People Who Know People

My father and I once had a funny conversation about the absurdity of people vouching. First of all, the word 'vouching' sounds as if it could have a definition that includes the phrase 'alternative sexual orientation,' and more importantly, the actual definition is 'to give personal assurance.'

Im going to take you out on a little ride here and make the argument that the measurement of success is how far into the scope of a voucher you are, as opposed to a person who requires vouching from others. I believe it safe to say that everyone I included in the reference section on my resume is more qualified than I am for any position in any company that I would be using their reference for. Dig?

With that settled, I want to cruise into the life and world of restaurant employees, and work out my thoughts on a common phenomenon that we all experience from time to time. The phenomenon is something I like to call, 'The reverse vouch.'

Hypothetically, a man walks into a bar and sits down. The bartender approaches him, throws down a coaster or bev nap in front of the man, and asks him some version of the question, "What kind of alcohol do you want me to pour into a glass for you so that I can earn a dollar?"

The man responds, "Is Dominique, the owner, here right now?"

"No, Dominique isn't in right now. Would you like me to leave a message for him?"

"Well, I was just hoping that he could pick out a wine for me. He knows what I like. We're old buddies."

"Okay sir," the bartender replies, "Maybe I can help you out. Are there any particular regions or grape varieties that you are partial to?"

"I like cabs," the man comes back with, not realizing that his answer strips him of any and all human credibility, not realizing that his response exposes him as a 'reverse voucher,' not realizing that the bartender is now aware of the fact that he is not a wine snob who requires conversation about 'notes of chocolate and a smoky finish' before he can make a purchase, nor is he a man without knowledge of what he likes, who requires a point in the right direction from Dominique. He likes cabs, after all.

And so we can now visualize. A name is dropped, typically in a manner that is poorly disguised from being an overt announcement of self importance, and the bartender, knowing the truth of the intent, inevitably demotes the customer a few notches down the list of 'customer status(see list below),' accomplishing the exact opposite of the initial intent. Sad.

This is actually most sad, this phenomenon, because it speaks of a common personal desire to have a voucher, as opposed to the desire to be one. The man in the hypothetical above was only trying to prove that Dominique would likely vouch for him. If the dumb bastard spent more of his life trying to become a voucher instead he would likely own his own restaurant where he could swim in cab and shower in deserved ego. Hell. Ill go so far as to say we could beat the Japanese in electronics production if we all tried a little harder to become vouchers.

Well, Im off to get some letters of reference for court next week.


Customer Status:
Highest - Pleasant. Non demanding. Tip well.
High - Any 2 out of 3
Normal - After our encounter I wouldn't be able to pick you out of a line-up.
Low - Nasty. Demanding. Does not tip well.
Lowest - Exerts some form of power over server with the intent of being regarded as a super v.i.p.

Im onto you bastards. And Im not alone. There are plenty like me out there, lurking in the service stations at your local Dennys, tending bar at your favorite dive, running plates of truffled this and that to you at white glove restaurants in Manhattan, and everywhere else. We got your number, Mother Fuckers.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rick Newmeyer

I want to write about my relationship with Double Cross Vodka. I was first introduced to the product while at work. A representative from one of the liquor companies came into my restaurant and gave me a bottle to sample. This sort of thing happens all the time now, as the market is saturated with spirits of all kinds, packaged in fancy bottles, advertised by Jay-Z, and all doing everything they can to make it onto the shelves of every bar in the world, including bribing bartenders with samples. So, I took the awkwardly shaped bottle to my house, figuring I would have something to guzzle down on those nights when Im looking for a proper tuning before bed. I certainly didn't have the intentions of 'sampling' the vodka and potentially recommending that my restaurant purchase the stuff.





To be honest, Im only a vodka drinker when either it's free or I just want to get the job done really quickly. The taste doesn't do anything for me because there never is a taste. It's boring. Vodka is the only ingested product in the world that we quality rate based on how much it tastes like nothing, essentially.



