The Philip Duff Show
Liquor, bars, cocktails: the people and companies who make them, sell them and drink them, plus everything & everyone in-between, with your host, globetrotting spirits guy and escaped bartender, Philip Duff.
The Philip Duff Show
#45, Forest Collins, French cocktail blogger and author, "Drink Like A Local In Paris"
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Forest is the O.G. cocktail blogger in France, since she moved there from the US in 2001 and started the 52 Martinis blog, adding a podcast a decade ago. She's also the author of several books including the new "Drink Like A Local In Paris", Academy Chair for France for World's 50 Best Bars, creator of the 52 Martini iPhone app, and a constant champion of all good bars throughout France. We caught up over a cocktail or two and went through the French scene, French spirits, lists like 50 Best and awards in general, and a bunch more, including what being a local or a regular really entails and why Parisians love that cafe life.
The 52 Martinis blog: https://52martinis.com/
The 52 Martinis app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/paris-cocktails/id1261249803
The 52 Martinis podcast: https://52martinis.com/podcast/
52 Martinis on IG: https://www.instagram.com/52martinis/
Buy "Drink Like A Local In Paris": https://www.amazon.com/Drink-Like-Local-Paris-Pariss/dp/1646434579
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Forrest Collins, how the hell are you?
SPEAKER_00I am very good. How are you?
SPEAKER_05I'm good. It's noontime here in New York, which means it's cocktail time over there. Do you have something something delightful to hand?
SPEAKER_00Um, I don't have anything to hand. I had quite a few cocktails yesterday, so I have some water to hand tonight. But as soon as we finish wrapping this up, I will move into cocktail hour.
SPEAKER_05I'm gonna tell you what I'm drinking, but uh, I think I got a sign from God or the other guy. Uh I did a podcast the other day with Derek Brown. Do you know who Derek is? Yep. Derek's the best. And I, you know, we we chatted for like three hours. I don't think I've ever hung out that long with him. He's fantastic. And he's been on, as they say here, a wellness journey. You know, he's kind of given up drinking, he's written books and stuff like that. And I asked him a question of like, how should people uh prepare for day one of going on the wagon, say January the 1st? I always do dry January. And his advice, his advice was genius. He said, start planning at two days out, like and plan the day, like fill it up with things, uh, you know, uh, go for a hike, a walk, visit a museum so that you're not tempted to kill time by going into a bar. He had some great advice. And it kind of spurred me to do something in advance. There's amazing non-alcoholic negronis made by a place in Brooklyn called St. Agrestus.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05And they do a men's cal non-alcoholic negroni as well. So I laid in about 12 bottles of each and I put them in our second fridge, because we have two fridges in our kitchen. And I came, I woke up this morning and some of them had exploded. Right? They had frozen so solid that they exploded, the cap cut off. And I'm like, is this a message? Should I not give up drinking for January?
SPEAKER_00I would really take that as a message. I mean, I I can't imagine a stronger message. Yes.
SPEAKER_03What's that Steve Martin movie where he's like looking at a picture of his dead wife asking permission to date somebody? And he's like, send me a sign. Like the picture starts spinning, the wind in the room.
SPEAKER_05You hear this voice, no, and then it all comes down again. And he's like, anything, just a simple suffering.
SPEAKER_00Just a little sign, yeah, yeah. Ah, very good, very good.
SPEAKER_05Well, I have here in your honor, and also because I had so many drinks last night, I actually need one now to get level. Uh, the only bottle of Lutes, a pair of teeth in the United States. Young Josh Fontaine was here a few weeks ago and he gave it to me very kindly. Um, it's the last of it because quite frankly, Mrs. Duff has guzzled the whole fucking lot.
SPEAKER_00Well, so good for her.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Josh, um, you've got one customer here, and she's married to me. So pluses and minuses, really. But no, it's absolutely delicious. I assume you tried it.
SPEAKER_00I have, yeah. It's very good. And now I feel bad. Now I feel like I should have made myself a drink before I sat down because that just would have been cooler to be sitting here having a drink while we're chatting.
SPEAKER_05But while chatting about your new book. I mean, we're not just chatting about it, but we are going to talk about drink like a local Paris, a field guide to Paris's best bars. And I love the sort of introduction that you write in it as well. But we always have to do a thing because all my listeners are drunk, both of them. Um, how did you make it so far in your career that you're finally on the Philip Duff Show? Can we have Forrest Collins 101 elevator pitch?
SPEAKER_00Oh God. Um, Forrest Collins has been the voice of cocktails in Paris, uh, a cocktail advocate in Paris for 17 years.
SPEAKER_05I love the way you talk about yourself in the third person. Please never stop doing that. Philip likes that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Well, Forrest will continue to do that. Uh Forrest uh wrote pretty well, you know, uh it was pretty much 52 Martinis, was I would say the first blog about cocktails in Paris, certainly in English. And so pretty much, you know, an early adopter of cocktails in Paris and an early advocate forum. And from that, basically it just branched out into anything that had to do with cocktails in Paris, there was probably some something that Forrest had to do with it. So, you know, I've got the iOS app now for Paris, uh Guide to Paris Cocktail Bars. I've had a podcast now for well, probably a decade, Paris Cocktail Talk, and um, and the blog's still there. But you know, like a lot of us who got our starts and blogging, it's not updated as frequently as when I had more time and energy to burn. But uh, but you know, that really kind of that that's that takes me up to to this point. So Owen, uh yeah, I'm the chair for 52 um world 52 for world's 50 best bars for France. So so you know, that's kind of my cocktail credentials, and uh, I guess what helped me get approached by the publishing helps to write this book.
SPEAKER_04But you've got a very cool day job.
SPEAKER_00I do, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I think it's very cool. Can you talk about it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd keep that's my secret. It's my dirty little secret. I don't tell people my day job as opposed to my night job.
SPEAKER_05It's all coming out on the Philip Duff show.
SPEAKER_00It is. You're you're making me spill my secret.
SPEAKER_05We're spilling the tea here live.
SPEAKER_00It is. Um, I work at UNESCO um in in Paris, the headquarters for UNESCO, and I work for the Oceanographic Commission. So I work in administration and the team that I'm working with, uh we focus on um uh well, we uh coordinate uh global ocean observing system. So so yeah, so it's very cool. I'm actually I consider myself very lucky because it's nice to have something during the day that I feel is really fulfilling and it's you know it's it's doing something good for the world. And then I get to have lots of fun with my night job. So um, but also that provides a really nice my my night job, especially the writing component, provides a really nice creative outlet. So so it's it's all about balance.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean it I think it'll be easy. The only way you could be any cooler would be if your day job was writing about cocktails and you moonlight it, right? Like flash dance. She was a welder by day and a dancer by night. But what if she was a dancer to support her passion for welding? Welding. Oh, and she was like, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna get in the union, you know.
SPEAKER_00Uh yes. Well, uh, maybe in another another career, another life.
SPEAKER_05But actually, there is one thing. I don't know if I ever discussed this with you the last time we met, but I do know that uh uh well, I think that a lot of your job involves kind of you know predicting and monitoring stuff, right? Like earthquakes, tsunamis, that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm I'm not on the uh that's not my team anymore, but in the past it it has been working on the tsunami team where uh a lot of it is about uh training different, um providing training opportunities and warning systems for for mem for nations around the world. Yeah. And and now it's it's more about coordinating a system of networks that take ocean science data and deliver it to end users um that help things like mitigate climate change or um uh weather predictions, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_05You're clearly you're clearly an assassin because nobody could have a job that dull, right?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. Watch your back, people.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, no, what I want to ask you is I read an article not long ago, and it was about how weather prediction has got so much better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And is that something that you saw? Because, you know, as technology progresses and and we get better at it, um uh is prediction of massive events getting better?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say so. I mean, the science is always evolving. Um, and in terms of weather prediction, it's not really my area because that's actually handled. We work really closely with uh actually our our um pro program works really closely with WMO, with the World Meteorological Organization. And so those guys are more about weather prediction. But uh, but yes, I I think globally, you know, I've been working there for I don't know, as long as I've been doing my night job, so a really long time, and you just see a continuous um evolution and uh of um scientific process for this.
SPEAKER_05It's it's very hard to see incremental evolution, isn't it? Like if something increases, there's Mrs. Duff.
SPEAKER_00I just saw her walk by.
SPEAKER_05She's off to lunch at Baltasar. So if any of the Baltasar staff are listening, um, call in the people who are on their days off. You will need all the help you can get. She's having lunch with our friend Jim. Um, like you never open the paper, and it's like, you know, infant mortality down three percent. Right. But over 10 years. That's like fuck, that's a lot of non-dead babies.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_05Like, that's uh it's it's always the thing that bleeds that leads. But enough of our media criticism. Let's talk of another medium. Oh, there is something I want to show you. Actually, let's see. Let me just pause recording. And we're back. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER_00Okay, I can hear you. Yeah, now I'm super curious.
SPEAKER_05This is a link to how we met. And I just received it today in the post. It's this beautiful framed picture of me and the boys. That's Nelson Phil Vare. We all got together, I'm sure you saw it, to recreate Gaz Regan's Finger Star DeGroni, which originated at the G Vine Gin Connoisseur program. So there's me, Hinsuga Ueno, Peter Durelli, Salvatore Calabresi, Jean-Sebastian Loubiquet, and young Dale de Gross.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, we auctioned this off for charity and a few other bits and pieces he'd get as well. And we're trying to revive the Dear Departed Gary Regan's um just one shift charity, where Ah, yeah, that would be great. Yeah, and it all goes to Wine to Water, which is an amazing charity started by an example.
SPEAKER_00I love that. Um, I love that charity, and I think Gaz was pretty um had pretty close ties to them as well, didn't he?
SPEAKER_05Very much so. It was started by a guy called Doc Henley, and uh the uh CEO or president of the charity actually came to Cognac with us, and they do all kinds of cool ass shit, like they participate in Coachella and South by Southwest. But yeah, given that uh it was uh you know our early hangs were down there in Cognac, thanks to uh G Vine. I thought you'd like to see that. And speaking of France, yes, speaking of France, in between the city periodically uh catching on fire and every third teacher being beheaded, you've written a very important book about cocktails.
SPEAKER_00Yes, indeed.
SPEAKER_05It's it's what France needs to heal, frankly. But it's it's drink like a local in Paris. Um, but the you know, and it's fantastic, and I want to go into all the little neighborhoods, but you write about how important it is and how rewarding it can be to be a regular in a bar. And uh, well, I've got lots of stories to tell about it, but one of them was a few years ago. I was in Atlanta doing some work, and on the last night, I took the sales rep out for dinner to say thank you and also congratulations, you're getting rid of me. And we had a great time. And he mentioned that his wife had a soy allergy. And I was like, Oh yeah, that must suck, no sushi. And he's like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's so much worse than that. Uh, soy is on or in everything.
SPEAKER_00I I didn't know that. If you'd asked me, I would have said, I have no idea, but somehow it doesn't surprise me. I I don't know.
SPEAKER_05So is it if you see vegetable oil, it's soy. It's in soy sauce. Soy sauce is put as a flavoring in many other sauces and prepared foods. Vegetables and fruit are sprayed with soy to preserve them on their trips. And if this poor woman gets a little bit of it, it really fucks her up. And I was he explained all this to me, and then I was like, like you, I was like, fuck, man, that sucks. He says, but because Americans are endlessly optimistic. Uh, he says, we have become serious regulars at four restaurants in Atlanta. We can only really, we were fortunately, we were eating in one of them. Shout out to uh Kimball House, Miles Macquarie. We know them and trust them. And all the kitchen staff will dive down every last alleyway to ensure there's no soy. So we are true regulars. And like, what a joy it is. Like, do you want to recount becoming a regular at one or two places in Paris, like you did in the sort of introductory uh chapter?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, as you read in the introductor and introduction, I do really think um drinking like a local, it's more than just hitting these top bars that we all talk about. It's it is about discovering something really special in the place. And it's it's the people and it's the time and it's it's your state of mind. And so when I very first moved to Paris, I dropped into a little pub that was around the corner from my apartment. It was the night before St. Patrick's Day. I got to chatting with the bar owner who was tending bar and you know, saying I just moved here, chat, chat, chat. And he said that I should come back the next day and meet his bar manager. He said uh that he's sure we would become great friends. And so I came in, met her. She's actually at my house this weekend. Um, an lovely Irish lady. She's, you know, my closest friend here. And um and then just, you know, I would stop in and and just repeatedly go back. And then suddenly this is this is where all your friends are. It just becomes it becomes part of your daily routine. It's this especially uh in many places it's this way, but you know, especially in Paris where apartments are small, space is tight. You're you're it's it's very customary to go out and and have a drink at the end of the day, to have your apparel, to have, you know, a little beer or a glass of wine. And so this really became like a a different room of my home. And you could go in at any time and you would always know people, you know, the owners. Sometimes you'd work an occasional shift there because somebody was sick, and you know, um, so it really it became such a special place to me. And it made me really feel like a local, made me feel I've got my my you know, my special place here where I can go at any point in time and find somebody I know and not feel lonely, also in a big city that I just moved to. So um, so that that was also a nice element to it as well. So that was great. And um, as I say in the book, that's that is the very first bar. It's called Lush Bar, and it's still around, it's in the 17th. I don't go so often anymore because I live in a different neighborhood, and I'm in a, you know, this is many years later, different, different period of time in my life, but I'm still friends with uh so many of the people. My my very close friendship circle here, almost all of them are from those days in that bar. So so there's really drinking like a real local, uh there's so many advantages to it from, you know, okay, staving off that loneliness, meeting people that are that become your friends for for for your life, and um, you know, and also just having fun. And also, it just feels cool when you go into a place and people know you, right? Like it's just it's so nice and comfortable and and just uh makes you feel good when somebody knows your name when you walk in the bar. So so yeah, that was my first kind of local place. I've also spent quite a lot of time in the past uh being a local at Red House because you know that also has like a real fun laid-back vibe. Again, you know, 10 years ago, I was there quite quite a lot. I've got less energy to be in in the bars and having fun all the time these days. So um maybe less of a regular there now, but uh that's another place. Same, same kind of thing. You just you go in and you just feel really you feel comfortable, you feel welcome. You meet people, people become friends just in a matter of a few minutes that you're sitting next to them at the bar. So so yeah, I mean I guess there's more to say about it than that. Obviously, I wrote a whole book about it, but uh yeah, I guess there's a couple of places I've I've drank like a local and and some of the reasons behind it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, there is a a feeling you should always go to the new, the shiny place, you know, or you can go to a place quite a lot and not really be a be a regular. Like my wife probably goes to Balthasar a couple of times a month, but she's not a regular. I mean, the bartender one bartender might recognize her, that kind of thing. And before the pandemic, um, could let let me bring it back to me for a moment, if I may. Uh, I didn't really have a local in New York. I lived here for over a decade and I did not have a local because I was constantly going out to, you know, my friends' bars, bars stocking my Geneva, bars stocking my things, new bars. And that was great because there was always people that I knew there, but the people that I knew were the staff, not the customers. And the pandemic happened, and it was fucking weird. It was exceptionally weird in New York. But I became a local at a place two blocks from my apartment, the Painted Lady, which sadly is no longer. It did survive COVID, but uh after a couple of years, the owners went on to new adventures. But I was there most days, you know, and I I had not been a local uh since my since probably my early days living in London. So more than two decades.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say it's probably very similar for you. Uh, I was thinking that exact same thing as it is for me. There's a because I I'm always reviewing bars and writing about bars, I do want to spend my time checking out the new bars, you know, and and I don't always have the luxury of returning to some of my favorite places over and over. Now, there's certain places that I've returned to many, many times. Um, but you know, I mean, there's 75 bars in this book. I'm definitely not a local at all of them. And uh, you know, it's just that's not possible to be. Um, but I I fortunately still know a lot of people in the bar world. So even if I'm not a local, same thing. I can go into a bar and generally say hi and and have some kind of connection. So that that's nice. But now you're making me sort of pine for days where I could just regularly go to the same place all the time. But uh guess trade-offs.
