.

"Yea, I did that rice thing," Don Lee said when he showed up at Milk and Honey on Saturday.

I'd just seen Eben earlier on Saturday at Tailor to try out some of the new stuff on the menu. He was leaving for the Mojito of the Future event the next day. He asked if I'd been practicing. I was, but I don't think it's enough. Let me put it this way. I wasn't too confident. I was having horrible flashbacks to back in the day when I took piano lessons. I was starting to seriously hate my freakish sausage fingers on the stirring side of things. On top of that, even though I tried the shaking at home, I couldn't tell if I was hearing it right.

"The thing about using the rice though is once you start using ice again, it's a different feeling from the rice. You almost have to relearn to hear it," Don said. "But at least you know what its supposed to sound like."

Don assured me though that it all came down to doing it often enough until you got it.

Even Kenta Goto at Pegu told me I just needed to practice when I stopped by on Monday.

"I don't think I'd make that great of a bartender," I dejectedly told Phil.

"You don't have to be a great bartender, you just have to be a good one," he said. "You could just learn how to make good drinks for yourself at home."

"Yea, but then I wouldn't have a reason to come bother you guys," I said with a raised eyebrow.

"It could even be about just knowing recipes and what goes into a cocktail," Phil added.

I quizzed him about his recipe learning technique and he said he started with the classics. Most other drinks tend to be variations of classics, so it's easier for him to think in terms of "Oh, so it's like this drink, except you're using x, instead of y."

Thomas Waugh described a similar process to me a couple of weeks back, but Phil said that each person remembers things differently, so I could figure out how to do that for myself. And of course, read some books.

With all this talk about figuring things out and a DIY attitude, bartending was starting to sound like the bastard child of the Arts and Crafts movement and punk rock. There's gotta be some kind of poetic comparison to be made from that statement, but I'm going to leave it for another day.

Tuesdays with Eben pt. 2.5

or A slight detour about service style

This was harder than I thought it'd be. Not that I never had thoughts of, "Wow, it must be a really hard job to stand behind a bar several hours a night and serve people," but I was beginning to FEEL that I would pretty much suck at being a bartender.

I don't think I'd been behind the bar even close to an hour, and I was already tired. I wish I was joking, but my arms were tired from practicing with the jigger and the bottle of water. And I don't mean the bottle was heavier than I thought it would be, I mean actual muscle fatigue from tilting to pour. Like I'd been doing curls at the gym or something. Also, my lower back was starting to stiffen up just from standing behind the bar and trying to work on it.

"Are you kidding me," I asked myself. "Are you tired from just PRACTICE?"

First off, let me remind you there was no one there. I wasn't serving anybody, yet somehow I was pretty flustered and nervous. I'd hesitantly reach for a jigger and shakily pick up a bottle and pour. Eben was going back and forth getting the place ready for an event, but when he saw me nervously pouring he came over to tell me that I needed to pour with more confidence. I was grasping the body of the bottle like it was going to turn and bite me, My lack of confidence was definitely affecting my pour. The slow tilt of the bottle was making the speed pour top gurgle and sputter water out in a very undignified way. Eben would grab the bottle about the neck and confidently tipped it forward, and water poured out in a smooth, unending stream.

While we're on the topic of bottle handling, a slight detour. So while I was being taught the basics of pouring and stirring, Eben also took time to talk to me about the style of service he learned about in Japan. It was all kinds of neat to hear him talk about this because I could appreciate the adherence to rules in service, and it meshed well with what I was being told about present a professional front.

First off, right hand is for pouring, but your left side is where you shake. So Eben explained when you reach for a bottle, you'd always grab it from behind you with your right hand from your right side. If the particular bottle you wanted is behind you or to the left, you stepped over so that you could grab the bottle with your right hand.

While this may seem like an oddly unnecessary bit of flourish, I thought about it for a bit and here's what I came up with. To pull this off it meant that you had more than a passing familiarity with the bar's stock and where everything was. And you weren't turning around all the time, so your back wouldn't be to the patrons. It made for less of a messy and hectic look to your bar service. Probably not doable for everyone everywhere, take out of it what you will.

