Check out my appearance on this episode of THE COCKTAIL GURU PODCAST, as I have a fun chat with father and son industry veterans Jonathan & Jeffrey Pogash on their terrifically entertaining podcast.
The Bartender’s Bartender with Charles Hardwick (THE COCKTAIL GURU PODCAST)
August 17, 2022 by Leave a Comment
First they came for the barbacks…
December 18, 2015 by 4 Comments
First, they came for the porters, and I did not speak out
because I was not a porter.
Then they came for the dishwashers, and I did not speak out
because I was not a dishwasher.
Then they came for the bussers, and I did not speak out
because I was not a busser.
Then they came for the barbacks
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a barback.
Then they came for me, the bartender
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
According to the current inhabitant of the White House, and many of my fellow citizens, quite a few of the people I have worked alongside for the last 30 plus years have no place in America.
As far as he and his supporters are concerned, they have never belonged here and they simply don’t contribute anything to our country but crime and violence.
In his enfeebled, bigoted mind, these brutal thugs who arrive at the bar before I do, and leave well after I’ve gone home or out to have a post-shift cocktail are nothing but trouble .
They don’t pay taxes on their income, or contribute to the economy by paying rent, purchasing groceries and clothing, driving American commerce by ensuring that there is as little waste as possible at my bar by cutting the right amount of fresh fruit every day, and knowing that we need half as much lime juice on Monday than we do on a Friday or a Saturday. These adherents to the cult-like ideology called MAGA don’t believe that my barback is not just an extra set of extremities or the eyes, ears nor the vital organs of the bar, and they damn sure don’t realize that they are its soul.
That agency who shares its acronymic name with the substance my barback hauls and sometimes chips and hews down from larger pieces into the shape of precious jewels so that I can use it to dilute and chill and preserve the drinks I serve and make them more palatable and more beautiful thinks that they should be herded into internment camps and shipped off to foreign prisons and penned in like animals regardless of whether or not they have committed a crime, and without any consideration of their green card or citizenship status.
Why?
Because they are brown.
As far as the insult to frozen water agency is concerned, the person who makes my syrups, stocks my glassware, and is as fast-or faster even-than me at the service bar, but will still have a narrower pathway to being a bartender than even I did because their accent is too thick, or their skin is a different shade of brown, or their hair is too black. They infiltrated this country to work 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week, clearing away people’s dirty glassware, doing double duty cooking their food, and cleaning up the human mess left in our restrooms, and they lie in collective wait, slowly biding their time until the moment comes when they can rise up, awaken from their conspiratorial slumber, and rob, rape, and kill us all.
These criminal barbacks from Ecuador, felonious bussers from Bangladesh, miscreant porters from Senegal and from Mali, and lawbreaking bartenders from Mexico to Morocco are not, in fact, committed to quality service, or to making people happy, or to making a decent living so they can provide for their families and themselves.
No, they are here to undermine our stainless steel values despite having toiled next to me and my colleagues in the trenches of service during the bloodsport that is the push on a Friday night because they hate America and all it stands for. Armed with a bottle blade, uniformed with a black t-shirt, their cunning is surely remarkable, their resolve and work ethic are incredible, yet somehow, it is all a grave deception.
To those that would believe this nonsense and irresponsibly and cynically seek to further this false narrative, I say this: The bar and restaurant industry has afforded me a lot of opportunities. And all of them I have had to fight tooth and nail for. I value those gains immensely. But there is nothing I’ve received that is more valuable to me than the quality and diversity of the people I have worked alongside that come from other countries, especially Latin countries.
These are the immigrants.
Now let me tell you about a fellow I once knew named Jose. I worked with Jose at a place called Pravda, and in many ways, Pravda was ahead of its time. The drinks program (although they weren’t called drinks programs back then) was designed by Dale Degroff, and its free-poured, high-volume approach to making cocktails set the stage for the future success of places like Employees Only, Macao Trading Company, and Sip and Guzzle.