SPEAKER_05Well, if you're doing this, if you're in the drinks business or a bartender or something like that, I do think that you need a safe haven. Right. And I'll give you an example. Uh my first wife, the amazing and patient Barbara. Barbara, if you're listening, happy holidays. Um, was not in the business, but she, you know, came to a lot of my seminars and we traveled around the world and you know, so she picked up a lot. And it began to be that we would be out at some place that was not a great cocktail bar because, you know, Holland, right? And she'd like nudge me in the arm, say, Phil, Phil, Phil, look. And I'd be like, What? She said, he's handling the ice with his hands. And I'm like, it's all right, you know, it's it's cool, right? She had learned enough to pick up on things like that, but not so much that she could relax. And uh the person who now has her job, the beautiful Elaine Dove, uh had that too. We had a place uh near our apartment called Parlour Steakhouse, right, on Third Avenue for anybody familiar with the Upper East Side. And it was, if I was ever going to go back into the bare put of hospitality, I would open a place very much like this because it was beautiful but not intimidating. You could go there for a martini and a $10 plate of pasta for your kid, or you could spend $80 on a steak. It was all there. The bar was good, but not that good. There was no road of apps or sous vide. And we, you know, we kind of that was our date place. It it was our easy meal place with uh our kid. Uh, I could take clients there, it was an everything place, and I never told anybody what I did because I wanted to be able to go in there. And if I wanted a vodka martini, I didn't need the staff texting each other saying, Philip Duff's ordering a vodka martini. And once I was there with uh Elaine and I went to the loo and I came back and she was lecturing the staff on I don't know how to stir a cocktail. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just could you could you give us a minute here? And I'm like, we need this to be a safe haven. Every now and then I want to drink Amaretto, and you know, like this, you need a place, and I feel that that's a function of a local two if you're in uh if you are somehow connected to the drinks business. You need to go in a place where everybody knows your name and nobody knows your business.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, what you just described sounds kind of like a unicorn of a place, right? You know, it seems like either the drinks are good enough. The the it's got everything that you need with without any kind of attitude or errors and graces or I don't know, presumption about whatever you're doing. So uh yeah, I I think so. And I think, you know, something with this book, I write a lot about cocktails, I talk a lot about, I get the same, you know, look at it. Are they touching the ice? Are they doing this? How are they stirring it? But a lot of the places in the book, in this field guide, they they're not all because they make perfect cocktails. A lot of them are these places that you go, and and it delivers what uh you know, a local. Can deliver. It's got the it's got the um the great staff. Drinks are good enough. And uh, I mean, some of them they're exceptional. I'm not saying that the drinks are just okay in all these, but um, drinks are good enough. It's a great location. I really like places that kind of have a story and have some soul to them. So yeah, I do think uh I think finding a great local is very different for me than finding the world's best cocktail bar. Uh, I think that um there's overlap, but they're not all you you don't always get the same, and and you you don't always get both in one place.
SPEAKER_05I've been thinking about that a lot lately, actually, because this is the first December in New York that for me feels like December 2019 and before, by which I mean I'm normally back home safe and sound, somewhat battered and bruised at in New York, and I don't go anywhere else again, somewhere around the middle of November. Right? It used to be that the end of the season was Bar Convent Berlin in Berlin, uh, but now the show's you know up into December. Yeah, you know, and I love going to them and I will and I'll travel, but generally I'm here. And what happens between the 15th of November and 1st of January is that every motherfucker I have ever met in my life visits New York and wants to go out for a drink with me. Yeah, and I I love it, and they look after me when I'm on the road. So I put on my my big girl panties and I head out there. And what's happened here, and I want to ask you about how it's happened in Paris, too, is probably what's happened in Paris. A bunch of places closed. Thankfully, a lot of places survived. New places have sprung up, right? And in the post-COVID boom, if you will, many of these new places are A, amazing and B fucking killing it. They are round all the time. Their problem is not publicity, their problem is buying enough wheelbarrows to take the money to the bank. And when all these people visit me this year, I've made it a policy. Uh I only take them to bars they haven't heard of. Excellent bars, but bars they haven't heard of. And they are consistently flawed. In fact, that was last night, the uh the bar tour that I was on with my friend Devender Sagal from uh the Aubrey in Hong Kong. He had an exceptional evening, not just because of my sparkling company, because I feel drinking like a local involves a bit of that. Like if I go to Oslo, I'll want to go to Himcock. And I'm sure Himcock has to be great, right? I still haven't been. Sorry, Eric, but I will.
SPEAKER_00This is very funny because right next to me, I just have happened to have on the share right next to me. I don't know if you can see that. Oh, excellent! One of their sweatshirts. I love those guys. Anyway, that's just a little shout-out for them. They're awesome.
SPEAKER_05Shout out to Himcock Hustle. Yeah, but I kind of, it's no secret about Hemcock. Yeah, right. Everybody knows it. So while it is, and you can say the same about Mile Play Store 74 in Amsterdam or PDT in New York, any but any bar that's famous, is not by necessity. You know, the world owns it a little bit. It's an, you know, as opposed to I I could take you to places in New York that would blow your mind, and you could take me to places in Paris. Is that what drinking like a local means?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think really To a degree. To a degree, but I think it means I mean, obviously, I think it means different things to different people. And there's bars in this book, like little red doors in this book, because I just don't think you can write this book without talking about bars like that. Um but it's bars like that also interspersed with tiny wine bars that you know that the average visitor doesn't know about, like uh Le Ruby, which is just a tiny bar, the people are just old, the floor tiles are, you know, it's it's kind of dingy, it's dusty, it's doesn't seem like much, but it's got so much personality. And uh yeah, so for me, it's uh a combination of both. Uh and I think that uh if uh the place is pulling in locals and has a really nice story that ties it and a Parisian soul, if you will, it also means you're drinking like a local. So a place like Little Red Door, you're right. Nobody most cocktail aficionados are not going to come to Paris and be surprised. Oh, I've just discovered a little uh a little red door. But um uh but there is this really lovely local element to them, especially because they they um concentrate so much on uh producers, French producers, and local ingredients, etc. etc. So um so there's that kind of a local element to it as well. And it really does, it really does pull in a Parisian crowd. So uh I feel like this book is directed at people, not it's not necessarily for only for people who are into cocktails, it's for people who come to Paris and they want to, they want to enter into a place where they really do feel like this isn't, you know, this isn't some big tourist trap. So for example, I didn't write about the bar that's on the top of the Tour Montprenasse because one, nobody needs to be told there's a bar up there. I'm sure anybody looking for any what to do in Paris will come across it. And uh two, it's full of tourists, actually. It's not really there's there's aside from the view of the Eiffel Tower, to me, there's not a really local element to it. So for me, I think it really is our locals, and by that I don't just mean the expat locals like me, but Parisians are they drawn to the place and uh does it have a Parisian kind of life? So another bar that's in the book is Chejenet, and it's a pretty standard cafe. Um it's got an interesting story because the original owner, when they sold it to the current owner, insisted that none of the um decor was changed. So now it's very like old and retro. And but like a younger generation loves it. It's kind of a rite of passage for young Parisians, you know, they go and they they have their little half a beer on the cafe and and they chit-chat and they flirt with each other. And you know, it's just kind of part of becoming an adult, right? It's it's their their space that they're going. And I'm not hanging out at Chay Jeanette anymore, but it is a real place that real locals drink and and you know has a real tie to Paris, I think. So um, yeah, so I think I I totally sidetracked myself. I'm not even sure what question I'm answering anymore. I'm not sure I asked one.
SPEAKER_05No, okay. Well, I mean I'll let you ask one then. We're teasing out what being a local is like it's it's a degree of regularity, right? It's a degree of you, the local, liking the place, so maybe not a tourist trap, and it's a degree of, well, this is a hidden gem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Like it was it's at the stage now where there are several bars in New York that are excellent cocktail bars, incredibly busy, like incredibly busy, but not famous. And their bar managers or bar directors or owners have asked me to help make them famous because they know that I know a few people here and there. And I'm like, well, look, there's a there's a treadmill you can go on, you know, the guest bartenders, seminars at cocktail fell, you know, we all know the hedonic treadmill. But I'm like, at the end of that, the goal is that your bar is busy every night and you're already busy every night. So why do you want to do this? And they're like, Well, we want it for the staff, which is quite interesting.
SPEAKER_00To attract better staff or to give them kind of the the to give them a bonus so that calculates, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they get flown around and all this kind of thing, and you know, I I get that, but there's also a bit of a well, part of the legendary curse of 50 best or awards or anything is that you get busy all the time. And I like to give the example of PDT here in New York. It is consistently rammed, and the staff, you know, 10 years. Oh my god, no, it's not 10 years, it's fucking they only too, they opened a year before door 74. So they opened in 2007.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah. So like 17.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, almost. Uh, they are consistently lovely, and it is, I don't know if they have any real regulars, but it is consistently round with tourists who all go in and they all want a photo under the bear, and they all want to have the bacon fat washed, old-fashioned. How can a bar cope with becoming famous and not be a tourist trap? Like, if you can't turn people away, you can't ask for their residency permit.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you could, but that's kind of an interesting concept for a bar. Papers only, yes.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's what they almost did with coffee shops in uh Holland, you know that? No, I didn't. Oh my god. It was so there's a view of Holland as being incredibly liberal, and it is in the big cities, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and Amsterdam. There's a very conservative edge to it as well. However, this story is hilarious for unconnected reasons. Um in the south of Holland, like Maastricht, you were at the nexus of Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and France, all places where uh marijuana is not legal. But it's legal in Holland and it's legal everywhere in Holland. So all these people would drive to buy weed at coffee shops, right? And the Dutch people were fine with that, business is business, but they were clogging up the town with parking. Like Dutch people are like, have all the marijuana you like, but don't fuck with our parking. So they came up with a proposal that you would have to show local residency to buy marijuana there, right? Now it didn't pass, but it began to be discussed in Amsterdam as well, as a way of mitigating uh what they describe as uh you know undesirable tourism, which is to say drunken young men from England. And, you know, I I was getting panicky phone calls from Americans here saying, Phil, Phil, what about this in Amsterdam? Do you still have an apartment there? Uh it didn't pass in the end, but uh it's I I think it's hilarious that it wasn't really about marijuana, it was about fucking up the parking.