Also, a bottle's label always faced out to the customer. As you picked it up off the shelf, carried it, poured it, the front label faced out. There was even a way of cracking a bottle open to achieve this. Eben showed me how you'd pull the bottle in (still in your right hand as how you picked it up from behind you) close against your body. When you twisted it the top open with your left hand, the bottle would stay put in your hand in the correct position.

You could also set the bottle down on the bar for the customer to look at (again label facing out), if it wasn't too busy or if you work at the type of place where you can leave out a bottle of liquor without worry. Eben said that as a bartender you often get patrons who want more info about what they're drinking. By giving them the bottle, it might answer any of the initial obvious questions they have about ingredients or flavors, and gives them a chance to educate themselves and figure out what they like. An added bonus is other patrons seeing the bottle might get curious about what the other person is drinking and can ask for what that guy is having with that stuff in it.

Tuesdays with Eben pt. 2

or First Tuesday: Jiggering and Stirring

Before we go on, I totally forgot to mention in my previous post another one of Eben Freeman's tenets of bartending, which is: Don't be afraid to push the envelope a little. Of course this makes sense coming from Eben. Crazy cocktails aside however, basics were still basics. And when we got down to brass tacks, he wasn't kidding about teaching me those basics.

So how do you start off making cocktails? By pouring in the ingredients. Eben found an empty creme de violette bottle and filled it with water. Slapping a speed pour top on it, he was ready. Eben showed me how to hold a jigger between your index finger and middle finger (fig. 2). It was all about being more ergonomic and the economy of movement. By holding the jigger that way, rather than instinctively picking it up in your thumb and index finger (fit. 1), when it came to pouring the contents out, it was a flick of the wrist forward (fig. 2), rather than turning in your entire forearm (fig. 1).



"This will feel a unnatural at first, but once you get used to it you'll realize how much more ergonomic it is," Eben said as he showed me the difference between the two movements.



As you measure out things with your jigger, Eben told me to hold my hand on level with the lip of your mixing glass. To steady yourself, I could back my little finger against the glass. The reason for this is, that while this means holding the jigger further away from your body, it made for a quicker and more graceful pour into the glass rather than measuring and then carrying the jigger over, wobbly meniscus and all, to your mixing glass.



Eben explained that once you get used to this, it becomes part of filling the gap that he mentioned earlier. The better you get, you start to get into the mindset of planning ahead. Rather than using one and tossing it in the sink, you can think about what measurements are needed for what drinks so that you can reuse a jigger. You can also think about what to put in or measure first (if not dictated by the recipe) to best utilize the jigger and not create waste by understanding, which ingredients are viscous and what's not.

"Now you'll see some people who do this," Eben said pouring into a jigger, but not exactly filling it to the top. Instead, he stopped short and poured the contents of the jigger into the glass as his right hand continued the pour.

He said that while some think that the continued "finishing" pour makes up for the missing amount, it wasn't proper jiggering and he was uncomfortable with that. He illustrated this by doing the pour again in a 2 oz. jigger. Stopping again just short of the lip as before, he then poured the water into a 1 1/2 oz. jigger. It was a little under a perfect fit.

Holding the jigger up for me to see he said, "You're losing almost a little over a half an ounce there."

Now that we learned how to measure our liquids, it was time to learn how to stir it.

"Do you have chopsticks at home?" Eben asked as he looked around the bar.

I nodded, slightly puzzled, but nonetheless chirped, "I like using them to beat eggs. They work great for scrambling them too."

Finding a box of cobbler straws he pulled two out and handed me one, "In Japan they practice this using chopsticks."

He held the straw in his thumb and index finger, then tucked the rest of the straw between his middle and ring finger; the middle finger went in front and his ring finger behind (fig. 1). Then he held the straw in the middle of an empty mixing glass and moved the straw back and forth hitting front and back of the glass with a lilting "ting."

"Push it back with your middle finger and forward with your ring finger," Eben said.

My eyes glued on his right hand, I painstakingly and clumsily copied what he was doing.

"They're going to want to move in the same direction at first," he said, as he corrected me several times.