I worked at Pravda shortly after I worked at another place called The Odeon. This made for a pretty seamless cultural transition since The Odeon was formerly owned by Keith McNally, and Pravda was then still owned by him. It was said that Keith opened Pravda while he was waiting for all of the licensing and other red tape to clear up for the opening of the behemoth that became Balthazar, and that since he had all the contractors, designers, and architects already lined up, he decided to put them to work on realizing a vision he had for a subterranean vodka bar with caviar that resembled the sort that he had seen during some of his travels in Eastern Europe.
I started at Pravda in the spring of 2001, and little did I know the impact the people I met there would have on me, how much I would learn from them, not just about drinks but about bartending, and the seismic global events that would occur during my time there which would change the course of my professional life and of history itself. But the events I’m about to share took place before all of that, and the time and the place are just the backdrop for the story of Jose.
Jose was a busser at Pravda. He was about 5’4 with hands the size of a child. He spoke English very well and had a lot of personality. He worked super hard, but he also worked SMART. He was super clever and resourceful and was always fun to talk to.
When it was slow, he would hang out by the service bar facing the floor so he could see all of the tables really well. He was so small you could easily have missed him, but Jose missed nothing.
What I myself missed about Jose during all of our talks was that he was also very ambitious. In fact, Jose had a secret plan.
He wanted to be a bartender.
Jose wasn’t just gossiping and talking shit when he was hanging out by the service bar; he was also watching and learning. And even though we already had a very fast and highly competent barback named Roberto who also made drinks at the service bar alongside the service bartender, which meant there was no real pathway for him to even be a barback. The hill was even steeper for him because the GM thought he was simply too small to do the job. Jose didn’t agree with this though. We didn’t know it at the time, but whenever he worked, he quietly and patiently studied everything we did behind that bar.
He memorized how we marked the placement of the cocktail with a chilled and garnished martini glass, how we held the mixing glass up high at eye level when we poured so we could see the levels of each ingredient, eyeballed the pour counts for each ingredient, the slightly superfluous but theatrical way we would nose the glass before we added the ice and clanking the Boston shakers together before shaking them, straining the drink and snapping off its last drops like a matador waving his cape in the last moments of a bullfight.
We wore crisp white chef’s jackets that were inspired by a famous cocktail bar called Schumann’s in Munich. The bussers and food runners wore black t-shirts that had the image of a big tin of caviar on them. I still have a couple of the jackets and one of the t-shirts for some reason. We all wore long, white bistro aprons that looked like skirts with the strings wrapped twice around our waists. There was a sartorial hierarchy to all this, and the bartenders were at the top of it.
This was not lost on José.
As I said, José had a plan. He watched and hatched it until one night on December 30th, 2002, his opportunity came. How do I know the exact date and time? Because it was New Year’s Eve Eve, which fell on a Monday, and that year, New Year’s Eve itself fell on a Tuesday. This meant that both Sunday and Monday, when normally only one bartender worked solo and without a barback, were as busy as a weekend night when we would have two bartenders and a barback. It was so busy, in fact, that one of the managers called me in to work the night before, but I didn’t get the message until late, and by the time I got there, things were already quieting down.
That night, I prepared myself and the bar like I was going to war because the previous night had been so insanely busy.
Even though this had happened, management neglected to schedule another bartender or even a barback to help me.
At first, service appeared normal. Maybe a bit busier than a typical Monday. Still, every time I made a Cosmopolitan, I refilled the cranberry juice storm pourer, I kept the bar napkins piled high, the simple syrup backup bottles full and handy. I cut extra fruit when I prepped the bar; I was as focused as an old gunslinger.
As I said earlier, the restaurant was below ground, and in the winter, it had heavy drapes in front of the door to minimize the amount of cold air that could come in when guests entered. Because the drapes hid the door, we also had a motion detector that, as a security measure, would beep every time the door opened. Working there, one would get used to the space between the beeps as an indicator of how busy it was getting.
The night progressed, and while it was busy, it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, and since I had overprepared, I began to think I might get through the night okay.
Then the motion detector started to beep more. And more.
And more.
The service bar printer began to spit out more and more dupes sounding like an old-fashioned ticker tape during the stock market crash of 1929: 2 Melon martinis, a Cosmopolitan, an Apple Martini, a Kempinsky Fizz, 4 chocolate martinis (super popular also the only batched drink thank God).