SPEAKER_00An enterprising person should have built a coffee shop just right on the border, around nothing else, where nobody needed to park. Sort of, you know, sometimes there's um shops. A drive-thru. Exactly. Drive-thru. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, that would be very funny. Um, but I do like back to what you were just saying. Um I find it interesting to watch these bars that are, you know, becoming famous, and these things where what was originally their draw, it's it's not a secret anymore. You know, PDT, it's not a secret. There's, you know, the lava matic here in Paris or the um epicri, which is they're both hidden bars as well, where one you find the um the washing machine and the other one you pull the right item off the um off the shelves. Um the secrecy is lost because there's always a big long line of people waiting to get inside. So um I yeah, it and it also becomes that kind of uh making these lists and and being famous, it becomes a full-time job, right? So, and many of these bars that many uh are able to pull off both excellent cocktails and still run the machinery, but it's more work, it's more resources, more financial resources, more human resources, really to make those things happen. Because um, sure, uh you might discover a good bar here or there, but I think there's really a lot of a lot of uh intent behind the ones that really um shine uh with with visibility on a global scale. Not all of them, but a lot. I I don't know what you think, but and so I don't know. I I I I I uh completely agree with you that I think when you were saying the goal is to be busy, what more do you need? Now I can't really speak to yeah, being able to uh provide more benefits to the staff with these guest shifts and things. I don't know, I don't know. Um, but yeah, it's a big machine to feed to stay to stay famous.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah, and it's strange that you know, when bars have made it and they stop playing the game, but they continue improving that they fall down the rankings or disappear from them. Perhaps the best example is the Dead Rabbit. I'm here to tell you, the Dead Rabbit's better now than it has ever been, and I have been there every step of the way from looking at the empty space with uh Sean Muldoon when it was still just an option to the pre-opening, the actual everything. Um, they are firing on all four cylinders, and I don't believe they're even on the list, or maybe they're like number 90 or something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it is it is to me really crazy to see how um how these really large shifts, this cannot be just due to the the quality of what's in the glass. You just you know, you you just can't rise or fall. I mean, I guess it also has to do with the other lists, the other um competition that you're that you're playing against, but um yeah, uh I it's also to me very interesting to see these lists and see, for example, the bars and the restaurants. I I feel like there should also be more crossover there. So if you if you're a bar, if your restaurant on the you know, on one of the top of the list, shouldn't your bar be like or at least a few of the top restaurants have top bars on the list? I don't know. I mean it's just a a thought of mine, but that's really interesting.
SPEAKER_05I think you're right. Yeah. Wow, I'd never really thought about that before, but definitely, I mean, and and let's be clear, we're not just talking about 50 best, we're talking about all the lists, all the awards, all of that. They tend to all mush together. But you know, if you think about that, if a bar works his ass off, you know, gets on the list to whatever position they want to be, and then stops, they fall down the ranking. So maybe these lists and awards are largely based on how badly you want them. And when you stop wanting them, they stop rewarding you. When you stop playing the game, the hedonic treadmill of endless pop-ups, guest bartending, seminars, putting on your own mini festival and flying everybody in. When you stop playing that game, you tumble down the rankings.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah. I I I mean, I think that you I think you have to you have to play to to um be visible, to have visibility.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, there's an interesting have you heard about this new thing, the uh the pinnacle guy.
SPEAKER_00Yes, uh, I have. We've you and I have talked about this a little bit now. Um uh I know we did.
SPEAKER_05I was just bringing it up. It's kind of it's what us podcasters do, right? So to kind of bring the listener in, both of you, both of you listening. Yeah. Little trick from us old pros.
SPEAKER_00I think um, I think it's an interesting concept. Um, but well, I'll let you explain to the listeners if you want.
SPEAKER_05Um well, I I think I know as much as you, and we we all know people doing it. It's a great idea. Um, it is a ranking system whereby you can get one, two, or three pins. There's no limit to the number of you know establishments that can be pinned in a city or country, and it's anonymous assessment. But the one of the interesting things about it is that you have to apply. They're not saying these are the best bars in this city. Essentially, uh, they are giving pins to bars, but you have to write quite an extensive, you know, opening of your kimono. And I don't think that's ever happened before. I don't think there's ever been awards you apply for in that sense in hospitality, in terms of in hospitality, yeah. Yeah, in terms of awards and lists and and this and that. That's what I felt was important. Pluses and minuses, you get to communicate things that might not be apparent from a visit. And then uh a minus, I think, would be well, what is relevant to telling a consumer uh this is a good bar, or if you go to this bar, uh you'll be drinking like a local. Which, you know, this is this is what your book says. You're saying, yeah, hey, here's my guide to drinking like a local, here's what drinking like a local is. But in terms of how formalizing it and saying, hey, this is our goal, our vision. Uh what's important? Question mark.
SPEAKER_00Um what's important in terms of are you talking about for pinnacle?
SPEAKER_05Are you just talking about for I guess what's important for the guest, right? Because this is all about the consumer, it's all about the guest. Um, is it important that you know somebody has read the mission statement of the bar and their commitment to this and that and the other thing? Or is it important that the toilets are clean and the staff are friendly and the cocktails are?
SPEAKER_00Of course, it's it's the yeah, it's it's all of that. I mean, of course, it's it's the the user experience, right? It's important that the customer comes in, feels welcome. And, you know, especially in cocktail bars, especially in, you know, the kind of the revival with the craft cocktail bars, it's really easy for customers to walk in and feel intimidated. And so, um, you know, it's it's definitely it's the it's the comfort level and then the quality of the drinks. And and you know, I used to be very rigid. It just matters what's in the glass as I'm you know, as I'm reviewing these things, but it's it's a whole experience. If I just want what's in the glass, you know, I I can make it at home. So so it's the service, it's the ambiance, it's the decor, it's the it's the concept if they have a concept. Um, I don't think all bars need a concept, but uh they're so so much more prevalent now. Um yeah, uh so I guess maybe that would fall into some kind of a mission statement, but I really just want to feel good when I go into a bar. I want well-made drinks and to be made to feel good myself. That's that's that's my goal. What do you think?
SPEAKER_05Well, definitely everything matters. Everything matters, like right down to I did a a psychology class in college, and by that stage I'd been working as a bartender for five or six years since the age of 15. And um the psychology teacher used a hospitality metaphor, which I thought was great. They're like, okay, you're going out with your partner or whatever loved one to a restaurant, and you want to have a lovely family meal and it's uncomplicated, you know, it's not intimidating. You're let's say you're going to, you know, neighborhood Italian restaurant. When you open the door, does it open out or in? Does it push you away or are you welcomed in? And he literally brought it back to the experience of being in the womb and leaving the womb and all that kind of thing. It's it's a lot of stuff that's not particularly deep, but isn't that well thought out? A lot of owners and managers don't sit in every seat in their restaurant or bar, and they don't experience it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I think that's definitely true. I mean, I think that uh, but you know, a lot of bar owners don't have a a global vision, right? I mean, and they have different intents, I think, when they open a bar. You know, it's cool to own a bar, or um the the they're thinking about it actually, they're not putting the customer as the central character, they're the central character. And I think that's the customer's the hero, right? Let's make them this is about them, not about the the bar owner or the bar manager. And I think that's that's not um exclusive to just bars. I mean, I think that's a that's an issue kind of all around and and restaurants as well. And um, you know. Yeah, but it's uh it's all about the customer.
SPEAKER_05So I mean, have you ever been you must have been to Rum Trader in Berlin, right?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes, but it's been a really while a while.
SPEAKER_05Well, funnily enough, the uh I I knew Mr. Scholl, uh fantastic gentleman. It's now, by the way, been handed down to one of his regulars, uh, Mr. Zamani and his lady. Shout out to Mr. Zamani at Rum Trader. But uh one time, Jim Mee and called me. Uh we were, I think, both going to Berlin. I'm gonna say it was probably for Barcon at Berlin. And or or something else, I can't remember what it was, but he's like, Phil, I've never been to Berlin before. Will you come with me? And I'm like, absolutely. Um we met up, and I'm like, I've got to take Jim to Rum Trader. So people who don't know, this is perhaps the world's first Neo Speakeasy. It opened in the early 80s by Mr. Schroeder, who was, I don't know if you know this, he was the last bartender trained at the pre-war Adlon Hotel.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. The Adlon to Berlin, uh uh specifically in terms of cocktails, was the Savoy to London. And it was, you know, destroyed and rebuilt after World War II. So Mr. Schroeder went on to work at some of the best bars in the world, the horseshoe bar at the Shelburne Hotel in Dublin. Um, he worked at the original Trader Vicks. Right? Very cool. And he came back and uh, like many Germans, he was an Anglophile, he married his love of tropical drinks and his love of uh English people, and he opened a place called Rum Trader, right? All about gin and uh thing. He passed it on to one of his regulars. Mr. Scholl was a classical musical composer and a regular at the bar. Oh, yeah. And Mr. Schroeder said one day to Mr. Scholl he says, My dear man. You must take over the bar or I will close it. So Mr. Scholl gave up a career in classical music composition. I've got I have some of his CDs, believe it or not. Wow. And became a bar owner. And then one day, about four years ago, uh Mr. Scholl said to one of his regulars, Sahad Zamani, who's a German-Iranian uh movie director, he says, Mr. Zamani, you must take it over or I will close the bar. Now, Mr. Zamani's a bar owner. It's brilliant.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like some kind of like scary movie, right? Like, you know, you can't get out of it until you pass it on to somebody else and and and oblige them to change their career. But it's actually a very cool story.
SPEAKER_03The monkey's paw, yeah. They've got a young apprentice there who's this like 19-year-old kid. And I'm like, kid, either stay forever or get out now.
SPEAKER_00Get out now. Save yourself.
SPEAKER_05But anyway, I took Jim there. Now, this is a tiny, tiny little um speakeasy in the uh the bourgeois area of Berlin. Um, you only know it's open when there's a flag flying outside. Apart from having an outdoor area during COVID, the door is closed. You knock on the door, there's no reservations or anything like that. And it's a tiny, tiny place, like 15 people would pack it, really. Yeah. And I had been there a few times and I knew Mr. Shaw. And I went in there with Jim, who not only had never been to Berlin before, never been to Germany, didn't know a soul. And I came in and I immediately got sucked away into all these other conversations and drinks and glasses of champagne. And it was, I suddenly realized it had been hours and I hadn't spoken to Jim. I felt awful. And it was a warm night. He was he was outside. I'm like, oh dude, I'm so sorry. He said, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is like the best place ever. Everybody took care of me because every regular considered themselves to be almost like an ambassador for the place. And when somebody new came in, they would look after them as they themselves would be looked after. It's a remarkable thing. And that's the nice thing about you know, places that have a little bit of a threshold. Um, once you're in, you're in. You know, once you're in Paradiso in Barcelona or PDT in New York or uh Door74 in Amsterdam, you're you're you're kind of looking around at other people saying, Yeah, man. It's it's like when you see somebody else driving your model of car, you're like, yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, yeah. Oh, see, so this is interesting to me as well because things have evolved so much, and you've seen them evolving the past two decades in the cocktail world. And what was really, really exciting for me, you know, 17 years ago was being able to go any place and and have a connection. It was a smaller community back then, right? So, and it was like that, you know. I remember going to Le Lyon and going to um, I I love that bar, but then also going to the, you know, the other bar across the way uh atop the Cafe de Paris and and like it's like, oh, this is so cool. And you know, it was probably somebody that had given me an introduction to um to your right, you know, it was probably maybe you or maybe somebody else. And so you do, you feel like you kind of passed this threshold, you've arrived. I'm I'm in this tiny, special, like really fucking small community of people who are like just equally kind of cool and interesting geeks who love like to to like get into the minutia of these things, but also just fun and interesting and friendly. It's much bigger now. I mean, I is that a good thing? It is a good thing, right? Because it means now we can get a decent cocktail in so many more places. Um, and and it's probably not right to want to keep that to for that to maintain like the small exclusivity that it felt like in the beginning. Um, and it's natural, right? Things go through these, you know, there's there's the early adopters, and then there's, you know, before things kind of hit more of a mainstream. But um, it's just been interesting, I guess, to watch that evolution. And I can't decide whether to feel excited about that or sad. I mean, I guess excited because in all honesty, probably nobody would have asked me to write this book if cocktails weren't mainstream these days, you know, the kind of but I don't know. How do you what do you think about there's not a real question there, but what do you think about that? How how have you felt about seeing that evolution? And does it change your experience now um when you're going into these places?
SPEAKER_05I mean, you have to recognize that we're the old farts now. I'm only 28 and I feel old, but uh I started bartending when I was two. Um, but there's constant new generations. I'm seeing it through my stepdaughter's eyes. She's 18 now, yeah, and she's going out to cool experiences. Probably in about 10 years, she'll realize how cool me and her mom are. Right? She's not quite there yet. Yeah, yeah. She'd be like, oh yeah, you guys really upped your game. But there are experiences happening, there are uh things, and it's all about I like to call it funneling. I was having a discussion once with a friend of the business about bar locations, and I'm like, some locations dictate what you do. If somebody gives you some prime real estate, slap bang in you know, the middle of Times Square or Piccadilly in London, you don't have as many options as to what you can put there because all of humanity will stream past your door, and you will have to, if they come in, you'll have to be great to them because there's no way to have successful hospitality without being nice to people. And I'm always reminded of my mate um Martin O'Sullivan in Australia, bar owner, great guy. And he opened a place. Now, this was exceptionally difficult to find in Sydney, right? Literally down an alley behind some trash cans called Grasshopper. And he told me from his previous bar, one of his regulars ran Google for the Australasian area. And he said, Hey Marty, I know you're opening a place. Um, how can I help? Thinking he would say, Oh, please, you know, push it up the search rankings. And Marty said, Please make sure nobody can find it on Google Maps for three months. So all Marty then had to do was have a great opening party, invite cool people, and everyone who returned there for the following three or six months had either been at the party or knew somebody who had, thereby assuring nobody who was lukewarm about it came in. Because this I, you know, I don't think there's good bars and bad bars, it's just the wrong target market. There's a place near me, Rafe's Reefs Bar. To give you some idea, when they built an outdoor area during COVID, it looked like the patio of a meth clinic. Everyone in this bar has made bad decisions for a long time in their life. But do they fucking love that bar? I bet they do. It's not the place for me.
