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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Cocktail hour.
Bottles spinning through the air. Shakers rattling. Bartenders gliding along the floor behind a crowded bar.
Everything we do with our bodies is some sort of flair.
Chapter 2: What does it really take to make the perfect cocktail?
This is The Food Chain from the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander, and today I'm finding out what it takes to make the perfect drink.
It's all about the execution.
Ice is really important.
Yes.
Yes. Bartenders use ice the way a chef use fire, right?
From the glamour of mixing drinks on film sets...
If you watch the skyfall, the lady who is doing the main shake, that was the one selected train by myself.
To handling difficult customers.
He jumped over the bar, grabbed the bottle of spirit and throw it at my face.
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Chapter 3: How do bartenders handle difficult customers?
Such as?
Such as anchovies or sea urchin, for example. Really? And it's all about really understanding how you can combine this flavor in order to make it delicious. Like Monica said, that you want to make sure that whatever comes out, guests pay for it and then want those guests to come back and returning and have another experience.
What do you want a guest to be thinking when you set the finished drink in front of them and then they have the first sip? What do you want to have created for them?
I don't know if you two both agree that I always look at the face expression. Don't even need to see the words. I just want to see the face expression. And that can tell you quite a bit of which direction the cocktail goes, whether we hit the palate or we did not hit the palate because it doesn't necessarily need to be a bad cocktail. It's just not the preference of that guest.
So that's really about to have that ego under control and not feeling the fences that are... I just made a very bad drink. No, I didn't. I just didn't hit the palate of the guest. But it's really about that curiosity of the guest that really think about, oh, right, I never thought that mentioning anchovies that I could actually have it in a cocktail and it works.
So you could make what you think is the perfect cocktail, but it just doesn't land.
If the guest doesn't appreciate it, then... But also it's the reason maybe why the guest doesn't appreciate it, because it can be either you read the guest wrong or it's just about...
not having asked the right questions or, you know, in the younger part of your career, maybe you are a bit more, you know, confident so you don't even ask any questions, which then eventually you learn that the best thing you can do is ask as many questions as possible.
Yeah, because you get tired of dumping drinks down the sink, right? Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What is the importance of flair in bartending?
There is a limit on how much I will pay for vodka because at a certain point they are literally almost all the same. I think that you can get great, great vodka for under $20 per bottle. Anything on top of that is usually just marketing.
And also I would say geography is more an indicator for me what style of vodka I would go for at any given time. Because in certain countries, certain regions, they have much more flavorful profiles, whereas other countries it's made to be a bit more neutral. You know, some of the very traditional products.
Eastern European or Scandinavian vodkas, which are made from either potatoes or grains or all kinds of raw materials. They can be premium within the cultural context, but maybe not in the kind of wider because there's no translation of the heritage, if that makes sense.
Monica, you've just been judging the Italian semifinals of one of the world's biggest cocktail-making competitions, the one Eric won in 2010. So what are you looking for? What does it take to be a world-leading mixologist?
Well, I mean, in this specific competition, you just need to be able to read the brief and do accordingly because that's where 90% of the bartenders fail. But basically in this competition, it's just about understanding the time, place and space that you are and do what is asked of you, which is essentially the same thing that you do every day at work.
Someone comes in and says, I would like this, this and that. then you should make this, this and that. If you can add a little personal twist from the bar, from the country, from the city you are in, great. But if not, just give them what they ask for.
And in world class, they will test you on many things, on your creativity within one subject, on your efficiency, on your ability to make a round really fast and still delicious, which is very hard apparently. Yeah.
so yeah so it was very fun jeffrey you mentor younger bartenders yes all the time what are your what are the key tips you give them
You know, these days, when I started mentoring bartenders many years ago, it was all about drinks for them. How do I make this drink? How do I, you know, make this ingredient? These days, mentorship is really career-minded advice, you know. How do I last a long time in this business? How do I deal with toxic environments? What have you done?
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Chapter 5: What is the craft behind cocktail making?
And it made me... make choices for the later stages of my career and that definitely has guided the way that i you know choose my jobs how i design my bar how i you know think about the way that i want to construct the team and kind of these things so and just thinking about that the fact you can find yourself in really difficult situations like drink fueled alcohol fueled situations
You must get very adept at handling difficult situations. And it's a key part of the job, communication and kind of spotting a situation before it blows up.
Learning to read a room at all times. It's a lesson in being present. It's a it's a hard learned lesson in being present sometimes. But it is a lesson. I think all of us, when we are anywhere, are very cognizant of what is happening there.
Anyway, whether we're at a museum or a bar or a coffee shop or a library, we all sort of just probably, I think, subconsciously do that visual check on everybody in the room.
Yeah, I completely agree, Jeffrey. Like what I often do and I'm training my team that it's a very important is the first moment when the guest stepping in, just have a quick scan and just like give yourself a.
uh questions like would you say to this guest another drink before that guest is unable to walk out from the bar and if the answer is no then probably it's better to stop that guest at the door and explaining that the night is done and not taking the risk of letting the guest in and completely intoxicating him because we are responsible for everybody and in charge and in control of of those people because often they don't even realize that because they're not going out often so they don't see the power of the alcohol can be so
impactful on them that they just lose the control within a second they come in and all of a sudden after a few sips switch off blackouts and that's the danger i have a lot of young women working for me so training them how to like go into a situation
stand up for themselves and the place and then sticking to that. But what we don't want for this situation to ever be is a situation where you feel scared or where you feel like you can't handle it, where you feel like you don't know what to do, but you have to deal with it because you have no other choice. And that's kind of something that you build over months and years.
It's not something that you can throw people into and say, yeah, you deal with it because you're in charge now. you know, like creating this environment where people learn how to deal with people. Because many times, I think for Eric and Jeff and myself in the past, we didn't know because it wasn't as accepted this kind of, I mean, guest psychology was like, would you like another drink? No.
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