The reason for this exercise was to get my fingers used to the stirring technique that would keep the back of a bar spoon glued to the sides of a mixing glass to create a silent vortex to chill a cocktail. Stirring was supposed to be smooth, different from shaking.

"The reason you shake a cocktail is to put air in it. It changes the molecules," Eben said, but stirring it doesn't incorporate air into the cocktail and provides a different mouth feel on the tongue, which is why proper stirring is about smoothly mixing your ingredients and chilling it with as little agitation as possible.

I nodded as I continued to "ting, ting, ting" the glass with my straw.

Eben showed me the stirring motion with his straw and I tried to do the same. He quickly pointed out how even though I was moving the straw round and round in the glass, he could tell the straw wasn't always touching the glass. Where there were gaps, the glass would lightly "ting" in whenever the straw would lose and regain contact.

Once your fingers get limber enough from the straw/chopstick exercise, you are able to push the bar spoon forwards and backwards in an unbroken circular motion along the edge of the mixing glass. Silently moving the ice, and not in a willy-nilly ice clinking and clanking everywhere kind of way and definitely not stabbing at your glass with the idea that all that frantic movement and chipping of ice will get your drink colder. Though, Eben added, I would eventually have to learn how to move my spoon up and down to make sure all of the liquid was getting equal contact with the ice.

He filled both of our glasses with ice and water and showed me how the stir looked. I was handed a bar spoon and tried my best to stir. I was getting the basic idea of the motion, but my stirring was a jerky swoosh around one side of the glass as I noisily pushed the ice around and after a bit of a stall and stammer as I tried to get my rebelling fingers to listen to my brain, another swoosh around the other.

While mixing glasses tend to be sturdy enough that you don't need to hold them, if you ever find yourself having to steady your glass, Eben warned that I shouldn't grasp the glass like I would if I was to take a drink from it. The warmth from my hand would transfer to the glass and drink. The way to do do it, was to instead gently hold the base with your thumb and index finger.



Eben said the straw/chopstick exercises would help me to stir in a less awkward manner. Of course I wanted to jump ahead and just start stirring away with the ice in the glass, but Eben said that I needed to practice this first exercise before I could get to the point of stirring with a bar spoon properly.

I was then left to my own devices behind the bar to practice pouring and get my fingers to obey. Eben said he'd come check on me and then we could start with shaking. He didn't want to throw everything at me at once.

First Tuesday to be continued...

Tuesdays with Eben pt. 1

or First Tuesday: Starting with the Basics

Prologue
Oct. 7

I was practically vibrating with a mix of anticipation and nervousness as I walked towards Tailor. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves before entering, but since I was a couple of minutes early I sat at an empty table and looked around. I realized that I never really sat in the dining area since I always headed down to the bar downstairs. I tried to busy myself to make the nerves go away. Why was I so nervous anyway? I guess I was just having a hard time wrapping my head around what an awesome opportunity I had here and I really didn't want to disappoint Eben Freeman since he was volunteering some of his time to have me hang around and be a general nuisance...oh, and he just walked in.

"Hey, the student is early," he said

There was an event scheduled for the evening so everyone was gearing up for that in the bar area. Once Eben took care of business relating to that, I followed him down to the the bar to see what I could learn today.

"First, I'm going to give you my tenets of bartending, then we're gonna do a little bit of skill and I'm going to let you practice on your own," he said.

Instantly in my head I saw myself dropping stuff, breaking things, and hurting myself in ingenious ways in the course of doing all that.

"That makes me nervous," I said.

"I figured you'll do better without me watching over your shoulder."

As I was soon to find out from Eben, a large part about being a bartender is being confident behind the bar, and I was going to have to practice, practice and practice until I got to a point where I was comfortable with everything behind a bar to project that image of confidence.

"OK, I'm going to explain to you some basic things about bartending," Eben said slipping behind the bar.

First off, learn about spirits. The stuff that's going to go in your cocktail. Eben said this was one of the things I could easily do on my own. Either read up on different spirits and brands, go out and try some, see what other bars have in stock.

Second, keep a clean workspace. This was very important. Eben said clean up after yourself and customers, not as often as possible, but ALL the time.