SPEAKER_00It's not, and who is it to for either of us to dictate who who should enjoy who should enjoy their bars, right? I mean, there's a bar for everybody out there, they're not all for me, but everybody deserves a bar that they love. So that's that's what I mean.
SPEAKER_05It's it's it's it's not that a bar is inherently good or bad. Like I know people who hate craft cocktail bars. They go in hating them, they hate the expense, they hate what they see as pretension, they hate the fussiness of some. And it's like the bars, these are not bad bars, they're just not for you. So the worst thing you can get as a bar, if your goal is X, is that loads of people who do not share that goal come in because you're on a busy street or you're very obvious. So the whole speakeasy secret hidden inside a subway station thing is basically a way of pre-selecting people. You know, are you curious enough to go to a bar hidden in a certain in a subway station? Are you interested enough to make a reservation or reach out in some way or contact people on Instagram? Or do you just want to go to the place you read about in the newspaper? Or, you know, the giant with the giant neon sign outside. That's those are also good. Because if you go into Margaritaville, guess what? You're gonna find a lot of people who want, you know, extravagantly lurid drinks, and they're all very easygoing.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah. And sometimes it's just not about the person completely. I mean, it's sometimes it's your mood. Like sometimes I love finding something secret and hidden. I'm I love like, ah, this is the door. That's the this is the code that I got off of Instagram that get allows me entry. But sometimes I just can't be bothered with that faff. And then I'm walking up and down the street trying to meet a friend for a drink, and I just I just want to go into a bar that's just I want to sign on my door. So so you know, it's not just you know, people that you can classify them as one way or another. Different different bars for different times too.
SPEAKER_05And you know what time it is? It's 7 p.m. there in Paris. Do you want to get a drink?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_05All right. Well, I'm gonna pause this. Okay. Right? And we're back. I have enticed Ms. Collins into a drink. I have one myself to hand. Tell us of the martini you have constructed.
SPEAKER_00I am having a very simple martini. I'm having a martini with um Citadel Gen, Wally Pratt, a couple dashes of Fees Orange Bitters, some lemon oil expressed over the top, and and just straightforward and simple. I'm also at the country house. I have a more limited bar out here. So um, so also working with what what I've got. But uh, but this is actually, I really I get very happy when I can drink local products as well. So I mean, I'm a big fan of Citadel anyway. But uh, so yeah, it's my little French martini.
SPEAKER_05Have you have you had their cornichon release yet?
SPEAKER_00No, I haven't, and I'm a little bit scared of it. I mean, I know I I yeah, I haven't. Have you?
SPEAKER_05I have, it's very good.
SPEAKER_00Is it okay?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I had a drink with Alexandra Gabriel only last week, actually. He was passing through his hand.
SPEAKER_00I have not seen him for quite some time, but yes, I'm quite a big fan of Alexandra and uh and uh his wife. I just actually sent her a little message because I have not seen her for a long time. So uh yeah.
SPEAKER_05We we might see more of her in New York than you uh than you do.
SPEAKER_00You probably do, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So you've recommended a drink, the gang of four.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_05Do you want to talk us through it?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I do. It is an equal parts. This is from Joe of the Red House and Sister Midnight. Um he has created this drink. It's um well, like I just said, it's an equal parts. And like lots of people, I love an equal parts uh drink because uh it's just easy. And then also I don't have to convert things, you know. I'm always writing recipes for people, but they're coming in in ounces or or metric, and so just equal parts.
SPEAKER_05How do you translate 50 mils?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly. So uh anyway, equal parts, mezcal, Saint Germain, Benedictine, and freshly squeezed lime juice. Um, I shake mine up and uh strain it into a chilled cocktail coop. It looks like you're drinking it on a rock. Is that what you're doing?
SPEAKER_05Yes, yeah, I'm I'm last wording it. Um it's very pleasant. We need more uses for Benedictine.
SPEAKER_00I know. You know what? I was actually really glad when Joe sent that recipe over to me because, first of all, here's another thing we can talk about. I this is not the first time I've had to collect cocktail recipes for a book. I mean, this is the first book with my name on it, but I've also ghostwritten the update to another cocktail book. And I had to collect recipes, and um it's really hard to get people to send a recipe. It's it and it's not a bartender's job to understand a writer's job or um make drinks that you know that the home bartender can necessarily make. And they always want to share something that's really interesting, and and um that's but it's really hard for or just the average reader of these things to get their head around or be able to make it home. So I was just really thrilled when Joe sent this over. And I felt like not only is this just gonna work, readers can get it, it's equal parts. It's there's no there's no crazy equipment, there's no weird techniques, not weird. I mean, I find them interesting, but you know, unusual to many home bartenders. Um, they get all the ingredients, uh, and and and it's interesting. And I can use that fucking Benedictine that's been sitting on my shelf forever. So um, there's just not that many cocktails that I drink with Benedictine. So anyway, that was a long way to say. That's that's the drink, and um, that's it. That's all I have to say on that. That's it.
SPEAKER_05The gang of four named after the revolutionary leaders of China at one stage, weren't they the ones who toppled Mao or something?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I believe so. I believe so.
SPEAKER_05I'm a bit hazy on the details. Uh well, but it's a very tasty beverage, and I got to use that heavily oxidized bottle of Saint Germain that has been knocking around the Duff liquor cabinet for about a it's in a dark cabinet, and it is oxidized to the stage that it's like a dark brown. Somebody said to me the other day, what happened to Saint Germain?
SPEAKER_00What well you there's I was kind of wondering the same thing too, but you see, you still see them, and then they're still active. It's just you, you don't, I don't see it in cocktail, the cocktail bars that I go to as often anymore. I mean, at first, you know, for a hot second, it was, you know, bartender's salt, and um, and now you don't see it very much. Um, and the bars are the places where you could use it because in my house, it really will sit around for a while to the point where it gets really oxidized, it gets really dark, uh, because I don't use it that often. But in a bar, you know, you can turn that around a lot faster. But you were saying something I found interesting about the uh when it's oxidized. So I'll allow you to elaborate.
SPEAKER_05Well, I think I think it's tastier. A lot of these things get a lot tastier. I don't know if you've ever heard of Eamon Rocky. No, so Eamon is, you know, ex Levin Madison Park and nomads, uh, had his own amazing place for a while, and really got into punch, right? And I I remember knowing this, he submitted a seminar about punch to Tales the Cocktail, where I used to be the educational director. And I saw it. And another guy, some guy I'd never heard of called Gareth, uh, submitted a seminar on Punch as well. And I'm like, well, I don't know if we're running to two seminars at Tails. So what I would always do in situations like that was say, hey, why don't you talk together and see if you can both put it on jointly? And they did, and they became great friends. Uh, so much so that Eamon went on to start his own milk punch brand. Initially, it was called Rocky's Milk Punch. And then, because people are idiots and things are difficult, uh, he changed the name. It's now called Rocky's Botanical Liqueure, and it's the most amazing thing: the universal mixer. You just add a bit of this to any liquor and maybe some soda or something if you like, and it's just fucking amazing. It's really, really, really, really, really, really good. And last year, uh we did a couple of, you know, going out, drinking, visiting accounts together, cocktails with old duff and rocky's in them. And on one of our last meetings, he gave me an old bottle of it from the very first production. It'd been sitting in a warehouse for a year or two, and it had oxidized. Like any milk punch, the liquid is normally clear. But this stuff was, you know, a light brown, and I took it home and I drank it. Oh my god. Oh my god, was it good? This is what it must have felt like to have the first sherry. Like it was so good.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Well, maybe that'll become a a thing, people aging and oxidizing different things in their bars.
SPEAKER_05Well, we've been doing it for a while. But going back to the thing that you said about Saint Germain, the thing is, Saint Germain is a liqueur and it's got the reputation of being a liqueur, it's amazing in a spritz. Just that and something fizzy like, and that's the drink that they push. But I wonder, I I have a personal theory that this uh current lust for bitter drinks and compari and select and and all of that uh is driven to a degree by the perception that these uh you know vermouts and aperativos don't contain sugar because they taste bitter.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, which is a miss mission.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and anybody looking to drop a few pounds before Christmas, uh I I regret to inform you that they could all pretty much be c classified as liqueurs should they so wish, meaning they contain at least 100 grams of sugar per liter.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, let's be honest, I I kind of I find it a bit funny when people are always on the lookout for for alcohol that's healthier, alcohol liqueurs, whatever. I mean, unless you're sitting around drinking Bailey's, like they're all, it's all, it's all bad, it's all calories, it's all so just drink what you want to drink. And but I I think that you're probably right, the the equating this idea of bitter with um, but there's actually quite a lot of sweetness to it, you know, as well. I mean, it's bitter, but there's I also there's sweet elements to a lot of these bitters. Um yeah, interesting.
SPEAKER_05Well, let's get back to the book. Okay, talking about it, and let's get back to my initial question, which is uh if you were to read the BBC or Reuters or ANP or the New York Times, uh, it sounds like things are kind of roiling in France at the moment. So can you take us through what it's like from you know, pre-COVID, COVID era up to now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we were we had really hit a stride pre-COVID. And um, you know, we were on maybe kind of a third generation of bars from the you know, the real OGs on the scene to, you know, just like happened in New York, where you know, people left Pegu Club and started opening the next bars, you know, we were on our third, fourth maybe generation of all these places spawning new places. Um, and then, you know, like everywhere, it really ground to a halt during COVID because we uh we were all uh you know, all of France, we were in confinement and not allowed to go a certain even a certain distance um from our home. So um, so everything shut down. A few of the bars were very enterprising with bottled cocktails. Um, the the folks at Sister Midnight did that. Uh, a few of the bars really took the time. They had the they had the means to take the time to um use that to really create new menus, do more research, uh, kind of just go inward, which was great. And I honestly don't know, I'm not a bar owner in France, uh clearly, um, but I think that in France there was also more opportunity um just from the government as well to be able to keep keep the lights on in some some way, shape, or form, more support for the bars. So I I suspect we had less closures than maybe certain places in the US, um, because we did lose a few bars here and there, but a so many of them stayed open. Um, and I think a lot of the closures subsequently came from the exodus of hospitality staff as opposed to, you know, COVID, the COVID closures. So um, so yeah, so we obviously had the dead period where the bars were reflecting. And I think once we got back on the ground again, bars were, you know, kind of coming up with we definitely saw a lot more conceptual bars at this point. So I think people were taking that time to, you know, and even if there were conceptual bars that weren't a new concept, like a vinyl bar, like Frequence, or um, you know, like the the various kind of speakeasy style places. Um so I think that we that kind of quiet period really um injected a lot of uh um more interesting things and into the scene and a lot of enthusiasm. It made us kind of renewed our interest. Kind of you take something away from somebody for a while, you want to you you realize how much you love it. So so things are going pretty well in Paris now, I think. You know, when I first started writing about cocktails, it was impossible to find a decent cocktail bar. Now it's impossible to hit all the new bars that are opening. It's it's you know, I used to spend time writing about the good and the bad bars, but I don't even have time to write about the bad bars anymore. I might story something out, but they they're they're everywhere. So and um, and also I think because of COVID, people were what it's happened is people decided they wanted to move out of the bars, they didn't want to be working at night, they wanted to be spending time with their family. So that meant a lot of them were migrating to more to restaurants or you know, less less bar environment. So that meant that that means that cocktails are spreading um to other types of venues and uh that are more accessible to people who want to live a day life and you know, not work a night job. So I I mean I would imagine that's probably pretty similar to to New York, right? I mean, you know, it's kind of plugging along, everything got quiet, um, and then lost a few and lots more new ones. That's pretty much sums it up for me.
SPEAKER_05I mean, there's a huge exodus of people from the UK, very highly skilled uh bartenders, to Amsterdam because of Brexit. Have you noticed any of that in Paris?
SPEAKER_00I haven't, and I actually never really even. Even thought about connections between um Brexit and and um there's a language barrier, really.
SPEAKER_05You do need to speak French, even in Paris, I feel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean there's there's people that work in bars and don't, but uh I think that yeah, it's it's definitely you if you want to do it effectively, um that's not the case in Amsterdam. Uh oh, true, yeah, absolutely. No, I think if you want to do it effectively, you have to speak French. But I I also think um to be effective in a bar in Paris, you have to speak English. So I actually think you really have to be bilingual. You do I think that yeah, if you I think if you want to make it big on the, you know, if you're doing the cocktail um competition circuits, if you're doing that kind of thing and you're a bartender in Paris, you have to speak English. Um, I mean, not that I feel that it's right to oblige everybody to speak my native language, but um, I just think that professionally to advance, you have to.
SPEAKER_05Well, if you want to run a restaurant in New York City, you better fucking speak Spanish because that's the language of all your line cooks. I mean, you literally have to speak Spanish. There's no way you can run a restaurant without it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I don't know. Maybe soon we'll all have our little AI, AI translators that are just kind of, you know, talking back and forth to each other so we can all speak whatever. We'll have some sort of AI lingua franca.
SPEAKER_05That's how that's how the that's how the machines start.
SPEAKER_00Oh god, the machines they're gonna be taken over. Are we gonna have machines that are gonna be able to do the cocktail work for us?
SPEAKER_05I saw a cartoon the other day, and it was like two naked humans being whipped by robots, and one of them is saying to the other, Can you believe this started with auto-complete? Yeah, our innate, our innate laziness. But I mean, what one of whenever I'm feeling a little down or depressed, I think to myself of my friend, and I'm sure you know him too, Daniel Jones from Angostura.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I sure do.
