Hey Bartender Page #7

someday.

And after about ten years I

had no money saved.

Nowhere near close to my goal.

And a friend of mine told me

about a barback job

at a bar across town, so I

figured I would

get a job at a bar,

make money faster,

save money faster,

and be able to open

my cafe sooner.

And throughout two years I

just all my money

I moved back with my mom

for a year.

I was stuck putting my

head down.

and sticking my man

to my mattress.

and One day I was read the

Village Voice

in the real estate section, I

saw commercial space for

eight hundred dollars.

It's an owner occupied co-op.

I promised them that they

would have no idea there

was a bar there whatsoever.

An hence the hidden entrance.

I really didn't know much

about classic cocktails

I really should have failed.

On numerous occasions. And I

got stupidly lucky.

So I opened a bar with no sign

in the middle of nowhere

and it happens to be that

the guy who lives across the

street was an old college

friend of Dale DeGroff's.

You know, so that's like the

sheer luck of that.

I think a visit one fateful

evening to Milk And Honey

by Dale.

Who gave Sasha, as the story

goes, a copy of Trader Vic's

bartender guide from 1947 I

guess it was.

It might have been a first

edition copy that he just had

I meet Sasha and he starts

peppering me with questions

He built the whole place himself and

he had no idea what he was doing.

He just was clever and just

did what he needed to do.

I remember ten years ago

and Milk And Honey opened.

In the lower east side of

Manhattan.

And you know, it was

one of the-

you had to know the phone

number of the place.

it was really, really special.

He opened a bar that made no apologies

for the emphasis on the cocktail.

It wasn't about the music

necessarily.

It wasn't about people you

might meet.

It wasn't about the way you

were dressed, it was about

the cocktail had to be as

good as it possibly could.

And his stubbornness, if you

will, to make that the most

important thing, inspired us

to re-think about how good our

drinks actually should be.

No one wants to be the

regular out of place if they

don't get treated specially.

And it took me years

to realize this.

The regulars when I was bar

tending and these people

Like they saved my life and

they saved my good name.

I don't want to say that I'm

defined by Dunville's...

But I mean, people do know me

as, "Hey, there's Carp.

He's the owner of Dunville's.

You know.

Of if someone who's never met

me, introduce myself

Then I'll hear like a little whisper,

"Hey, he owns Dunville".

And I mean, that's kind-of

cool, you know, and I mean.

If I sold, I mean, am I going

to walk into place and they'll

be like "Yeah, there's Steve".

You know, flatline, ehhh,

you know.

How about that I

used to own Dunville's?

Or do I just all of

a sudden lose my-

That's it, you know. I'm just

simple Steve.

The goal with any cocktail

is to wow the person

who's ordered it.

I am a process oriented person.

When I'm bar tending, I'm

thinking about everything.

It would be a luxury to just

think about the daiquiri

you're making.

In reality, you have so many

different social interactions

going on.

You're thinking about the lights,

the temperature, the music.

There's always a hundred

things going on at once.

When I'm in the zone behind the bar,

I'm seeing all of them

at the same time and

I'm actively

pursuing getting to them.

As a bartender, you're an

entertainer and

a cocktail is not only meant

to stimulate your senses but

meant to amuse you.

When I was 18, as a freshman

at the University of Wisconsin

Madison I started

bouncing at a bar called

State Street Brats, that's

been there since the fifties.

Jim came to work for us, back

in the day, just like

a lot of college guys come in.

They're looking for just a job,

just for something to do and

to take them for here to there.

Get them a little beer money.

Work my way up from bouncer,

to cook, to barback

Jim was, uhm, pretty good at

his job.

Uhm.

A little bit hyper.

By twenty I was managing the

place and I've worked full time

at a bar for the last 15 years.

I watched people have kids, I

watched people have...

you know, go through

break-ups.

I've watched people go

through deaths.

Uhm, and as a bartender there

I really became

part of their lives.

My mother, growing up, was a

school teacher.

She was a Catholic school

teacher in Chicago.

She made about 20,000 dollars

a year with a

masters degree.

And when I graduated

from college

all my parents friends asked

me what I'm going to do.

"Are you going to be a

teacher?" And I said no.

I'm going to be a bartender.

And they sort of looked at me

like I was gonna take a career

But when I moved to New York,

a co-worker of mine

told me about Gramercy Tavern.

I went from the new guy to

quickly rising up. Taking

over the cocktail program.

The management team and I

really did not see eye to eye.

And I was terminated.

I was also, at the time, I

had started this

consulting project called PDT.

When PDT opened up you had to

find out a way

to get inside. To make

reservations you'd walk

to the phone booth.

It almost felt like it was a

a secret world. Like how do

you get involved in.

And that really kind-of fed

the intrigue and the mystery.

When PDT opened, we described

it as a

by the books hipster bar.

Which I cringe at to this day

because it's so much

more than that.

It just so immediately it became

You know, the number one

of everything.

Has won every award for top

cocktail bar in the world

at Tales In The Cocktail.

When I opened PD my goal was to still open a

bar in my neighborhood.

That I could come

any night of the week.

Have a table waiting for me.

And have great cocktails.

But it's bigger than,

it's bigger than any of the

people who work here now.

The James Beard awards are

the Oscars of the food world.

Just to be nominated really

is one of the highest honors

anyone working in the

industry can receive.

This year we were really proud

to introduce a new award for

uhm, the bar program.

Uhm, Jim Meehan from PDT, was

the first recipient.

It was huge for us but

I hope it was huge for

bartenders and bar owners,

mixologists.

People who work behind the bar.

When the James Beard

Foundation recognized

mixologists and bar programs

I think that

we were legitimizing a lot of

the hard work that has gone in

uhm, to learning about and

developing a unique

approach to making cocktails.

The tome had come.

Cocktails have had a renaissance

over the last few years

because people are just more

and more interested in what

they're putting into their body.

But what's really, really

important is the quality

of ingredients that people

are getting.

When they taste that drink,

it's the vibrance, it's the quality

of the ingredients.

Food-wise and flavor-wise.

When you're taking something

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