St. Louis’ “Ideal” Bartender… Died Almost Fifty Years Ago

Who is St. Louis’ “ideal” bartender?

Some names that come easily to mind include Ted Kilgore, Matt Seiter, and T.J. Vytlacil. But it’s Tom Bullock, the author of what’s purported to be the first cocktail recipe book written by an African-American, The Ideal Bartender, published in 1917, who deserves that designation. During the first couple of decades of the 20th century, Bullock worked at both The Pendennis Club in Louisville and in town at St. Louis Country Club, where he mixed drinks for the likes of G.H. Walker. In fact, Walker wrote an introduction to The Ideal Bartender that works to authenticate the guide, in the tradition of slave narratives, where a white “authority” figure presents an African-American writer and his or her work to a mostly white audience who may doubt the text’s veracity. In that introduction, Walker claims it is a “privilege to be permitted to testify to his [Bullock’s] qualifications.” Also working to authenticate The Ideal Bartender is a reprint of an editorial published in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on May 23, 1913, “at a time,” according to the editorial, “when Col. Roosevelt was vindicating, by a libel suit, his reputation for sobriety and temperance.” Bullock’s irresistible mint juleps were used as a humorous way to cast doubt on Roosevelt’s claim of temperance. For, as the editor noted, “Who was ever known to drink just a part of one of Tom’s [juleps]?”

The Ideal Bartender joins other cookbooks and domestic guides written by African-Americans, some of whom were former slaves, currently under study by food historians. Bullock’s text offers not only a historical record of cocktail culture, but together with Robert Robert’s The House Servant’s Directory: An African American Butler’s 1827 Guide and the eponymously named Rufus Estes’ Good Things to Eat: The First Cookbook by an African-American Chef, published in 1911, the three works demonstrate how some African-Americans, both before and after Emancipation, used their positions in the service industry to gain autonomy and financial independence.

Tom Bullock was born in Louisville, Kentucky, sometime around 1872, and his mother, at least according to one source, was a slave. Little is known about Bullock’s life outside of his tenure at St. Louis Country Club. The Feeding America Web site lists Bullock’s death as 1964, and notes that his life after Prohibition, particularly how a bartender survived during that time, “remains obscure.” According to D.J. Frienz, who authored a reprint of Bullock’s guide in 2001, many cocktail recipes from the Pre-Prohibition era would have surely been lost without Bullock’s publication.

The Ideal Bartender, which Bullock dedicates to “those who enjoy snug club rooms, that they may learn the art of preparing for themselves what is good,” includes 150 plus recipes for drinks. Six entries are dedicated to absinthe alone. Also of interest are the Carleton Rickey, “St. Louis Style” (lime, Old Bourbon Whiskey, sweet soda, and lump ice); the Coffee Cocktail, which, curiously, does not actually include coffee (egg, bar sugar, port wine, brandy, and nutmeg); and, of course, the irresistible mint julep, Kentucky and St. Louis Styles.

Bullock’s question on the dedication page of his book—”Is it any wonder that mankind stand open-mouthed before the bartender, considering the mysteries and the marvels of an art that borders on magic?”—remains applicable today, nearly 100 years later, as one watches one of St. Louis’ many talented mixologists create a potable work of art. Anyone who thrills not only in drinking that work of art but merely in browsing the cocktail menus at Sanctuaria, Taste, or Blood & Sand will certainly enjoy Bullock’s guide, for the drinks’ names and descriptions, but also for a glimpse into the St. Louis cocktail culture at the beginning of the 20th century, from the perspective of one who existed both as an insider within the industry and an outsider within society.