SPEAKER_05Daniel is the greatest ambassador, the greatest male ambassador that Trinidad has ever had. Uh, its greatest female ambassadors are all the fucking beauty queens, because every third woman has won Miss Universe. Uh but Daniel is literally Trinidad in a bottle, the most embullient and second most charming person in any room I'm in. Um, but the he moved to Paris, as you know, and he one of the things is you have to learn French, yes, as a foreigner. You have to, yeah. Uh I just, whenever I'm feeling down, I like to think about Daniel in a French class somewhere. It just, I mean, immediately. And I want to hear him speaking French. I had to study French. In fact, technically, I've got a university degree in French and can't speak it because I never lived there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but even living here, it takes a long time to it took me a long time to feel comfortable, to feel like I could express myself in any way I wanted, explain, you know. But um, yeah, uh, but there are people who do live here and and manage to navigate the city without ever learning the language, which is to me, it feels like a little bit of a sad way to be. I do think that you open so many more doors when you can when you can talk to the locals.
SPEAKER_05Um, kids, Uncle Philip's here to tell you, I am the first person in my family to speak another language. And it's Dutch, actually, I'm bilingual in Dutch. Uh, we've never had a conversation that I couldn't have in Dutch. And it teaches you to be better in your own language, to communicate, because it teaches you the it gives you the gift of humility. Because while learning it, you have to really truly listen to people in a way that you don't do consciously in English.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, and it's not just the humility from that, you also have to force yourself to feel uncomfortable. You know, I consider myself, I mean, I'm not really um showcasing that very well right now. I feel like I'm not being as intellectually funny and witty as I normally am, but um, but I feel like I can hold my own in English. And so, you know, I learned French, you know, I learned it in high school, but you know, I was old by the time I moved here, not old, but you know, I was 30. So um, that's an old age to have to throw yourself into situations and sound like an ass. Like, you know, you just you're making mistakes, you're not expressing yourself well. I remember kind of throwing myself into this one French class and making this big statement about yes, um, gay marriage should be of course it should be legal, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I after my big statement, the teacher patiently explained that they were talking about something entirely different, you know. So it's like traffic lights. Basically, basically. So, you know, I mean, I didn't feel bad, I made my opinions known, but um uh, but you have to like it, it teaches it humbles you in that sense too. You have to be willing to run around and express yourself like a three-year-old. So, um, but it's it's great if you're the boss and you have to learn a language.
SPEAKER_05I it it happened to me. I wound up sort of managing a bar team, coincidentally, all women, um, and in an organization that was completely bilingual. It was, you know, everybody spoke English, but I was the only person, and all my staff spoke Dutch to each other, so I learned Dutch, meaning I began fucking up so horrendously, and they were very patient, but it made me a better manager as well. I'm not really a fan of the concept of servant leadership. Sometimes you've got to be the boss, but uh here's the story about fucking up. Kids, if you learn a language, embrace sucking and embrace fucking up. Here's the story. I used to have to tell people at a bar in Rotterdam that uh they would order their food at the bar, but they would pick it up at the yellow bus, right? Because we had an American yellow school bus there, and that was the food counter. Now, English doesn't really have guttural sounds. You can pronounce any word in English, and it might sound a bit weird, but if you pronounce it, people will understand it, and it doesn't mean anything else. You can say straightforward or straight for word or straight for word. It kind of all the same in some languages, the sound you make affects what the word is. So the Dutch word for yellow is geil, right? The Dutch word for horny is geil, very similar. So I discovered after four to five years that I had been telling people to pick up their burger at the horny bus.
SPEAKER_00And did you notice an increase in traffic to the bus during those years when you were directing people to the horny bus?
SPEAKER_05I did notice a few confused people, but then again, I'm a fairly, you know, and I induce confusement in a lot of people. But coming back to uh France, can you take us through uh, well, first of all, an overview for any of the uncultured barbarians, most of my listeners, in fact, who do not know Paris and its layouts, its arrondissement. Right? Can you give us a bird's eye view of that and then zoom in on a couple of them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the uh arrondissement of Paris, those are these are the little neighborhoods, and there's 20 of them that make up the city, and they are organized like a snail shell, and they they they go in a spiral. They start from the center of Paris with the first and the second and the third and the fourth, and they get progressively larger as they go out into finally until they hit the 20th. And each arrondissement, you know, they they have their kind of distinct personalities. Um, some of them kind of blend into others, some of them are very hot spots for um cocktails. So you've got like the the 10th or the 11th, you know, super um young, uh trendy, um not as refined as maybe something like the the sixth, which is kind of old and stayed, and you've got uh you know the Sorbonne there. But um and and the nature, the the the style of these a rendezvous kind of is reflected in the bars that you find there. So um yeah, everybody loves like everybody loves the the 10th or the 11th for for bars, and it's packed with bars of all stripes. You know, it's lots of young bars, lots of um student bars, but also you know, lots of really, really good bars. Um, other places are pretty uh desolate for bars. So I live in the 15th, which is very kind of residential and very nice, and very large boulevards, but very few bars. So you have to really do your work to find a place to drink there. So um yeah, so they're they're they're all kind of different. And you see something like the the 20th Belleville, which is a very working-class neighborhood, it's very multicultural. Um these are the spots that are interesting for me because they're places where you're not normally going to find uh mini cocktail bars of the the type that the the that we probably frequent mostly. Um, but so the ones that are out there and that are really popular, like uh combat, um, are uh really worthwhile because they are they're bringing people across town to go to a pretty like remote part of Paris for most of us. You know, it's it's kind of a trek. And so it's really interesting to see these neighborhoods sort of shaken up in this way and and something new and something different. I mean, you know, there's two sides to that. I mean, some people also feel like some of these neighborhoods with these kind of bars and establishments are getting a little overly gentrified. I kind of feel like you can't stop progress and things change and things progress, and that's the nature of living in a cosmopolitan city like Paris. You know, things are gonna move and spread and change, and you're gonna have people, you know, foreigners, uh, locals, expats, everything kind of in one relatively small geographic area. Uh, Paris is not really that large, even though I just said it's a big trek to get to the 20th, but it's really not that large. So I really kind of like those kind of areas for exploring because it's it just feels more worthwhile. Um, uh there's another bar I've I've heard of recently that I'm dying to go to called Kiss Proof, which is not in the book because it I learned about it after it opened after the book was out. And so I'm just hearing talk of more little spots like that popping up in these in these different areas. And even in fact, when I first started writing about cocktails, um there was nothing around Pigal, right? And now you've got you know all the bars are around Pigall. So um, so yeah, um it's I mean, I I like I said, I guess some people don't necessarily want to see a lot of cocktail bars popping up in and these uh spaces that that have different uh that I guess different types of establishments, but I think it's kind of cool. I just I think it's um I don't want the entire city to look the same, but I like to see a little cross-pollination between um a randy smalls, I guess.
SPEAKER_05Well, it's you know, Paris is unusual in that regard. It's a beautiful city, like New York is impressive and stimulating, but not beautiful. Paris is beautiful, Amsterdam's beautiful, London's beautiful, but Paris, among all of those, because the whole fucking city burned down and was rebuilt by Baron Ossman in I don't know, do you know when was that? 1800s?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't know for sure now.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, um yeah, let us know in the comments if anybody knows when Paris last burned down. Uh but the it that's why you've got you literally can say, Oh, it's in the 18th, Erin D. Simon. Whereas here, like there's arguments about, well, what's Murray Hill? Where's Carnegie Hill? Where does the Upper East Side stop? Like it's very fluid, and the street map of London looks like you dropped a pot of spaghetti, right? So you can't, but in Paris, you can in many ways your book, uh Drink Like a Local in Paris, Cider Mill Press available at all good booksellers, uh, is perfect because you have literally stratified Arrondissimo.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I tried it, and that was actually for me, I didn't know how I was going to approach it initially. And I did look to there's a drink like a local um New York. I don't know if you've seen that one. It's a Amanda Schuster who wrote that one. And so I kind of looked at that and I thought, okay, she's got this broken up sort of by neighborhood. So I that's what I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_05Just copy that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah, I'll do exactly what that other person did. That's all good artists. Thanks for the assist, Amanda. Um, but still, I didn't know how uh it took a lot of kind of time in thinking, how will I express the personality of these neighborhoods? And how, you know, and just actually it took a little bit of uh analysis on my part. Like, do the bars really reflect the personality? And I really kind of found that they did, you know, and and um the personality of the of the neighborhood and and the residents of that neighborhood. In many cases, they did. You could sort of see some generalizations, you know, kind of like well-heeled people of the, you know, sixth rondissement having these nice bars, or um having uh student bars there as well because of the Sorbonne. Um, no bars in my neighborhood because it's primarily old people and families. Um so yeah, I actually was really very happy with how this kind of finally played out, you know, looking at my big list of bars, big table, um, noting all the arrondissements and then kind of like finding in there the patterns and putting it into something that's coherent and I hope really useful for the for the reader. Um, because I do think people, when they pick up a book like this, they're not coming to Paris and going, let's see, I want I want to go see what Forrest has to say about you know this particular bar. They're pretty much like, okay, I'm in this place, I'm I'm in the fourth, I'm in the third, um, I'm in the second, and then oh, okay, that's where the experimental cocktail club is. They don't they shouldn't know the bars before they come. So they have to be grounded somehow, and geographically is how I'm grounding them, which makes sense. And again, stole it from Amanda.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, no, I mean there's there's been a few of these books. Um actually. So what you're just saying about neighborhoods, as I said, it's very stratified in Paris. Your book is perfect for anybody going there, but especially in large cities, there's sometimes a weird disconnect that I experience in my neighborhood. I live on the Upper East Side. Um, contrary to what people think, it's not just wealthy people, it's actually a huge mix. Like single bars were born on the Upper East Side, because there are insanely wealthy people here, uh, but there's lots of working class people too, people who work in the hospitals and the schools and and all that sort of thing. But there's a lot of areas of the Upper East Side, like 10 block radiuses, where you know the bars are decidedly average. And this in one of the cocktail capitals of the world, like a place where you would order a martini with trepidation and no idea, because there's this sort of thing like, oh, I'm in New York City, everything's half an hour. Generally, you can get everywhere in half an hour on the subway at least. Um, so I don't go out where I live, I go downtown. I'm going downtown. And that becomes a weird thing in that the local restaurants and bars have no incentive to up their game.
SPEAKER_00I that's totally that's so true. That's very, very much like Paris. I mean, it takes about 30, you can get anywhere in 30 minutes on the metro. And um, you know, when I moved to the 15th from, you know, I was living up by Pigalle. Um, when I moved to the 15th, lots of people, especially the bar people, said, Oh my God, you're you're moving to an area that's dead, devoid of bars. And I kind of thought, well, this area was devoid of bars when I moved here. So maybe bars will start appearing in the 15th. But that aside, I don't really care if personally, I mean, I'd love to have nice bars around me, but that's not the goal of where I'm living. Because I go to bars all over the city, I'll I no matter where I live, I'm still gonna go all over the city, go to bars. But that's just me. Most people do not, you know, make a career out of trying to visit every cocktail bar in Paris. Those people, they just want to go to their restaurant next door, to their little, you know, cafe around the corner. Um, I do think in Paris, uh, so much of the culture is cafe culture, and that's pretty standardized. You get, you know, this kind of the same level of wine in most of them, you get the same beer, you know, you might get a Grosh or you might get a Lef or something like this. And um, and that's um most Parisians are pretty much just that's their um acclimated to that. That's what they expect, that's what they get. And in fact, if they got something better, they might kind of be, oh, what is this fancy business here? Uh, this isn't my usual cafe life. Um, but you're absolutely right. I mean, and I do think it's the same in Paris. I don't necessarily think that people aren't there, they're or maybe they are catering to the their neighborhood and their neighborhood doesn't care.
SPEAKER_05But um it does become the tyranny of low expectations. I'll say this: I opened door 74 in 2008 in Amsterdam. Everybody thought it was dumb, including my business partner and the staff. Shout out to Timo Jansa.
SPEAKER_00But what if they think was dumb? Because you opened it with a concept to be really welcoming to people, right?
SPEAKER_05I mean, you know, well, the fact that the door was locked, you had to make a reservation, there was no sign, da da da, but everything right down to the alcohol collection, and it was a gamble. All hospitality is a gamble, right? If you build it, they'll come. Amsterdam's a hotspot now, not just because of door 74, but it did kick a lot of things off. So, you know, in my neighborhood, it's very interesting. When I say neighborhoods, a 10-block radius, there's two. Let's say that there's probably 30 bars or restaurants with bars, right? And there's two or three that you can go in and order a Manhattan, order a martini, order a Negroni, or order something off their menu, and it will be good. It will be a seven out of ten, at least, right? The if you if they haven't created cops on the menu, it will come as described.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Which is great.
SPEAKER_00A seven out of ten is good. I mean, you know, I I'm tired of all the hyperbole, and everything can't be ten. So seven out of ten, I think, is solid.
SPEAKER_05No, exactly that. Exactly that. And we have, but the interesting thing is we have some spectacular restaurants, and their bars are not at that level.
SPEAKER_00But that's been, I mean, that's that this is that's historically been it. We are only now seeing the restaurant um prioritize the bar programs. And I there's probably lots of reasons that you know more than I do because there's probably financial reasons behind it and managerial reasons behind it, and you can't maybe give the bar as much free reign as you would if it was a freestanding bar on its own. I don't know. But but I mean, I I don't, I've never understood why there's such a disconnect. Continue. Sorry, I just had to sidetrack.