Anyway, I drank the Double Cross. At first I mixed it with orange juice, and then when I ran out of orange juice I mixed it with whatever I could find, probably salsa or hummus, I really can't remember. Eventually I started feeling guilty about never actually 'tasting' it, and at some point before the bottle was finished I poured a little in a glass by itself and gave it a fair shot. As it turned out, in terms of quality, Double Cross was the best vodka I had ever tried.



The next day I recommended that my general manager purchase Double Cross, which he did, regardless of the disgusting saturation of the vodka market, and I began to sell it to my customers.



About a month after we put it on our shelves a tall, handsome, slick talkin charmer type of fella came into the bar and ordered a Double Cross on the rocks before he even got situated in his bar stool. It was the first time that anyone had ordered the stuff without my recommendation, and knowing how this industry works, I immediately assumed that he was affiliated with the sales of the vodka. We talked briefly about how much I liked the product, and he eventually revealed to me that he was the CEO of the company, just out in New Brunswick checking out the bars that had given his vodka a chance on their shelves.



I liked the guy. I liked him because he seemed to genuinely like to drink, which I think is kind of important if your salary is based on the rest of the worlds desire to drink, and I liked him because he was out personally experiencing the identities of the places that were supporting Double Cross. I also liked him because he tipped me with rare 2 dollar bills.



After our encounter at the bar I continued to sell his vodka, with even greater determination because of his personal appearance that night, and I even sent him an email about a marketing idea that I thought might benefit the company. He responded to my email right away, thanking me for my support, and requesting my address so that he could send me a bottle to my house for personal consumption. I sent him the address, and as promised he sent me a bottle right away with a personal letter attatched. Awesome.



The guy is obviously a very hands on, word of mouth marketer. He's obviously smart as he chose me, a bartender, to charm with 2 dollar bills and 40 proof presents, and he's smart for spending his nights getting to know the people who will be ensuring the success of his company. I would sell his product for that reason alone. Luckily, I can also be confident that anyone who drinks vodka is going to like it, as it probably is the best on the market.

What happened to classic?

Here's one for ya. As the years went by and the cosmopolitan revolution moved into the pomegranite cosmopolitan revolution, which moved into the rhubarb and papaya mojito with a sugar rim and a carmelized star fruit garnish revolution, classic cocktails have fallen into obscurity, giving us bartenders an oppurtunity to bring them back under the guise of something "new and cutting edge." It's actually quite absurd.

These days, as people become accustomed to walking into fancy bars and having the option to order one of several drinks off of the cocktail menu that infuse tropical fruits and bizzare spices with trendy liquors, muddled bacon fat with bourbon, and house made tonic water made with sweet brown sugar, it's fun to really blow someones mind by making them a proper gin martini ( with vermouth ).

The cocktail craze is peaking hard. Bartenders around the world are getting more and more outrageous, using stranger and stranger ingredients, and becoming, in my mind, more and more disconnected with the fundamentals of what a cocktail is, or how to build one. I think we need to take a look at some of the original American cocktails again and think about why we're not ordering them.

1. Manhattan-Rye. Sweet Vermouth. Agnostura bitters.

Genius. Made correctly this cocktail is balanced, charming, and delicious. The sweet vermouth cuts the raw burn of the rye, the rye makes you feel warm, uninhibited and randy, and the bitters bring out these sensational spicy flavors on the back end.

2. Negroni- Gin. Campari. Sweet Vermouth

My personal favorite. The painfully bitter taste of Campari is enveloped by the sweetness of vermouth, creating a beautiful balance, and complimented by the gin ( which is also the part that allows you to have unprotected sex without feeling guilty).

3.Champagne Cocktail- cheap champagne. bitters. sugar

Awesome. Bubbles are always satisfying. Throw a little of the intensive spiced bitters in the glass, round it out with a drop of sugar, and freakin drink a million of them. You will want to.

I could go on forever. There are tons of these wonderful cocktails out there, living mostly inside the pages of a Mr. Boston guide, or as a fond memory of your grandfathers, but I assure you, they can easily be recreated and enjoyed the next time you go out to dinner.