I started to get overwhelmed.
I only had two hands, and most of the menu drinks needed to be shaken. Meanwhile, Jose was bussing tables, but he was also watching the bar closely. NYC bartending legend Henry Lafargue, who has since passed into glory, was managing the floor that night, and for whatever reason, he had every faith that I could handle things.
Perhaps too much faith.
I quickly began to feel like a surfer staring at a looming tsunami. Sirens went off in my head. This was not a drill.
Jose looked at me expectantly, eagerly even, waiting for me to pull a Hackman in Hoosiers and call him off the bench.
Finally, his moment came. I asked him to come behind the bar and serve only beers and things like vodka sodas, vodka cranberries, and other drinks that we call one-and-ones.
The drink orders flooded in, the motion detector at the front door sounded like a damn smoke alarm going off, and the service bar printer rattled and hummed as the dupes spooled onto the floor.
Even though I told him not to, Jose started making Apple Martinis and other menu cocktails. He had been watching us work so closely during his downtime stationed by the service bar that he had memorized many of the recipes just by observing. It was impressive how well he pantomimed the way we made the drinks. Some of them were still not made correctly, but he came damn close on most of them.
Things descended into borderline chaos. The entire bar was 2-3 deep, the restaurant was packed, and it was just me and Jose, a busser drafted into service as a barback making the drinks for the entire restaurant. I looked at Henry, and he looked unfazed. Amused even. I was sweating profusely, and I found a moment to indulge in a common custom and a rite of passage at the bar and share it with Jose. Together, we pounded a shot of Stoli Gold vodka.
I got absolutely crushed during service that night. It seemed like the drink orders would never stop coming. But that shift would have been infinitely worse had Jose not been working. He didn’t just save my ass; he saved the entire restaurant from going down in flames.
One metric that might provide some bit of perspective on how busy it was: On even the busiest Saturday night, the most the bar would ever get tipped out by the servers for making their drinks—this is based on sales volume, mind you, since that’s how they also get tipped—was 150 bucks. So with this in mind, how much do you think the servers tipped me out that night?
They tipped me out $150.
When the mayhem was over, I stuffed a wad of cash into José’s child-sized hand, thanked him, and we did another shot of Stoli Gold. I broke down the bar and sat down for a bit after work for a shift drink while I reflected and marveled at how strategically José had been at playing the long game without any of us realizing it.
A couple of years later, and after I had moved on, I heard that José had followed the two most prominent bartenders at Pravda and future co-owners of Employees Only to another place Keith McNally opened on the LES called Schiller’s. There he became a full-time barback, and then when they left there, along with Henry and others, left to open their own place. That place?
Employees Only.
There José finally became a full-time bartender. What’s more, his regular shifts were working behind the bar with Henry. This little Mexican guy had become a kind of Mighty Mouse of the bar. Equipped with a sharp mind and an ambitious and industrious spirit, a former busser who could barely see over the bar top and who could barely get his fingers around a Boston Shaker, ended up an opening Principal Bartender at what was then the most high-volume and profitable cocktail bar in the city, maybe even the country. And you know what?
He didn’t steal a dime.
Cocktail Epilogue
The Moroccan Martini created by Abdul Tabini:
2 parts Stoli Ohranj
1/2 part fresh lime juice
1/2 part Agave nectar
Splash fresh orange juice
4 mint leaves
Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass along with ice. Shake passionately to insure the breaking up of the mint leaves. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a mint leaf.
A Simple Twist of Kate
February 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Imagine encountering someone you’ve never met before, yet you’ve seen them hundreds, maybe even thousands of times.
You know where they’re from, their age, their relationship history, how much money they make, even their height, yet you have never spoken. You are a complete stranger to them.
Today is different though. On this day, you’re playing a more familiar role: that of the ultimate friendly face. Amidst an endless sea of intruders, sycophants, patrons and paparazzi, nobodies and yes men, you are the only one who wants nothing from them because you are there to serve.
You are their bartender.