SPEAKER_05No, I actually I just wanted to jump in. About half our listeners are based in the USA, where you know, you'll go into a dive bar in East Owlfuck, Arkansas, right? Where the bartender's arm is in a plaster cast and he's only got one eye. And you'll ask for a martini, and he will fucking do his best to make you a martini. It might come in a mason jar, but he'll make it. And my my uh my friend, and God rest him, he's not with us anymore, Wayne Collins from the UK, my direct contemporary, um, he would bemoan this fact. He said, You go to a pub in England, they've got vodka, they've got lemons, they've got oorcester sauce, they've got Tabasco, you know, they've got tomato juice. But if you ask for Bloody Mary, they'll just tell you no.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Right? And this is by way of explaining to my American listeners that traditionally in Europe, right up to and including Michelin three-star restaurants, the bars would be decidedly average.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so average. And what is funny, I mean, I I I kind of chuckle when I do have American friends visiting, and they are so surprised that you can't just rock up to one of these cafe, you know, cafe uh corner cafes that I was just talking about and get a martini. I mean, it's it's it's out of the question. Now it's becoming more prevalent. And the funny thing is, all of these little cafes, they always have it, always has written cocktails on their awnings and things. It's it's very it comes with the sign. Yeah, it does. Cocktails. I'm like, not really, but okay.
SPEAKER_05Um they should put on a big cocktails. Only kidding. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, cool true. Um, but uh I'm not sure they know what the word means though. Um later, yeah, it's it's absolutely true. You just cannot um yeah, you you can't expect to give it all the place there was a place in Rotterdam that got three Michelin stars.
SPEAKER_05Big deal. Big fucking deal. Because Dutch people won't pay for money. If you want to have the cheapest three Michelin star meal in your life, go to Holland. It will literally be almost half the price of a three-star Michelin meal. Interesting. Yeah, okay. Dutch people are cheap. Um, but I went in there and I was jazzed. Now, this is back in the 2000s. I wasn't gonna ask them for a martini. That's a fucking dick move. But I said, Hey, can you bring me a glass full up? And I did the ping with your hands, like full up, and I'm doing this in. Fluence and impressive Dutch, by the way, full up with ice, uh, and just a big old pour of gin. And they're like, We got you, brother. What I got was a wine glass with two tiny sad ice cubes from the bottom of an ice bucket that had been set out three hours before, and an ounce and a half, or 50 mils, if you prefer, of Gordon's gin. Now, there's nothing wrong with Gordon's gin, but this place had just ascended to. I mean, how many three-star Michelins are there? A hundred?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe maybe, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And that's that that's a big it's a big disconnect. And I always feel like, well, uh as you know, I know the inner workings of bars and restaurants, all the money is made at the bar.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but also, so sometimes I wonder, um, I all the money's made at the bar, but how many hoops do they really have to jump through? So I've been talking to people more recently here in Paris because I uh I find the hotel bars, like I really love a good hotel bar, and I find the level of nice hotel bars I'm talking about, like like the Palace hotel bars, does not compare with London. And I don't understand why they're just their their game is not. I mean, I love all my Paris cocktail bars, no, not throwing shade at all you guys, but you know, I just don't think that the level of quality is not the same at the high-end, you know, bars that that you see in both both places. But I really don't think they have to in Paris. I don't think most of the people are. I mean, I don't know about in London, but like I just I don't think they have to to go that extra step. And I'm not talking about um, you know, getting real geeky with the cocktails. They're they all have great service. The service is spectacular.
SPEAKER_05Specifically hotel bars here, yes.
SPEAKER_00Hotel bars, yes. I'm talking about, yeah. Like like like yeah, I'm talking about the four-star hotel bars. Um and uh I I just the it's not there. And the some of the people that I've talked to really agree, but also feel like it's because they don't have to. They don't have to.
SPEAKER_05So um what do you think is lacking in a sense? I think not lacking, but what are they not doing? I think that's a couple of examples. You don't need to name names.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I well, I just think that the um the it's not the service at all, but I think that the range of cocktails, the range of spirits, the um the techniques that they're using. I, you know, um I I also think for me, they are focusing on um what's not important to focus on in a high-end hotel bar, but what is important to focus on in a high-end hotel. So, for example, I went into a uh hotel bar and I ordered a martini to start with, and I specified it to start with before a bucket of whiskey because when Forrest comes in, all staff vacation is cancelled.
SPEAKER_05That's right, double the security detail, alert the owners to start with.
SPEAKER_00No, I got my martini, had that, but I specified the gen, and I don't remember what gen I said, but um uh and so then I wanted to try something off their menu. So I picked something off the menu and it had a specific gen. And he said, Okay, and he said, Oh, would you like me to make that with Plymouth or whatever I'd asked for? And I said, You mean your martini gin? No, no, no, I'm talking about this cocktail number two was listed on the menu. It was a creation of theirs with a name-checked gin in it with XYZ gin, yeah. Exactly. And so he said, Oh, should we make that with um Plymouth? And my thought was, I don't want this is your creation that you've built around this particular gin. You must think that's the perfect gin for it. So I want it with what it's supposed to be with. But and so I kind of had to remind myself that's not a fault, that's actually a positive for them because they're in a high-end hotel. What they're showing me is that they recognized and remembered my preference. Uh, so so I think that it's probably a challenge as well, um, doing these high-end hotel bars. But yeah, I just think that we've got a little um room to maneuver. And I think that it's a shame because I've said before, I think high high-end hotel bars, they're like designer sunglasses, right? Like most of the world will never get a taste of spending a night at the creole, but they can get in there and they can afford a martini. So they can get a taste of the creole.
SPEAKER_01Great metal.
SPEAKER_00So I think that uh that they're letting themselves down with with the when they just allow themselves to skate by on all they need to, you know. They they probably, I guess what I'm trying to say is that in a lot of these cases, the amount more of effort or money they would invest in trying to put together a better cocktail program or make better cocktails or make more coherent menus doesn't equal the improvement in revenue. You know, people are still going to come anyway, but I just think that people could have a better image of the restaurants. And I did just call out the Creole, but I actually think they have a great bar program. Um, and that's I think one of the ones that's doing really well, but they're also doing well because they're looking at their London sister hotel bar, right? Like Scarves is fantastic. So they've got this nice um cross-pollination and and inspiration and um, you know, really good, like, you know, info coming from from London. So I think that um yeah, we could do better in Paris. And I don't even know why I was talking about that anymore, but there you go. That's my opinion.
SPEAKER_05We're a drink, and there's you know, there's no questions anymore. But this is a situation, uh Forrest, where toxic male dick measuring can result in better bars. And I say that because I was there in London in 1995. Uh, if you wanted a great cocktail at the time, I would have taken you to TGI Fridays, where I work.
SPEAKER_00I know, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And you would have had a fucking delicious cocktail. Like we we knew, by the way, that a lot of the cocktails were just fruity nonsense. But bartenders, we drank El Diablo's Uncle Vanya's, we made Sazarax. I worked at One Fridays where we grew mint outside in 1993.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_05And every now and then we would recommend a mojito to somebody and and run outside or a julep. I made juleps with mint that I'd grown in 1993 in fucking Croydon.
SPEAKER_00So but I think that's also part of the uh you know philosophy behind TGI Fridays, not grow mint, but like there's such a such a focus on um customer experience, don't let them sit at the table for more than uh this amount of time. Like you you really do have a playbook at TGI Fridays, from what I understand. I think from what I've learned from from you and other people I've talked to. And I think that um that does it. I mean, it's surprising, but I think that people throw a lot of shade at TJI Fridays. But I think that the current cocktail world has a the people that are doing something successfully have uh should pay some homage to learning tech process from places like that.
SPEAKER_05You know the guy who invented Fridays is still alive. Really? Alan Stillman, God bless him. How old is he? 900 years old. I I went into so he only actually, after founding Fridays and inventing modern singles bars, he only went on to own it for like about 10 years. Then he sold out, traveled the world, got bored, came back, and he founded Smith and Walensky, and then he founded a whole bunch of other places. And I'd be living in New York for five or six years, and I'm like, I've heard of this place, I gotta go in there. So I go in there and it's lunchtime. There's an old Irish bartender, actually Irish, you know, he didn't just watch Far and Away once. And I order a martini and he's pouring it out. And as he's pouring it out, I say, Hey, did you ever serve Alan Stillman? And without pausing, he's still pouring. It's very impressive. He goes, Mr. Stillman still comes in a couple of times a month for a drink. And I was like, Oh my god. And he kept pouring and leaned across and he says, But his son. Different story. Like the end of the story is the bartender was, of course, union, and union is the only way you cannot be fired in New York City. But what a lovely story. Anyway, back to me. If you had come to me in London and said, hey, let's have a great cocktail in 1993 or four, I would have taken you to Fridays, or I would have taken you to a hotel bar. And when I say hotel bar, I mean all of them. They were all dusty, luxurious but unloved, if you know what I mean. The bartenders and the beverage director, there was no beverage director, were clearly low down on the prestige list. The drinks, you could order a Manhattan or a martini, you could order anything you like, but they were, let me be frank, not well made. They were not well made. And what happened was the cocktail revolution got going very first in the UK. And I'm gonna date it, 1995. Oliver Payton opened the Atlantic Bar and Grill. And everyone's suddenly like, holy fuck, fresh juice is delicious and proper technique and small glasses and boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, boom. And what happened was these old school bartenders got better. They were not always better. They learned like Dale deGroff is very open about it. He was actually hired by Jonathan Downey to be the instructor for the match bar group. So he would be going to England four times a year, and he would come home by his own admission, uh, having learned more than he had taught. Because these young bartenders had nothing to lose, and they were iterating like on a daily basis. Like our one of the most recent podcasts is with Kevin Armstrong, who was you know, a young bartender became the group bar director for Match Bar Group. And he was like, no, every first Tuesday of every month, every bartender and bar manager came together. We got a lecture, we got a written test on the previous month's topic. You know, this was like serious shit. So back to the dick measuring contest. What happened was this cocktail revolution got going in London, as you saw. And I now I might be getting it wrong here, but I think the first luxury hotel to close down and completely renovate, including putting in a cocktail bar as good as the other freestanding cocktail bars in London, was the Dorchester.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05I think even um with the gorgeous group, a young Charlotte Voicey worked on that one. Um I don't know what just happened there. Um and then all the other billionaire owners of hotels did the same. The Savoy shut down and then reopened with a superstar uh FB director, Daniel Bainrauther, who hired uh a young man called Eric Lawrence to head the bar, et cetera, et cetera. And this kind of toxic male dick measuring, that's what's actually driving the rise of uh cocktail bars and hotels in Asia. Because very often the people who own Rosewoods and Four Seasons and stuff out there because they're franchised, are billionaires. Yeah, they can they they have fleets of private jets, they can buy anything they like, but when they're all around the dinner table measuring their dicks, it's like, well, we're at number six in the world's 50 best bars. So and and that has actually been a positive. And for instance, I know the the Ritz, the legendary Ritz of Paris, closed down, renovated, reopened. It's gorgeous. I did a thing there for Blue Govodka just before the world ended in 2020. Yeah, and in fact, uh, I'm interviewing young Colin Field on Monday or Tuesday, his first public outing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'm very excited to listen to that. I haven't seen Colin for a long time. Well, the Creole the Creole also renovated in 2017, 2019, and it was a very extensive renovation, and there it was a an incredible change in their bar. Like their bar used to be just kind of a like small room in the back and not anything of note. Um it's a world difference. So anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, to bring it back, like you you you're your chair for 50 best, but now there's 50 best restaurants, 50 best bars, and 50 best hotels.
SPEAKER_00I was going to say that, yeah. So these hotels, yes, there's a there's a list for that as well.
SPEAKER_05I think so. 50 best bars was actually around since 2002, and nobody gave much of a shit about it until about 10 years ago. It was one more list, you know? Yeah. And then for whatever reason, and I'm I'm not entirely sure, but it it became a thing. And here's I'm putting this out this I don't have an opinion on it. I want to ask you, right? Uh if you are, let's say you're a hotel with a bar and a restaurant, and getting on some kind of a list or winning an award will turbocharge your business. We all know that. What's the cheapest and most efficient list to get on? Because it used to be bars, it is no longer. It is no longer interesting. Restaurants, restaurants is if you think bars are a commitment, getting on the restaurant list, it's a whole thing. The hotel list is brand new, so we don't really know yet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this year was the first year that we had the hotels, and I think that that is um it's a whole different category. I mean, when we're playing at that level, I do think we're I think with the the 50 best bars, it leaves room for a wider range of a type of venue, right? Like I I can let people know I vote because it's not as secret as a chair, but um, you know, I voted from everything from dive bars to really high-end bars, but I I think that that that's gonna be more challenging with the hotel list. So um uh I oh yeah, um, I think I still I would still feel like it would be bars. I I I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Um, because you might be right, because here's the thing, right? As your your chair, I used to be a chair myself. Um, but as a judge, you are supposed to go to these bars, pay your own money, and judge them, right? And you nominate bars you have visited in the last year, yes, the last 18 months, year and a half. Is it okay? Yeah, um, I was out last night and I had an expensive cocktail. It was a boatyard gin saffron martini at the amazing zoozus. It was $28 plus tax and tip, however, it was seven ounces, and that's why I had a hangover this morning. Uh I can swing 28 bucks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Right. And I can go out to dinner to 11 Madison Park, and I can drop $1,300 for dinner for two, um wine pairing, tip tax, sure, the whole thing once a year. Right? Yeah. Now hotels. Some hotels are a thousand dollars a night.
SPEAKER_00Yes, they are.
