Bartending Flair
I know, I know flair bartending seems pretentious and needlessly self-aggrandizing, but incorporating aspects of it would benefit any bartender’s game behind the bar. Flair calls on one’s sense of showmanship and sleight of hand…
The Art to Being Funny
Every bar is a stage. A stage that puts you on display for guests to interact with for eight, ten, twelve hours a shift. Stephen Kittredge Cunningham, author of The Bartender’s Black Book, discusses creating…
A Guide to Stop Bartender Theft
A busy bar’s bartenders handle a large amount of cash transactions and buckets of cash tips. Often these activities are outside the watchful eye of management making them ripe for the bartending thief. But what…
Bartending for the Lost Generation
What would it be like to bartend for such legendary figures as Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and various European Counts and Princesses? Well, Jimmie “The Barman” Charters did…
Wine School 101
The bar offers people drinks containing alcohol, right. Well sometimes people want to class the joint up a bit by ordering from the wine menu. So, you better have enough wine knowledge to handle whatever…
Fine-Straining Cocktails
What’s with the kitchenware behind the bar? We’re making drinks back here not prepping pasta for a large Spaghetti dinner! Relax Max what you’re looking at is a fine mesh strainer that is used to…
How to Remember Names and Faces
There you are wishing you could crawl under the backbar and hide. A wonderful guest who you recall works as a creative executive at a well known magazine has just returned to your bar. Oh…
How to Make a Tom Collins
Nothing cuts the heat and humidity like a tall slender glass filled with a Tom Collins cocktail over ice. So famous and beloved they named the glass it is served in after the classic drink. …
How to Rim a Cocktail Glass
Bloody Mary’s, Lemon Drops, Sidecars, or Margaritas are just some of the cocktails where you’ll be called upon to rim the serving glass. Some places will have you only rim half the glass so as…
How to Make a Skinny Margarita
It’s a surprisingly beautiful day to still be in the throes of Winter. Maybe too beautiful. The after work crowd is just starting to crescendo across your bar when the question comes. ‘Do you know…
