Hey Bartender Page #2

alcohols, or liqueurs, or beer

or whatever.

And those things all ended up

accumulating in one glass

and we called it the cocktail.

And by the eighteen eighties,

we have what we call

And it was that era, that we still look

back to, at the cocktail lounges of today.

America's relation to drinking

before prohibition was extensive,

it, you know, it went back to

the first colonial days.

It used to be that the bartender was

the royalty of the working class.

You know, he was the banker

and the judge, and you know

whatever you needed him. That

was the bartender.

He was the personal trust.

Bartenders were pretty much the

rockstars of their community.

They were the most important

people in the town.

Jerry Thomas is really

considered to be the

father of the American bar

tending profession.

Because he was the first guy

in 1862, who actually

wrote these recipes down.

And his book was published.

It was called "How To Mix

Drinks" or

"The Bon Vivant's Companion."

And it became an instant

classic. It was repeated in

edition, after edition,

after edition.

Starting in the Eighteen

Nineties, you really saw

change in the cocktail.

Bartenders suddenly had a new

part of their job.

Now they had to invent drinks.

When prohibition came,

it shut most of the creativity down.

And pet him so much booze, if he's

liable shall I down in a drunken stupor.

Higher for sire!

I would say the story of prohibition

is one of un-intended consequences.

When you look at it, it's an idea

that wash't as crazy as it might seem

when it started.

But everything went to hell really quickly.

When prohibition hit,

basically the best bartenders in cities

who wanted to continue on

with their trade, they went to

Cuba, they went to France,

they went to England.

They went to Tijuana. They

basically left America.

Prohibition really put a stop,

uhm, to any kind of drinking

culture that was public and

celebrated.

And that was when the craft of the

bartender, and the cocktail culture, died.

There was a wise man who told

me, uhm, when I was

buying this place.

He said, you know, Steve, all

rods lead to Dunville's.

You know, it's that old saying,

if you park yourself, you know,

in one place in Manhattan and

you sit there for a certain

period of time, eventually

everybody in the city is

going to pass you.

Uhm, that's kind-of like

here.

Most of my friend are like

married, they have kids...

Families... and I'm

single still.

I feel like Dunville's is...

like a home away from home.

It's like family to me.

Go team.

It's the only bar that I'll

come to by myself.

How about a Heineken?

No charge.

We're out of Beck's.

- Out of Beck's?

- Yeah.

Thank you guys for coming in.

I appreciate it.

A great place to meet people.

The only place to meet people.

All the other places the people are boring.

You know, the places are boring.

What goes on is boring.

It's never boring in here.

The employees and the

customers all become friends.

They socialize together.

They go on vacations together.

The go skiing on

weekends together.

The connections through here...

Uhm... are amazing.

Hip, hip, hooray!

Restaurants and bars and the

"joints and neighborhood places.

Aren't just places to

eat and drink.

They've become cornerstones

of their community.

The clock stops ticking.

You're here to have fun.

You're here to enjoy

someone's conversation.

You're here to enjoy being with people.

You're here to maybe

watch the bartender, have

some food, or whatever it is,

but relish, you know, relish

in that moment.

I don't want my customers to

see cars going past them

and be reminded that they're in

the middle of New York City.

It's rainy out there, it's hot out there,

it's snowing out there.

In here it's nice.

By creating that kind-of sexy

mystique that the night is

young and so are we, but yet,

anything can happen.

Anything is possible.

Employees Only is the greatest

date bar in the world.

When I have friends

or family in town

I always take them to

Employees Only.

I- If it's like my mother,

I'll take her earlier in the day.

Employees Only is on of those

kind of bars where you think

but you can't. You'll end up

there three or four hours later

Yeah, you go into EO... you're

not getting out, you know.

With our partners we opened

Employees Only in 2004.

Uhm, since then we have

become the busiest cocktail

bar per square foot, in

the country.

This is considered to be one of

the first speak-easy style bars

and restaurants.

We consider our establishment

to be a

well class neighborhood joint.

Correct.

I try to focus on the person

that I'm making the drink for.

I try to make this cocktail

be a bridge between us.

It is for me a creative process.

It's not just the measurements.

that goes into the cocktail,

that makes it divine.

For me, the favorite part

of the cocktail.

The whole cocktail building

process, the execution,

is the last drop.

That blends into the surface

and creates that ripple effect

in the glass.

and then the garnish

comes in and it's done.

It's like the last chord of

the song, you know.

The whole band just like

comes to this crescendo

and then the last chord

finishes it off.

I'm going to change into

something more comfortable.

Thank you.

And I put on a bar jacket,

a uniform.

So this is our office.

Here you can see the

Employees Only progression

from day one to now.

This is me when I was in a

rock band in the eighties.

I had never, ever imagined

myself to be in anyway

involved in the restaurant

business.

It was-In my case,

it was just a necessity since immigrated

up to the United States from

Serbia, from Belgrade.

Back home at that time, you

know, times were pretty tough.

Civil war was going on.

Not the preferred

surroundings, you want to be.

I had a friend, uhm,

offer me a job

to become a car salesman.

And I sucked.

I sucked as a car salesman.

Then they fired me and that's

the biggest favor anybody

ever done to me professionally.

Dushan, at Employees Only,

was one of my first top bartenders.

Amazing success he has.

Dushan is probably one of the

most sincerest, hardest

workers ever in show

business. Period.

We met at Pravda in 1998.

Ad we uhm, noticed that the

time was right for us to

attempt to open something

by ourselves.

This photo was taken by me

when were mixing the cement

in the basement for employees

only.

And, uh this is Igor, like...

striving.

Mixing the cement in the

basement with Igor and J.

Joking with them that this is the

last time that we're going to do it.

Because if we're successful,

next time somebody else is

going to mix the cement, I hope.

And if we're not successful, there's no

reason for us to go down this road, because...

obviously, life is trying to

tell us something.

This bar is very sexual.

People here do get, uh...

carried away.

The bathroom sometimes the

line is long because the

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