The first time I served a big celebrity, I was briefly hunched over the sink behind the bar at a trendy SoHo restaurant where I was the Bar Manager. Suddenly I felt eyes on me. I looked up to see the biggest supermodel in the world at that time peering at me from between the beer taps. She disarmed me with a smile that had graced countless magazine covers and said hello in a familiar tone. For an instant I almost forgot where I was. Had I met her somewhere recently? Obviously, I knew her, but she also seemed to know me. How?
Her British accent was quite apparent as she spoke again, “I have a bit of a sore throat and was wondering if you had something for it. Maybe a-what’s it called…a Hot Toddy?” Suddenly jolted back to reality and context I realized I was in fact working the bar and I was her bartender; therefore, it was my duty to make a drink for her.
“Sure”, I said. “Would you like whiskey, brandy, or rum?”
“Whatever you think is best” she replied. Her being English I settled on a nice scotch diluted with warm water fortified with a bit of honey and lemon. I stirred it up and handed it over. She took a sip and as she complimented me on it that odd disoriented feeling returned. This was not because I was star struck. Being from New York and bartending in many kind of sceney, exclusive downtown places I had served, met or partied with numerous celebs since I was a kid. But there was something that felt different in the dynamic on this day. Here was a very well-known celebrity that is often forced to shun and avoid public attention. She’s a supermodel that has had to contend with being recognized wherever she goes. She is sought after, in demeand, and she must tolerate being approached by strangers as though they know her because they know her image so very well. Yet on this day, at this moment, she has come to me seeking something, and she recognizes me, or at least the role I play behind the bar even though we have never met before. In this case it is my image as the bartender is one that is familiar and for one bewildering instant, the typical social dynamic is inverted and it’s as though we both inhabit the same stratosphere. We are breathing the same oxygen and today Kate Moss is my friend.
Ok, not really, but it feels that way.
Being a bartender means that, at least when you are working, you become a public figure. Like the song on the TV show said, “Where everybody knows your name…” and your name is “bartender”.
Unless you decide to share your real name, which can sometimes be the worst hospitality decision you can make.
For better or for worse, when you’re their bartender people really feel like they know you. And for the duration of their stay at the bar, you’re their buddy, their confidante, their matchmaker, and their life concierge. Participating in this charade of a friendship with your guests can be annoying at times, as can, I imagine, being a celebrity. Guests, especially regulars, can start to feel like fans.
They want to trade in gossip, namedrop, and know what you’re up to when you’re not at work. They sometimes push the envelope by making judgmental comments on your appearance or demeanor. They expect entertainment from you in the form of hospitality, and they keep coming back for more. At the end of the day though, this is what you want, and what you need.
Fans.
Regulars.
A loyal group of people to sustain you when it’s slow or when you’re bored. To get you through the lean times. You may start to feel a hint of contempt at the familiarity and routine of it all but ultimately the show can’t go on without them.
Kate Moss sipped her Hot Toddy and resumed her conversation with her agent or whoever she was there with and when she was done, she paid, said thank you and left. And in her wake, I plummeted back to earth, and returned to the dull and quotidian rituals of polishing glassware and cutting fruit.
But for a brief glossy moment I was on the one on the cover of that magazine and I was the star.
I breached that paper wall, ascended to the top, and was recognized and was recognized. With a tip.
Cocktail Epilogue:
Hot Toddy
½ oz brandy, whiskey, rum or combination of two
1-teaspoon clover honey
½ fresh lemon juice
Combine in a mug and fill with hot water or tea.
Men Sipping Through Straws
April 17, 2013 by 10 Comments
I fell off my bike the other day.
I was riding the wrong way down Elizabeth St. and unaware of the large pothole looming before me. When my wheel hit the edge of it, off I tumbled. Luckily I rolled with the fall and only ended up feeling a little bruised. Like a fool, I wasn’t wearing a helmet and it was a bit painful. Far more painful, however, has been the philosophical bruisings I’ve suffered in witnessing the bizarre drinking habits of the modern American male these days.
