"bartending" news and stories

Be honest: How long has that bottle of vermouth been in your cupboard? If it's more than 30 days, that's a big bartending fail. And -- surprise -- so is keeping limes in the fridge. What else are you doing wrong when you're making cocktails at home? YumSugar's Susannah Chen asked legendary bartender Tony Abou-Ganim for the 10 most common at-home bartending mistakes. How many are you guilty of?

Get the whole list at YumSugar.com

I began bartending many moons ago when hardly anyone had heard of a cocktail competition. I've judged a few, but only ever competed in one, so I sometimes feel quite old when the young whipper snapper bartenders boast how many competitions they've won.

My initial training in Birmingham, Alabama came from a bartender who used to take me to T.G.I. Friday's so I could see how the "serious bartenders" worked. The flashy, bottle flingin' bartenders there competed to see who had the best flair -- and I'm not just talking about the number of decorative stick pins and message buttons on their suspenders. Friday's actually held the first ever "flair bartending competition" in the mid 1980's, inspired by one of their pourers who had a knack for juggling bottles. A few years later, they held the first world championship bartending competition. Fun fact: The winner trained Tom Cruise for the movie Cocktail.

Flair competitions now occur worldwide with large liquor company sponsorship. However, the cocktail competition world has also taken a turn towards actual mixing talent and not just showmanship. Perhaps the Japanese culinary show Iron Chef (with a cult US following) is partially to blame for the rise in competitive drink mixing.

Last week, I wrote a piece about David Herr, an engineer who followed the ultimate foodie dream and pursued a second career as a chef. Oddly enough, I subsequently discovered that the bartending industry is currently seeing a major spike in new employees and trainees. Over the last few months, bartending schools have seen a 20-25% growth in enrollment, as traditional jobs evaporate and the newly unemployed begin to explore their next career move. Given the fact that we're facing a long, cold winter with limited resources, it seems likely that a lot of people will be headed out to the bars.

In all likelihood, the next year or so will see a significant change in the bar environment. Instead of cold nightclubs and cocktail palaces with high-priced frothy drinks, there will probably be a spike in neighborhood joints where the beers are generous and the well whiskey is cheap. Still, although per-person bar expenditures will probably drop, the increase in new customers should make bartending a reasonable career choice for the foreseeable future.

At their best, bars are comforting places where one can take shelter from the cold, converse with one's community, strike up conversations with total strangers, and huddle for warmth. While it may be too soon to draw conclusions about where America's communities are headed, it seems reasonable to expect that cocktail-making skills will continue to be in vogue, at least for the next few years.

Before we get started on the continuation of your goal of being a good bartender, I'd like to address publicly a great point brought up by one of our Slashfood readers.

Suzy pointed out in the comment field in the last post that as an alternative to becoming a barback, another way to get your foot in the door is as a cocktail waitress. Great point, and I'd elaborate that to include anybody in the restaurant business. If you're a server and your restaurant has a bar, try asking if you can step behind the bar and train. This is how I got into bartending. Now, ordinarily, this will mean you will be back there for free. Again, this is how I got in. I put in several volunteer hours until I was asked to cover a shift and until finally getting my own shifts. The point is, any way you can get yourself behind a bar and start learning, paid or not, do it.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that starting as a server is probably the optimal way to go, though the process will take longer. As a barback, you'll get behind the bar quicker and your learning curve on how to work a bar will be shorter, but you'll be missing what I consider a key element of bartending, namely, service. Going through a server training program through a restaurant gives you an eye for the details of good service, an element I think is lacking in many bartenders today. A server in a restaurant would never skimp on the basics such as a) providing water for your guests, b) acknowledging new guests right away with menus and c) patiently explaining the product being offered if asked. I cannot tell you how many bars I go to that skip the bare minimums of good service, as if the bar were a rarefied plane of existence in which these standards don't apply. Good bartending means good service. Period.

Okay, stepping off my soap-box and moving right along . . .

My wife wants to be a bartender.

Makes sense; we have a dream of opening our own cocktail lounge someday, so it'd be nice if she could step behind the bar with me and know what she's doing. Better yet if she could stand alone with her arsenal of cocktails and be known about town as a great bartender.

Seeing as how she is married to a one, I'm the obvious choice to begin her training. The question for me is, where to begin? How do you build a bartender from scratch? There is no real established training program or apprenticeship blueprint that I know of that doesn't either a) cost a bunch of money or b) get you physically involved behind a working bar, so I've decided to take a whack at coming up with my own.