SPEAKER_05How many of those are you able to pay for yourself and be an objective judge? Like, is the entire panel the fucking one percent? I I'm just putting this out there. I don't have an answer.
SPEAKER_00Uh, I I don't know because I even amongst the bar chairs, we are all very secretive about because it's we are supposed to keep this to ourselves, how many people are on our panel, who's on our panel. Um, so I don't know how many people are on the South of Africa panel, even though I talk to the chair there all the time. Um, so I don't I don't know how they decided to compose the um the hotels. What I do know is contrary to the hotels and the restaurants, voters are uh can vote for things hotels that they visit on trips, on press trips.
SPEAKER_05Oh, interesting. Yes, interest. I mean it doesn't work any other way for any of my uh listeners. One of the things that came up recently in an online debate that kind of surprised me was that some people, and I'm not just talking about 50 bests, I'm talking about all these awards, right? We're not just spanking that particular monkey. Um that people would vote for a bar that they hadn't actually been to, but that they had been to a pop-up of.
SPEAKER_00And that's not a good thing to do. You are not, you can't do that.
SPEAKER_05Fucking bonkers. Are you out of your mind?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's it's it's not within the rules to vote for a bar that you have not stepped foot into and visited in the previous year and a half. And you know, that's something that we do discuss amongst ourselves that you know, that we kind of solidify our resolve that we make sure that all of our panels, I mean, I can only speak for the for the bar chairs, but you know, all of our members of our panels are fully aware of this. Now, I can't control what somebody does anonymously, I don't see anybody else's votes. Um uh, but there's also, you know, what makes me you know, no list is perfect, right? I mean, uh so, but what I like is there are there are there are audits. There are um the the the votes are audited at the end and they do certain things to sort of check to make sure that people are, you know, uh we as chairs kind of spot check like with our people to keep an eye on them on social media. Have they actually been to that place? Have they not? But they actually have professional auditors, um, William Reed, that come in and look at timestamps on when people are voting, or two people voting in the same house, or two people do, you know. Um, so I they I think that there's an easier way to do it.
SPEAKER_05And funnily enough, uh white guy came up with that idea, uh, which was audit every judge twice a year.
SPEAKER_00How would you audit every how how would you audit everyone?
SPEAKER_05What it means is if you vote for a place twice a year, you'll be asked to produce a receipt, a photo of a receipt. And that uh solves two problems. It solves the problem of were you there? And it also solves the problem did you pay for your drink? Because there is a there is a very different experience. There's no way to say this without sounding like Philip Duff. If I go into a bar, I'm gonna have a very different experience, even than my wife. Right? I will very often like last night I went into this amazing bar, and the bar a bartender came up and hugged me, and quite frankly, I didn't know him. I or remember. Yeah, he hugged me and he said, Philip, what can I get you? I'm like, Oh mate, I just want a beer and a shot. I'm waiting for my friends. And he brought over a silver platter filled with crushed ice and a bottle of Miller High Life and one of those little crafts and a frozen martini glass, and he said, This is Japanese whiskey with a bit of plum and it's on us. Right? Yeah, every now and then it's good to be Philip D. Right. But if you're a a a judge, a voter, and as you know, and certainly as I know, um, nobody should know who they are, but you can make some pretty informed guesses. You've got to judge based on paying your own money and actually fucking going there. So if you knew of your whatever five choices you have to submit, then at random intervals in the year, but at least two intervals, you would have to produce an actual receipt. I think that would make it less imperfect. What do you think?
SPEAKER_00Uh, I think that's very interesting. And I'm surprised that that is not a conversation that has come up. Uh, because I think that sounds like a really well what do I think? Would that be effective? I mean, I think it's sound in theory, yes, I think it would be effective. Um I am thinking. Sorry, I forgot. I'm like, you can see me, but they can't. I'm just staring off. Um, yeah, I think it's like Boris is naked, by the way. Yeah. Um uh I think it would be effective. Um but I Guess it it seems like this isn't like that's not the the most out-of-the-box suggestion ever. So uh I can only imagine people maybe have thought of it and decided it's not. I'm not saying just because somebody decided it wouldn't work, it doesn't mean it won't. But yeah, I mean to me, obviously, like I would not want to be, you know, if if my if it was risk of not voting, not you know, being pulled from the panel, if it sh turns out that you're not paying for your drinks and making visits to these bars, I would be, you know, very careful.
SPEAKER_05I'm already careful, so I'm actually kind of like um I mean there there are people who would crawl over broken glass covered in piss to be able to sort of subtly hint that they are 50 best voters.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_05Um time, my favorite story, uh Ian Griffiths from you know, uh Mr. Lion, Super Lion, White Lion, All the Lions, all that kind of thing. He told me at the Spirited Awards, the Tales of the Cocktail Spirit Awards, he was in the toilets, and uh there were two guys peeing next to one another. And one of them, just to be clear for everybody who doesn't have a penis listening, it's not nor we don't normally chat there. This is we're there to do a job, that's it, there's no conversation. It is a purely engineering feat. But this guy's chatting this guy says, Oh, are you from so and so bar? And the guy's like, Yeah, and the other guy's like, We vote, I I voted for you.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Big no no. Now the question is, did you tell the um chair of the region?
SPEAKER_05I don't know. Well, I Ian wouldn't have known who that was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_05Anyway, I I happen to know the region, but yeah, this is a few years ago. But no, there there are people who like they will. I mean, there are anomalies with lists. Like one time, I think it's been enough years, Clover Club was uh nominated for a Best New Bar Award, but it hadn't opened by the time the nomination period closed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.
SPEAKER_05Well, well meaning, of course.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But you know, it's strange. I've seen the lists and awards go from like, oh, like being almost a joke to being things that people are deadly serious about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I do think that I I mean I think the lists are very important to to bars to bring people in. And you know, we talk about the problems, but I do think that um that it's again, I'm not just talking about 50 best, I am talking about tails, I'm talking about 50, I'm talking about you know, all these other things.
SPEAKER_05Oh, top 500.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, top 500, yeah. Um uh it's raised visibility in general, which is good for us consumers. It's making the bars work harder. So, you know, I say this, you kind of you you've got to get involved. And from various perspectives, I wonder how beneficial that is to the bar. But it's been really good for me. Uh well, uh really good for the regular consumer. It's great for me. I love, I love what I do, but um, but but you know, for your average consumer, they get more interesting bar experiences. I mean, you know, it's it's hopefully globally a good thing and raises the visibility of bars and cocktails in general, you know, the old all boats rise with the tide, but um uh, you know, which I don't know. Um yeah, but back to that absolutely big no-no. I I if if I hear about somebody on my panel uh mentioning to other people that they are a voter and it and it has gotten back to me, I have heard people tell me about this so-and-so that they were sitting with at this dinner table at and they kept telling me that I thought, okay, that that that's noted for next time I'm compiling the panel. And um yeah, which you know, but uh at the same time, I understand people's um impulse to do it because other than you know, trying to add your opinion to to to the list anonymously, you know, I people people we all like to talk about our accomplishments and and how valuable we are in our in our community. So I do understand the impulse.
SPEAKER_05Well, it's it's political, and there's a saying, nobody should be a politician who wants to be.
SPEAKER_00I fully agree with that, yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know, nobody should be a voter who wants to be, because it's unpaid work and you don't get acknowledged. So, you know, it's uh it's an interesting one. Well, let me ask you a question. You've writ you've written the guide, Drink Like a Local in Paris, available from Cider Mill Press and all good booksellers, um that would help people to discover bars in Paris.
SPEAKER_00Yes, right?
SPEAKER_05Bars they might not know, areas they might not go to. Maybe they're visiting Paris, maybe they're visiting from somewhere else in France or Europe or from abroad. Right? However, one thing that has been uh painfully evident in the last few decades, uh, and particularly post-COVID, is that many people how can I say this, have not had the proper instruction in how to behave in a bar. So, what are the things you would tell people about behaving in a bar of any kind, not just a fancy cocktail bar, but the kind all the bars that you wrote about in your book? Um in Paris, and is there anything different in Parisian bar etiquette compared to New York or London or Sydney or Bangkok?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, I think in Paris, anytime you're going into a shopper or or a bar or a venue, you know, you you greet the person, you know, you bonjour, you you say, you know, and that might not be the case.
SPEAKER_05Bonjour is the French word for hello for my American listeners.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And if you don't start a conversation with that, if you just go right into your request, um, it's it's considered rude. So, you know, you want to bonjour, acknowledge the person first. And beyond that, I also think this is just pretty standard everywhere. Um, even though earlier in this episode I said the customer's the hero. Also remember that person on the other side of the bar is a person and you want to treat them with respect and you're gonna get much better service. Um, and uh don't expect things to maybe be as fast, or you know, if you've got a lot of US listeners, don't expect things to be as friendly. And um, I remember many years ago now, I hadn't been back to North America for a while, and I went to visit a friend in Canada, and I said to her, I said, I think this waiter is totally trying to pick me up. She's like, No, he's not. I said, No, no, he is. Have you noticed how much he's talking to me and how friendly he is? She said, You've just forgotten what really friendly North American service is like. And I was like, Oh god, you're probably right. I don't think he's trying to pick me up at all. But um, so you know, don't you sleep with him? What's that?
SPEAKER_04Did you sleep with the waiter?
SPEAKER_00Um maybe. No, I didn't. I didn't. Um no. Um, but uh yeah, so I think don't expect overly effusive uh service. And um really I think the rest is is is pretty standard. I mean, um that you'd find anywhere. You know, don't don't be obnoxious, don't bug the, don't bug the people next to you. Don't uh, you know, uh, I mean, you know, don't hassle the other guests. I don't know. I mean, I kind of feel like other than being really polite and recognizing that you're not gonna get that kind of over overly enthusiastic hovering service, um, it's not much different from any other big city. I don't know. I mean, you've been drinking in Paris. Do you think there's something I'm overlooking there?
SPEAKER_05No, not at all. Not at all. I think the key uh aspect of, shall we say, drinking internationally, right? Or even just outside your hometown, is knowing you are not in Kansas anymore. Yeah. Right? Like there's a bar owner in California called Rick Dobbs, um, very nice guy, very funny guy. And he wrote a Facebook post once that really uh hit home. And he says, Do you want to know what it's like to be a consumer? Go to another city, go to a hot bar, and just walk in cold. Don't reach out to your friends, don't get introductions, just go in there, sit down, and and you will know what it feels like, maybe for people to walk into your bar. Because that's the flimp side of this incestuous, globally interconnected world. If you are going to Bangkok, there are people you can reach out to who will make introductions and you will be received there maybe more effusively than if you were at Little Red Door or the Savoy or uh you know the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Right? And yeah, that's kind of like it's as if your your bubble has extended to Bangkok or wherever it might be. But it's very beneficial to get outside your bubble because customers are not there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. But I also think that's also where some of the talent of selecting, well, I can't speak to how the other other lists are made, but the talent in selecting a panel. So, you know, um, your panel of voters, uh I try to make sure there's a really good mix of people who are um good customers, but not good customers who travel enough, but not incredibly well known in the industry so that they're gonna walk in and be recognized. So I think that that's another way where you can sort of try to maintain some integrity in in the well, in your own panels, but um, and you know, hopefully that trickles up to the list overall. But um, yeah, I mean it's uh but it it's kind of a what are you gonna do about that?
SPEAKER_05Like, you know, I I mean the Michelin guide has lost money every year for a century.
SPEAKER_00I am not surprised.
SPEAKER_05And I've never seen an advertisement. Well, no, I have seen advertisements for Michelin tires, but it is they clearly see it as part of their ad budget.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's that's what it's there for. So yeah, um, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Will we see maybe somebody stepping up to subsidize bars? Well, I've you mean you know by reviews like like paying independent, professional, anonymous reviewers who will go to a bar three times, who cannot be identified on pain of death, et cetera, et cetera.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've always wondered that. Like if you could find some adjacent, some bar adjacent product that um I and I don't know what that would be, but yeah, absolutely. I've always thought that that that would be an interesting um uh interesting uh way to do that, but I don't know what that might be really.
SPEAKER_05Amazon sells alcohol everywhere in the world except the USA. Why not Amazon? Because it can't be any product that is sold in a bar because you know the fix would be in, it can't be like, oh, you know, it's like oh Diageo's funding this guy, yeah, exactly. It's like they have this thing like, oh, distill ventures our venture capital thing is totally independent. I'm like, really? Because all the employee paychecks actually come from Diageo, so you know, but yeah, it it would be maybe that.
SPEAKER_00Maybe what would be the benefit to Amazon to because they sell booze.
SPEAKER_05You go to bars, you'd you you know, you go into bars, it's all liquor-based.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and then you come home and you want to order that liquor from Amazon.
SPEAKER_05Well, they sell beer and uh yeah, whatever, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just putting it out there. Jeff, if you're listening, call me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I know. I'm like, I'm just kind of like mildly brainstorming. I'm like, what about Uber? Although I don't think their profit margins are very high on Uber. Um, because you know, you need to take, you should probably not be driving to bars.
SPEAKER_05So well, actually, Uber's a very uh prescient suggestion because the original idea for the savages that listen to this of the Michelin guide was that Michelin sold car tires, and then they came up with a list of restaurants that you would drive to, like ones that were literally worth a detour. Exactly, and that was their meta thing. The whole thing about Uber is like, well, if you're gonna go to bars, you're Ubering home. That's actually genius for us. That's very clever. It really, really is. Well, thank you. Unfortunately, Uber's been losing money for its entire yeah, I know. I was gonna say I think another billion a year won't make any difference. Uber, uber, yeah. I like that. The the uber stars, yeah, and uber stars, although it does remind you of the Nazis a little bit, um would be a thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, could be.