Time was when bars were places where men went to do Manly things: to drink, to carouse and chase women, to engage in discourse both civil and raunchy, and to grouse about their troubles. Read Hemingway, or Fitzgerald, watch Bogey, or Gable; for God’s sake, listen to Tom Waits or Leadbelly, and there you will find the perfect essence of life and bar culture distilled down and perfectly expressed. These men of yore weren’t concerned with their carb intake or the state of their prostate. If they were hungry they ate steak and potatoes. They slaked their thirst with a Scotch and water or a Boilermaker, not a Jack and Diet Coke or Bud Light. Their problems and concerns were simple and timeless and they didn’t spend thousands of dollars on psychotherapy. Their shrink was their barber or their bartender. Viagra? It was served in a tumbler. All you needed was a couple of stiff belts and you felt like Rhett Butler primed to carry Scarlett up the stairs at Tara. The doctor’s prescription read: Vodka, Rum, Gin, Rye, Bourbon, Irish Whiskey, and Blended Scotch.
Yes, Blended Scotch.
Before every pisher with 20 crumpled bucks in his pocket assumed aged single-malt always meant a better whiskey, men had the taste, experience and individuality to order what they wanted, rather than what they felt they were supposed to order. And they often ordered blended Scotch. These days too many men order what they feel is sensible and expected; the beverage equivalent of a bicycle helmet in a glass, or a Martini with training wheels. Sam Peckinpah, Raymond Chandler, and Langston Hughes smoked and drank unrepentantly and I believe their work reflected and conveyed much richer experiences largely because of this.
Try for a moment, to imagine Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca” slumped over the bar at Rick’s Place, broken-hearted by Ingrid Bergman’s return, without a cigarette burning in the ashtray and nursing a Vodka Red Bull. Or Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris regaling their fellow patrons at the local pub over an Amstel light instead of a frothy pint of Guinness, and you’ll begin to understand what I’m talking about. Bombarded by strange, conflicting images emanating from our movie and television screens and our iPads, we men now feel a pathological need to behave like the practical, colon-conscious, offspring of Dr. Oz and Martha Stewart. We do everything we can to avoid offending the public’s increasingly delicate sensibilities. This strange neurosis seems to overly mitigate our drinking and culinary choices and nowhere is this more sadly apparent than in a bar. Bukowski and Pollock, for better or worse, are forever as linked to bar culture as they are to their bodies of work. Moreover, this complex ecosystem informed their work greatly. Quoth John Barrymore in reference to acting: “ There are lots of methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass, and some cracked ice.”
This modern preoccupation with “health” seems to involve consuming only decaf espresso, ”lite” beer, and my personal bête noire, Diet Coke. Of the tiny percentage of coffee drinkers that drink coffee for the taste, which of them can say they actually enjoy the taste of decaf?!? Light beer, and Diet Coke, and decaf coffee are unique and unfortunate American concepts and the world of adult beverages is all the worse for them.
Which brings me to perhaps the most misbegotten drinking accessory of them all: the soda straw. Not to be confused with the sipping straw whose primary purpose is to mix or stir your iced drink as you progress through consuming it, the soda straw was until recently under the purview of milkshakes and various children’s beverages. Now it is the equivalent of short pants for your drink. Something that, with the exception of certain types of cocktails: Cobblers, Slings, Mint Juleps, and Tiki drinks, every adult should have outgrown long ago. These days I see grown men drinking a whiskey and soda, or the aforementioned Jack and Diet Coke through a soda straw. Watching a grown man eat a bunless burger with a knife and fork while he drinks his beer with a straw is akin to watching him consume his own entrails. Horrifying.
Do I propose that we eliminate such things as drinking Jack Daniels through a straw, or putting Sweet ‘n’ Low in your Irish Coffee? Far be it from me to even suggest such an audacious thing. I merely suggest that we shun things like Light Beer back to the grimy, dark corners of the beer cooler next to the O’Douls. That the Diet Coke button on the soda gun be rigid and unpressable from neglect, and that the underused can of decaf coffee be so old that Juan Valdez’ moustache has begun to gray. Say what you will about the French, their lifestyle has made it necessary for scientists to study the “French Paradox” in trying to figure out why, despite their consumption of foods that food science tells us are very unhealthy, they actually have a lower rate of heart disease than Americans do. And to oversimplify their findings a bit, they have determined that this has less to do with what they eat and drink, than how they eat and drink. They don’t drink to get drunk. They enjoy themselves. They eat slowly and savor the experience and the company, with balanced tastes and little to no direct concern for carbs and cholesterol, only quality. The American male could benefit tremendously from this uniquely epicurean perspective on life. So gentlemen, let’s get off our libationary tricycles and ride the wrong way down that street.