I don't know for sure why the younger generations aren't enjoying the classic cocktails. I've speculated that perhaps we're just a lazy, spoiled, impatient culture. Why bother allowing your taste buds to acclimate to the enjoyment of a new and interesting taste profile when you can just drink some sugary and overly fruity 'martini,' which coinsides with the flavor profiles of all the candy you consumed as a child, and get nice and drunk in the process? I think that this has been the driving force of the wild gastronomy drink revolution. I think that the origin of it all has been the concept of copping a buzz while sipping something that tastes like a slurpee, and I think that is why the 'classics' are getting lost. Fortunately, I think that the entire thing can, if I'm methodical enough, backfire.

I believe that the bartenders quest to become creative and innovative, for the sake of pleasing the lazy sugar hounds, has become a movement in itself, which has made it really trendy to try new and interesting things. Bartenders have been making candy cocktails of all sorts, designing menus that look like a box of Lucky Charms, offering pink diamonds, green clovers, lycheetinis, and whatever else. It's cool and trendy to try all these silly things.

So, when a group of youngsters come into my bar, and ask me to make them something exciting, I whip up a negroni, even though Im sure they're tring to get me to muddle some strawberries. Hey, negronis are new and exciting these days. And thanks to the trend of trying new and exciting things being born from the mother concept of making new and boring candy cocktails, I can reintroduce what I like without worrying much about people not giving it a chance. The trend, I believe, is shifting from drinking cocktails that taste the most like something that isn't a cocktail, to just drinking whatever is new and different. These days, all of the famous and fundamental cocktails are, in fact, new and different.

This is a good bartender

Industry Hospitality and Creeping

I spent a little time in Bangkok a few years back. If my memory serves me, I believe that I initially went with the hopes of meeting a tribe of Bhuddists somewhere out in the jungles of northern Thailand who would adopt me as their American student and teach me about their superior zen lifestyle, much like would happen in one of those awesome Jean Claude Van Dam movies, and after several years of discovering the truth of my existence, I would return to the states and totally impress all the bartenders from my home town, compelling them to give me lots of free drinks. Instead, I completely immersed myself in the drug and alcohol culture of several Thai cities, venturing into the jungles occasionally, armed with psychotropic substances and bottles of whiskey as opposed to robes and scripture. Suffice to say, I certainly exceeded my expectations of a good time while in Southeast Asia.

The bars in Bangkok, for the most part, were all pretty much the same. For some reason ( I never understood this strange phenemenon ) The Dire Straights were almost always playing loudly on the stereo, young girls dressed in skimpy black spandex always harrassed the white guys for free drinks, and above every bar hung a bell that the bartender was required to ring loudly if she was going to give someone a free drink. In all my time in the bars, being a regular and spending extraordinary sums of money, I never recieved a free drink without the obnoxious jingle jangle of piercing sound in my brain first.

AMERICA

As everyone knows who has read this blog before, I am a bartender. With this career one is afforded several ammenities that are worthy of pointing out. 1. I can sleep late and still be able to accomplish things that most of the world would have to take a sick day in order to accomplish, such as making doctors appointments, visiting the verizon store, watching Oprah, etc., and I can do these things before my shift even starts. 2. The ladies dig me. 3. Free shit ( this is the important one ).Every lawyer who frequents my bar would happily give me a free consultation, at the very least, when I get arrested for urinating in public, as the people who work at the theaters give me free tickets, and the liquor reps give me free bottles of booze. Every time I walk into a bar and the bartender knows that I pour drinks for a living as well, I inevitably get free drinks.

The other night I walked into a bar to have a cocktail before dinner. There were two bartenders working, one of whom being a woman that knows me and the freakin chick I was with. She came over to us, asked us what we wanted, "Two malibu bay breezes, please, " and she quickly poured us our refreshing libations. I tried to hand her my plastic paying card, as we only wanted one drink each, but instead of closing us out, the transaction and conversation became weird. She said, "I'll hold onto this, don't worry, I'll just keep it open."

"No, just close it out," I responded, "We're only having one."

