Very recently, after years of pining away (in perhaps the most melodramatic, teenaged, clove-smoking, Smiths-listening sense) for my own bar program, my precious little dreams came true. If you had told me it would be at the helm of the best cocktail program in a city in the midst of a major food and beverage renaissance, I’d probably order another boilermaker and tell you to piss off.
But here we are, armed with a red sharpie and my a-grindin’ axe, and due to a series of events both unfortunate and/or purely eventful, the team now in place is 100% new to the bar.
There is possibly such a thing as too much wish fulfillment happening here, but I’m frankly too occupied to contemplate the whole karmic cycle thing right now.
The menu is drenched in red, festooned with arrows and my percussive, all-caps shorthand. Some problems are magically fixed just by a change of hands, some cocktails revived and brought to proper execution by the disappearance of managerial resistance (aka, I’m wearing the daddy pants now).
I always told myself, with every manager, good or bad, that I was going to remember exactly what it was like in those crystal moments, not just the horror stories:
The encouragement of my elders, and the mantra I learned in New Orleans as an Apprentice at Tales of the Cocktail, the world’s largest convocation of all things alcoholic-“Don’t be a hero, be a legend.”
The annoyed shrug of a manager when I had the audacity to claim, among other such outrageous statements, that a seasoned, professional server should know the difference between a Stout and an IPA.
Experiencing another bartender tank, scramble and mutilate the method, facts and history behind a spirit or drink, and having to swallow that shit sandwich.
All of the expectations of the chrysalis have been bequeathed to a shivering hatchling, who is destined to make at least a few of the same mistakes- something that horrifies me. I love the opportunity that making mistakes allows, it’s the only way you can grow as a person.
As a student of history, however, the certainty that I will invariably play a part in someone else’s crystal moment is terrifying, and preventing history from repeating itself is just one of the plates I’ll be spinning.
The first menu reprint is the beginning of what I sincerely hope is a (generally) happy blur.
Here we go.
86 composure 