You might just rediscover your manhood.
Cocktail Epilogue:
The Fitzgerald Cocktail
1.5 oz dry gin
0.75 oz lemon juice
0.75 oz simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
Method: Combine and shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, or strain over fresh ice into a rocks glass.
The Bubbly and The Green Dress
March 25, 2013 by 8 Comments
The story behind the creation of the Bellini, and how the drink got it’s name, is fairly colorful and interesting. Yet perhaps even more interesting, is the story of how Harry’s Bar, the place where the drink is said to have originated, was financed in it’s beginning. Something involving money lent to an expat American (the eponymous Harry) in Venice during the depression. It’s all very Hemingway-esque. Which is ironic, since Harry’s later became one of Papa Hemingway’s favorite haunts.
My own personal Bellini story is a bit more R-rated, but it is, I assure you, quite colorful and exemplifies the kind of spontaneous, “No two days are ever the same” shenanigans unique to the life of a bartender.
I was somewhat wearily throttling the stick on a late Saturday night, while entertaining a few dead-enders and an old friend who lived nearby. This particular friend had been having great difficulty meeting and finding success with the opposite sex. So from my discerning perch behind the bar, I decided to make him something of a personal project of mine. I encouraged him to read some books on social interaction with women, to work on his appearance a bit, and to use the bar whenever he wanted as a sort of flight-simulator for chatting up the female species. He took advantage of this with varying levels of success during pretty much every shift I worked.
Part of this evolving makeover also included him wearing different and slightly flashier clothing and accessories in order to attract attention from afar and to stand out in the crowd of all the similarly clothed, male, Dockers wearing sloths who usually populated my bar on the weekends. Among his more favored accessories was a white fedora-style hat with a bold patterned band. The accoutrement worked rather well, and he began to have a lot more women approach him to flirt and strike up conversation. This is, in fact, what happened on this particular Saturday night shortly after a group of about 6 people came in and ordered a round of drinks. There were a few women in the group and one was wearing a very short, and very tight, green, one shoulder dress. tan, barelegged and propped up to an impressive height in a pair of wedges, she had dark blonde hair and garnered no small amount of attention from the malingering guests at the bar. This included my friend, whom I will call Dennis. As the group began to order their respective drinks, I could see Dennis considering his conversational points of entry and doing the necessary mental calculus required before approaching a strange woman at a bar. The groups round consisted of the usual assortment of vodka sodas, etc. with the last two drinks standing out slightly. One being a Maker’s Mark on the rocks and the girl in the green dress’ order: a Bellini.
A Bellini? At 3 am? I hesitated and thought about suggesting something more appropriate to the hour and setting but I learned long ago not to argue or even try to understand these things. As I rummaged through my low-boy fridge to find the white peach puree, checked the expiration date and then began to mix her cocktail, I noticed her grab the glass of Maker’s Mark while the other guys back was turned and take a huge gulp of his bourbon. My mouth was agape momentarily as I stirred the puree into the Prosecco. I was both stunned and impressed.
I probably should have been concerned, but then, there was the matter of that dress. While I stirred and began to pour, Dennis feebly struck up a conversation with her, using some sort of mundane but ultimately effective opener. Broken clock theory at its best. She bit and they were chatting pleasantly as I served her cocktail.
