In many restaurants, the bar is a secondary consideration, an afterthought. Considering the potential profit in all things liquid, though, this approach has always confounded me. Why isn’t the bar a top priority? A handful of places in St. Louis—Taste, Sanctuaria, Blood & Sand, to name a few—are doing it right, putting as much emphasis on the cocktail as on the cuisine. But other restaurants might benefit from these five pointers.
1. Begin with the basics. If a bar serves a sidecar, then it should be a classic sidecar, with the correct ingredients and measurements. If the bartender wants to interpret it differently, then he should call it something like Mike’s Sidecar. As with cooking, only after the classics are mastered can a mixologist become the equivalent of an improvising, freewheeling chef. (And for anyone tending a serious bar, Dale DeGroff’s The Craft of the Cocktail should be mandatory reading.)
2. Use quality ingredients. A respectable cocktail isn’t made with substandard liquors, poor-quality sodas and mixers, or stale juices poured from a big can. Quality should always be paramount. Don’t cut corners: Use fresh juices, bottled mixers, and premium liquors.
3. Don’t shake up the martini list. A classic martini consists of two parts vodka infused with juniper berries and other botanicals (otherwise known as gin), one part dry vermouth. It’s erroneous to call everything shaken and poured into a cocktail glass a martini. A martini list should only include the following: martini, perfect martini, dry martini, and extra-dry martini—all containing gin. That Banana Split martini containing strawberry and banana purée mixed with vanilla vodka? Call it what you want, but don’t call it a martini.
4. Get creative, but in a civilized way. Today’s bar owner forgets that classic flavoring agents are available for enhancing cocktails: liqueurs, concentrates, infusions, tinctures, bitters… Just because a liquor distributor (or worse, a celebrity) is touting the latest lame flavored vodka doesn’t mean it belongs at a bar. Keeping the stable of flavored vodkas to a minimum adds credibility.
5. Don’t sell out. Alcohol vendors should not dictate a bar’s business. Letting distributors monopolize a beer, liquor, and wine list is shortsighted and lazy. Distributors don’t always have your best interests in mind—they’re often steering and filling quotas. Instead, customers should determine a bar’s product mix. If the clientele drinks 50 percent cabernet, then the wine list should reflect that. If customers prefer craft beer to domestic, so be it. Don’t let cockamamie pricing and free T-shirts guide what should be a major contribution to the bottom line.
A former sommelier at The French Laundry, Hoel serves as a senior wine advisor for Soutirage, a Napa Valley wine merchant and advisory firm.