"Even if you have just one person who sat at that spot, as soon as they go, clear their glass, because someone might want to sit in that spot."

A clean workspace works both ways. For the bartender, it helps with organization and smooths out service flow. You wouldn't want to finish up shaking a drink only to realize that you don't have any clean strainers or glasses to pour the drink into.

For the customer, a clean bar space conveys the message that the person serving them is a consummate professional and more importantly, it's not gross.

"I can tell you of times when I order a drink from a bar without mint and I'll find mint in it," Eben warned.

I crinkled my nose up in disgust. And speaking of clean glassware, I was even given a brief lecture on how to keep the sinks. Cold water vs. hot? Eben prefers hot. In his opinion "Hot water just cleans things better."

He's used to working with hot water, so his hands have toughened up and he has to warn people that just begin working with him that the water in the sink is indeed very hot and they might scald themselves.

Do not mix the side of your sink for soaking with the side that you dump refuse into. This can lead to the "finding mint in a drink that doesn't list mint" scenario Eben mentioned above. More importantly, no drinks with egg whites in them (or just egg whites for whatever reason) into the soaking water.

"Egg whites are used to clarify things like stock and it will do the exact same thing here," Eben explained. "You'll end up with a layer of sludge at the bottom that has everything trapped in it."

Eben said he even will go as far as rinsing a glass out before letting it do its pre-clean soaking.

Third, learn your techniques. Again Eben stressed that this was something I could practice at home. All of this, knowing spirits, keeping a clean house and knowing your tools and technique, was all about providing a confident air of professionalism to your customers and making life easier for you. I nodded. It made sense. Customers are more willing to trust someone who looked like they had their stuff down, and fumbling around frantically behind the bar is not fun at all for anybody.

Eben said, "You're trying to get to a point where you can fill the gap," by which he meant pull of a seamless effortless service, even when it gets busy.

Even if you're making one, two, or five drinks, there's no pause between them, you weave in and out. You know what things go in a glass first, what drinks can sit longer without worrying about dilution so you can mix something else. If there is someone else on shift with you, you may ask another bartender to help you out.

"So say I'm making something like the Waylon," Eben said, referring to the smoked Coke and bourbon cocktail on his menu, "I like there to be a tall head with that."

Now that cocktail would be something you need to make last, but if you have something else that needs to be topped off or is something fizzy? Ask for back up. And that other bartender should be able to work in tandem with you along with his drinks. On top of that, you're also working as a team with your servers if you have any. If one server is still explaining drinks to one table, he or she won't be available to pick up the drink you're making to send to another table, so in that case, Eben said he might hold off on filling out an order for a bit.

I was already trying to digest all of the above when Eben put a whole different spin on that I'd never even thought of. Being a well-prepared bartender could quite possibly save your life. Well, OK, I'm kind of exaggerating, but I'm not being sarcastic. I really had never thought about it this way.

"I've been to places where the bartenders are doing shots with the customers and things like that. And that is not a bad vibe, but for my safety and the safety of the customers, I need to look like I know what I'm doing."

"A place like this is nice, because you have someone out front, or other places have bouncers," he said. "But I started working at places where it was just me behind the bar. That one guy just might have one shot too many and will flip over a table or something will happen, and you're on your own. You're not paid to handle something like that, what are you going to do?"

I nodded as I listened wide-eyed to this explanation. I forgot that sometimes the bartender can be your first and last line of defense in a room full of people drinking alcohol. Sure, if you're one of those places lucky enough to have a heavy working the door, you can call them in when things get all hairy, but for the most part, you're the guy that has to spot and deal with people who could be trouble. You have to have your wits about you to a) first of all notice if there's going to be a problem b) try to ameliorate the situation as much as possible before you call in help or until the cavalry arrives. The bartender is the mood maker of the place. Once again, in the end, it's all about good service.

"When customers see you are professional...they might be in a place that they don't know or are unfamiliar with, but then they can relax when they see that you are relaxed."

And if you look and act like someone who is an authority, it's easier to deter an unfortunate situation.

First Tuesday to be continued...