As the two of them drank and talked, she playfully removed his hat and put it on, unintentionally proving that it was an awesome accessory to everything else she was wearing. Further, she proved herself to be quite insightful and observant when; upon noticing Dennis’ discomfort at being deprived of his hat, she made a bold pronouncement about his seeming to “Need the hat to feel complete.” “What do you mean?” he blinked, as I stood there slack-jawed at her perceptiveness. “ I just feel like you need the hat. Like you feel as though it’s the source of your power. Some sort of crutch maybe.” Whoa. This girl was quickly making mince meat out of him. Dennis was reeling and clearly out of his depth, so I decided to extend a hand across the bar and try to pull him back into shallower waters. “Waitaminnit.” I piped up. “You women are the last people who should talk about needing a piece of clothing as a source of power.” She turned toward me serenely and said, “What do you mean?” I continued, pontificating, “Well you have all these things you use to look better, smell better, appear taller, sexier, and you use them to get all of kinds of extra attention when you go out.” And then I made one of the best conversational maneuvers of my entire career behind the bar. “Like that dress for example.” “This dress?” she said, stepping away from the bar so we could survey her from head to toe. By this time, her friends had made their way outside to the smoking patio and the only ones at the bar were me, Dennis, and our inscrutable middle-aged Chinese barback Min who stood nearby waiting for the keys so he could begin locking up the joint.
We all looked her up and down and figuring I had her cornered logically, I smirked with satisfaction and prepared to gloat. “Yes.” I answered. Suddenly, with what seemed like preternatural speed, she reached down, pulled her dress over her head, completely off, and flung it aside. She stood there defiantly in nothing but a pair of wedges and a G-string.
Talk about playing your trump card. I was rendered mute, something that rarely happens to me behind the bar. Min looked like he just won 10 grand at Mah-Jongg and Dennis tongue rolled out of his mouth and out the front door. She seemed calm and sober as she said superfluously, “I don’t need this dress.” She had a beautiful, toned, sun smooched figure. As I took everything in, I believe I managed to stammer, “You win” or something to that effect. A little observant time behind the bar will quickly teach you that women are much smarter creatures than men, and with a flick of her wrist this woman had just proven it. She outmaneuvered us all. Game. Set. Match.
There were a few more conversational acrobatics as she put her dress back on and then, for her closing argument, removed it again, this time along with the g-string. Later, during her nude bartending lesson, she told me that F. Scott Fitzgerald was her Great-Grandfather and she proved this by almost drinking the bar into bankruptcy. (After a display of such audacious wit, drinks were most certainly on the house.) I have no idea where her friends went, but after I tossed her almost forgotten g-string into the cab I escorted her to, I locked up, and was left with a memorable and humbling lesson in gender dynamics. And you can’t put that into the tip bucket.
Cocktail Epilogue
The Bellini
2 parts White Peach Puree
3 parts Prosecco*
½ part Marie Brizard Peach liqueur (optional)
Combine ingredients (without ice) in a mixing glass and stir. Then pour into a chilled champagne flute.
-Invented in 1948 by Giuseppe Cipriani, founder of Harry’s bar in Venice, Italy.
*As always, proportions may be adjusted slightly according to personal taste.
Love’s Leaver’s Lost
March 19, 2013 by 33 Comments
Losing things can be a tremendous nuisance. There are the tangible losses that sting: a scarf, an umbrella or a cell phone. And the abstract losses: your innocence, your inhibitions, and perhaps, your self-respect as a result of several booze-induced bad decisions. Alone or accompanied, you wake up and wonder, “What was I thinking?” The bar is a place where you willfully go hoping to lose something intangible and perhaps unmentionable, while praying that your belongings and daily mentionables don’t tumble out of your purse or pocket along the way. After all, a hat or scarf can be replaced, but that favorite hat or scarf that you bought during that trip to Ireland, and all the memories associated with it, cannot. You walk through the door courting a kind of self-inflicted amnesia, and you do so at your peril. You wager on your future and the quality of your evening . Win big, lose small, and most of all, know when it’s time to go home.
The best bartenders know a lot about losses and gains. They recognize that the bar is a kind of casino where bets are placed; often by people who don’t even know what game they are playing. In the abstract, you can win big in the form of closing a big business deal, or you can meet the love of your life. You can also come so painfully close to success with either that you will want to cry like a baby when it is suddenly snatched away from you. We are the Croupier, the Pit Boss and Casino Manager all rolled into one. Things get lost or left behind, people spend far more than they intended to, and we dispassionately bear witness to all the comings and goings. When the item is something material, we store it, label it like an archivist and (usually) hope it gets back to it’s rightful owner. When it is something we covet however, this becomes more of a challenge. The woman whose shameless flirting seems to grow in direct proportion to her date’s lateness or dull conversation. The new iPad or digital camera someone left behind. These things can inspire no small amount of temptation. But I feel pretty secure in saying that our guilt at keeping an item from the lost and found directly corresponds to its material value. It is the cheap and mundane, the crass or comical things, neglected and easy to replace, that we consider fair game.