"Oh, okay, well take your card back and you can close out when you finish," she said, handing the card back to me and walking away.

My initial reaction to the awkwardness of the dialogue was that she was inconspicuously trying to give us our drinks for free, trying to keep it a secret from either a manager who may have lurking, or perhaps the other bartender. Of course I couldn't rely on that assumption and throw a few dollars in tip down on the bar and leave, and so when we finished our drink, I had to try to avoid the lesser known bartender, so as not to cause trouble, and ask the woman in question to close me out again.

As it turns out, I was charged, as I should have been, and the entire situation turned out to be a total manifestation of my industry psychosis. I was wrong in this instance about the bartender creeping around and making me feel sneaky and uncomfortable when I just wanted to catch a quick and relaxing buzz before dinner, but I think my feelings were justified, as I have been in such a position countless times before. I have had bartenders slide me a shot before, the entire time staring intently at the back of their managers head, hoping he/she wouldn't turn around and see, and I have been handed an overtly anorexic check before and asked by bartenders to make sure that only our eyes saw it. Also, at times in my career, I have done the same kind of thing, not realizing that a sneaky and creepy free drink is only insulting. It means that the recipient doesn't really deserve it, and by no fault of their own, they become an accessory to stealing. That isn't any way to show hospitality, now is it? I guess it's a damn shame all the bars in America don't have a bell hanging over them.

Also, for those of you who think my freakin chick and I drink malibu bay breezes, go fuck yourself.

economy, huh?

Last night I had an interesting conversation. I left work early, being the opening bartender on a night where my once typical crowd of cocktail enthusiasts were probably home watching cnn and considering their long term plans of financial savings, and I had dinner alone at the bar of a restaurant down the street. Next to me sat the overly flamboyant manager of some business located blocks away from my restaurant. He engaged me in conversation about random politics of the town in which we both reside, and in hearing that I was a bartender at one of the most prestigous restaurants in town, the topic of the global economic crisis inevetibly came up. He asked me, in an overtly skeptical way, whether or not I was personally being affected by the economic downfall. Being the honest man that I am ( for those of you who know me personally, please be kind ), I told him that I was in fact making significantly less money than I was a year ago. He then asked me the classic question that I have been asked over and over again by every ignorant fool who has had the luxury of keeping their job and salary throughout this situation, "Okay, well do you think it's just the media hype that is causing people to go out to restaurants less? I mean, I am still making the same money that I was last year, or the year before, and most people I know are still making the same money. It seems to me that everyone is just falling into this trap of freaking out because the news programs are telling us to."

Several months ago, perhaps, I would have taken that question seriously. I can actually remember a time in the not so distant past when I blamed Dan Rather, or whoever the fuck, for scaring people into not buying $16 glasses of wine from my bar. Ha.

Earlier today, as I was having a few cocktails(beers and shots of whiskey), I ran into one of my old regulars at a local dining and spirits establishment(shitty bar). He was drinking guiness and doing shots of jameson, as opposed to the expensive scotch and premier cru wines that I am used to seeing him ingest, and yelling obnoxiously about how he wanted to just get tanked because he couldn't deal with the fact that he just laid off a hundred or so employees from his company. He made ridiculous drunken claims, like it was all his fault, and that he had ruined the lives of countless families, and of course, talked about how much he loved everyone that had worked for him, "even the guys that swept the floors of my warehouse. I knew where they all lived, and I would bring bagels to their houses in the morning and meet their families. I thought of them as my families."

Yeah. So that sucks. As much as I hate being the guy who took this enormous pay cut as a bartender, I would hate even more to be the guy who feels guilty about drinking good scotch, even if he could obviously afford it, because of the people that he had to send to the unemployment line. Even more than that, I would hate to be the guy in the unemployment line. And even more than that, I would hate to be the ignorant fuck who is asking questions about the legitamite nature of this financial crisis to complete strangers, in a public place, just because his or her salary has not been compromised. Yeah dude, this stimulas plan, the unemployment rate, and the millions of families who are struggling to make normal human ends meet, are probably the result of some "hype" being sponsored by the media.