Take umbrellas for example. I haven’t bought an umbrella in twenty years. I’ve had all sorts come into my possession. At one point I counted an accumulated two dozen umbrellas in my apartment. I eventually gave most of them away and all but two I don’t have anymore. Why? Because I left them in a bar somewhere. Believe me, I am more likely to buy an Aston-Martin than I am to buy an umbrella.
I don’t smoke, but I have dozens of cigarette lighters. Bics and butanes, large, small, plastic, aluminum, I even have a $500 DuPont lighter that I probably should have sold on Ebay long ago. Scarves and jackets, a couple of amazing raincoats courtesy of the unclaimed lost and found bin; I could build a façade of accessories that would make Ian Fleming proud. But please don’t think me a thief or cold-blooded opportunist. In every one of these cases I have at least waited the requisite 2-4 weeks before taking possession of the orphaned items. I confess to being a bit of a calendar watcher on occasion, but at least as often, I have gone on the internet, or Facebook, and called credit card companies and told them to inform the card holder of their lost item. Certainly, that lambs wool sweater feels far less itchy with a clear conscience.
Some things that get left behind are just plain weird. Opening a stranger’s bag can be akin to opening the prize packet inside a depraved box of Cracker Jacks. Someone once left a beautiful leather golf bag behind and upon opening it I discovered, among other things, a nice, but weathered dop kit that, along with the usual toiletries, contained a diabetics insulin testing kit and several syringes and medications. Worrying about the persons safety should they not get their meds, I scoured the bag for anything that might identify the owner, but to no avail. I was once haunted for months by a woman’s lost Korean passport with all sorts of difficult and complicated stamps and visas stapled in it. Try as I might, I couldn’t find her via the internet or any other source and she never called or returned for it. The documents are probably still in that office right now.
But it is the birthday parties that yield the most colorful left behinds. The half-consumed customized cakes, and tons of delicious designer pastries. Kooky balloons withering on their strings, the thoughtfully chosen oversized cards with scores of signatures that the drunken birthday celebrant completely forgot about. I once had a guy celebrate his birthday at my bar. Kinda hip looking in a Maroon 5 sort of way, he intended to move to a table but wound up having such a blast at the bar that he just stayed and reveled the night away as his friends continued to give him all sorts of various and sundry gifts. When he left, many of them were left behind in a bag (they were unwrapped) and a partial list included: an iPod Charger, a bottle of 1999 Dom Perignon, a bottle of K-Y warming lubricant, and an enormous 12” black dildo called “The Emperor.” I suspect the last item may have explained his hesitancy in calling to retrieve them. We kept everything for quite a while until one day, the dildo mysteriously vanished along with a never-been-kissed Jehovah’s Witness cocktail waitress of ours. The timing may have been a coincidence, but at the end of the day, I’ll never know. I can only view it as the detritus of a night well enjoyed, that in some mysterious way, rippled outward and made a few lives better.
When the evening ends, the inventory of things lost and found can begin, and one hopes that they are only vague and ethereal. A few cares and inhibitions, perhaps a forgotten stop or two during your bar crawl. This along with a few dollars and you can happily declare that you’ve at least broken even. If it’s a tooth or a pair of underwear, well, it still could’ve been worse. William Shakespeare must have just awakened after a long night out when he wrote, “Praising what is lost, makes the remembrance dear.” Indeed. And if you’re lucky, we may just be holding on to it for you.
Cocktail Epilogue
The Casino Cocktail
2 parts Old Tom Gin
¼ part Maraschino liqueur
¼ part fresh lemon juice
2 dashes Orange bitters
Combine all ingredients along with ice in a cocktail shaker, shake vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a brandied Maraschino cherry.
Source: New Diners Club Drink Book, 1968, by Matty Simmons
Through the Mixing Glass 
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