SPEAKER_05Cocktail bars, uber alice.
SPEAKER_00Hmm, huh?
SPEAKER_05Maybe we do it all on the Philip Duff Show.
SPEAKER_00Indeed.
SPEAKER_05Tell me about a bar you haven't been to that you're eager to visit.
SPEAKER_00Well, I did mention this one earlier, um, kiss proof that I'm very eager to visit.
SPEAKER_05Not just in France, though, huh?
SPEAKER_00Oh, not just in France. Oh gosh. Well, I haven't been to um double double chicken, please.
SPEAKER_05It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00I that's what I hear. That's what I hear. Um, and uh so I hear really good things about that. Love to go. Uh, where else would I like to go? Um, I mean, there's so many places. I mean, fortunately, I get to travel a lot of places, but that's probably really high on my list at the moment. And um I don't know. I'm leaving it at that because sure I could dig through my memory. But um, but no, I've had the good fortune to travel a lot lately. So um, well, not lately, but the past many, many years. So so I'm narrowing that list down to, you know, of bars that I I want to go to that I haven't been to.
SPEAKER_05You know, the nice thing is though, to return to our discussion about neighborhood bars and whatnot, uh in France, well, in Paris, you've seen it get to a stage where there are many bars that will make you a decent six or seven out of ten cocktail. Yep. Right. And I I saw that happen in London. I was literally watching it happen on a day-to-day basis. I saw it happen in Amsterdam, and it was already the case in New York, right? They started from a high bar, but now you are seeing better and better and better bars in in you know, more outlying areas, like, you know, the wilds of Bushwick and the Bronx and you know, Green Points and New Jersey and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I was thinking about that earlier when we're talking, we're I mean, massive growth in sort of secondary cities, you know, Paris is has the highest concentration of really uh quality cocktail bars, but you know, you've got bars in Bordeaux, you've got Lyon has a really fun um cocktail scene, lots of cool stuff there. And um, now that's another bar that I need to get to. And I was trying to get down there this year. Um, Bistro, of course, now the name is escaping me, but it's Remy Sauvage's um uh project that he's got going down there. So that's another one I really need to get to soon because I really do like to think of myself as an advocate, not for just Paris, but for France. And I think that that's another thing I think about when sometimes bars reach out to me and say, How can we get on this list? And part of my role, I see, is to get out to these other cities and put them on my Instagram stories and put them up here and put them on my my site so people become aware of them. Um, so I mean, I'm not saying that I'm gonna solve the problem, but I I feel I feel a personal responsibility to try to get more visibility, not just to Paris, but to these other cities that are, you know, working hard in France, turning out some good drinks.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, do you know Rachel Harrison?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_05So Rachel owns Rachel Harrison Communications. It's a terrible idea to name your business after yourself. I say that as the owner of Old Off Geneva. Uh, but she is uh an absolute superstar, old family friend of ours, uh a queen bee of public relations for bars and restaurants and hotels and booths in New York City. And I had a long podcast with her the other day. And I said, Look, what can you know? A lot of bars will come to you and they will say, Well, I want to be on the list, I want an award. Like, what do I do? Where do I sign? How much do I pay you? And she's I said, What's your number one bit of advice? She's like, make sure you've got something. Be good at this and this and this and this, right? Yeah. You like you don't need to be good at all of it. She gave the example of one of her clients, I know who it is, um, where the cocktails were amazing, but the food was not at that level. And she would say to writers and journalists, hey, go in there, don't eat the food. Um, have the cocktails. You know? Yeah. She says, You've and and be different. You've got to have something to differentiate yourself. And that thing, you you should be doing it better than anyone around. Right? Uh, before you commit to a PR agency, because a PR agency, it could be eight grand a month. That's US dollars, baby. You know, so and and they need six months to make any kind of an impact at all. So that's 50 grand.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but and their job is knowing how to get your good product in front of eyeballs and get the right people to notice it. Their job is not to make your product better or make it good if it's not good. So uh yeah, but I mean that there that is it's not so applicable anymore. But you know, I remember when I started blogging and people would be, how can I get to be a well-known blogger? I'm like, just do the fucking work, just work really hard. Like my goal was never to be well known, my goal was to put this information in a way that I could really easily share it with friends visiting from the US and all my cocktail people, you know. I'm not my cocktail, not the bigger cocktail community, but my friends who are foodies and and like good drinks. So it was never a question of like how do I manipulate the SEO? What's my SEO strategy? And how do I it just just do the work?
SPEAKER_05It is like publicity can turbocharge things, but you know, you can't guild a lily, you can't polish a turd, you know. It's you you can take something that's kind of it's good and you can catapult it, I think, but you can't go from you know zero to hero overnight.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that's that's totally true. But you know, fortunately there's a lot of good bars out there.
SPEAKER_05So there's one more question I want to ask you. Um okay. And in the spirit of this podcast, I know you're at your uh your secondary location. Tell me about your liquor closet, and I'll pick something for you to drink.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Um, well, I've got all the basics, as you know. I've got I I have all the basics. I've got makings of, you know, I like things that are kind of these equarts. So I've got the makings for paper plain down there. So um uh I've got vodka, gin, rum, cognac, cowados. I don't have a lot in the way of juice at the moment. Like I've got a few lemons and limes down there.
SPEAKER_05Let's talk about cognac.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_05Why don't you grab a drinking cognac? As to say, something, you know, an everyday thing that you can talk to us about. And I will I think I have some Armagnac here. A really interesting one. All right, we'll take it, we'll take a moment. So I have plundered the Dove Liquor Cabinet for Ortulan Armagnac XO back Armagnac. And I have a rum. You mentioned rum, and that just set me going. Uh, what have you got?
SPEAKER_00I have got a a pretty basic Camus cognac, um, XO as well. Uh, I usually have a cognac out here at the house because I use it for mixing sidecars and such. Usually when we're doing digestive sippers, we're doing a lot of Calvados because our house is very close to Normandy and lots of Calvados production around us. So that's more of my like like range of sippers. But yeah, this is just a nice simple cognac camus.
SPEAKER_05What is it, VS or XO? Oh, nice. No, Camus was fucking delicious. Yeah. Do you know do you know the Irish link to Camus? No. No, so they were the ones who originally uh founded slain Irish Whiskey years ago. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how the connection came about. And then, you know, they made it, then they stopped. The connection lapsed, and Brown Foreman swooped in and Bought the brand. And the Camus people, if I'm getting this right, they founded Lambay Island Irish whiskey. That's an island I could see from the beach where I grew up. Really? Yeah, yeah. There's some kind of Irish collection. I am drinking this Ortalan Armagnac, which was given to uh it was given to my wife to give to her boss, and we're just drinking it now. Um, but the Ortalan is a illegal dish in most places. It's you're you're likely you're likely poaching a baby sparrow in cognac and eating it while it's alive. And you're supposed to put a black little cloth on your head as you eat it to shield you from the judgmental view of God. Exactly. Yes. It was in succession series four.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00I can't remember. We were just talking about that because was it we were talking about?
SPEAKER_05Can you can you actually see the baby?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh you can, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Look at the baby sparrows here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean, it's kind of like calling a fucking kosher wine, you know, gas chamber. This is bad. This is, you know, this is bad. But however, lots of body broodiness. I mean you see cognac differently to everybody else in the world. And one of the strangest things is that cognac cultivated a luxury image everywhere else. An image it lacks in France. Uh, one of my friends was the global ambassador for Remy Martin for a long time, and he told me if he brought home a bottle of Remy Martin XO for his father, he'd literally be slapped in the face. But if he bought a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label, his father would hug him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Isn't that weird?
SPEAKER_00It is. I mean, I find that so um I'm so lucky to live in France where there is this like masterful distillation. Um, and it's so strange that it's so underappreciated by the people who live here. Now, you know, if you live in cognac, I think that there's more appreciation for it, but uh things are very regional to these drinks, right? Like you're you're gonna be drinking uh uh Armagnac down in the southwest, you're gonna be drinking cognac in the cognac region, you're gonna be drinking Calvados in Normandy. Um, but it's just so underappreciated. I mean, you know, it's it's well, it's what the Le Sandy Cat built their their whole bar on, kind of the idea where grandpa's spirits go gangster, right? It's like, you know, so many generations didn't um want to drink mom, dad, and grandpa's old spirits.
SPEAKER_05They wanted something well, you want to drink great granddad's spirits, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, exactly. So yeah, and we're that's like anything, right? It's all cyclical, so coming back full circle, but still, um, it just yeah, it doesn't have the same same appreciation.
SPEAKER_05Um, it's it's weird if you run down the categories, right? As to are they as beloved in the country where they were born as export. Um, I think vodka would be 50-50 because Russians fucking love vodka, incidentally, if you didn't know, but it's massive in export, it's massive abroad. Gin until 10 years ago, I would have said it was more export, but the English have really reconnected with gin.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, true.
SPEAKER_05Rum in total is domestic, but premium rum is export, the local people tend to drink. I'll include cachaca in there. Oh, because you know tequila. I mean, Mexicans drink more brandy than tequila. Yeah, and they don't drink as much mezcal as you think. Uh bourbon. Bourbon is still domestic.
unknownLargely.
SPEAKER_00I would say so, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Largely. Scotch export. Did you know Scotch whiskey is the number one product by value that the UK exports? Interesting. Including fighter jets and submarines and everything else, they make more money from Scotch whiskey.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_05And the number one spirit in Scotland is vodka.
SPEAKER_00Well, the I don't know for this year the stats, but generally, almost every year, the number one spirit in France for you know, per per personality. Scotch whiskey, baby. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04Scotch whiskey.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's yeah, you're not you're not getting much bourbon, you're not getting much American whiskey here at all. But um, yeah, and which always surprises me because I don't ever see that many French people sitting around drinking whiskey.
SPEAKER_05Oh, they're at home drinking bottles.
SPEAKER_00I think they must be, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean, it's so humbling. Like being Irish is generally great, but when you go to a whiskey festival and it's full of Germans and French people and Dutch people, and they're all better at being Irish than I am. It's like, oh, it's like you going to a TGI Fridays in Prague, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But the other thing I brought along, we had a kind of a cocktail party for uh parents of our kid recently, and everybody knows we're in the tricks business. So these people brought along a bam bambarra rum from the Turks and Caicos Islands. Oh, interesting, right? Eight years old. I have no idea if there is even a distillery on the Turks and Caicos. It looks nice, it is the Armag with 43% alcohol. This is 37.5%, and you know what that means.
SPEAKER_00Is it a um, I don't know what it means. Is it a sugar cane? Rather, is it a um like uh agricole style?
SPEAKER_05No, it means they want to sell it in Europe.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Because spirits in Europe can be as low as 37.5% alcohol. They have rum has to be at least 40% alcohol for the USA. Interesting. We're coming for you, Bambara. So let's have a live tasting of Bambara here on the Phil Kill Show. Great O's. It's a little bit of something like vinyl, but there's lots of funk and no, this is rubbish. This is really like really Yeah. It's not eight years old. If it's eight years old, it was terrible going in. Um again, but let's let hey, like I said, there's no bad bars. I don't know the price they're charging for this. Like, do you know um Turconel, single malt Irish whiskey? You ever see that?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_05So it came out in the early, well, uh late 1990s. Um, the Coolie Distillery in Ireland was shuttered, reopened, bought, rejuvenated, and they brought in experts, and they they're like, we're gonna make Irish single malt, we're gonna make Irish single pot still, which nobody was doing. It was all blends back then. And they brought out a minimum age, three years old, uh Terconel single malt. And it wasn't very good objectively, but it was also priced about the same price as a blend. So compared to a blend, it was great, and that's what I drank in college because I went to college in the town where the distillery was.
SPEAKER_00Very interesting bit of trivia.
SPEAKER_05So it's I I I I I should walk that back a little bit. There are no flaws in this room. My expectations at seeing eight years old were heightened. Yeah. It's like eight years old, but you were locked in a basement.
SPEAKER_00No sunshine, just sitting down there in a tiny box.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, no, no joy. Yeah, it sparked no joy. So uh to get back to your book, it's out now, yes?
SPEAKER_00It can be purchased and it can be purchased, yes.
SPEAKER_05Have you thought about doing an audiobook?
SPEAKER_00I no, I haven't. Um, but now I'm thinking about it.
SPEAKER_05Um no, they're huge, they're off the fucking charts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I I I like audiobooks. I listen to them from time to time. So um I just wonder, like I always don't, because the book includes recipes as well as bar descriptions, the bar descriptions are they they would lend themselves to audio, but the recipes maybe not. Um, but I don't know. I don't know if any of these are done in audiobook format. And I have a strong feeling if they were, I would not be involved in it because you know the publishing house pulls all the strings there. But it would be fun to read it to narrate it if it were.
SPEAKER_05No, I I bring this up because um I recently had our mutual friend, I think, at least, uh Robert Simon on the podcast, and he has just published the Encyclopedia of Cocktails.
SPEAKER_00I know, I saw that. I put I put it on my little stories for suggestions, suggestions for gifts to people for cocktail lovers for this holiday season. So it is exciting.
SPEAKER_05It's a brilliant book. It marries drink making, cocktails with the prominent features, the prominent people, and all that. And I asked him, Do you do an audio book? He said, Yeah, I did. It was my first audiobook. And the publisher asked him to do an audiobook. And Robert was born to narrate audiobooks. He has that deep, yeah, rich, dark brown Midwestern voice. He's great. But he fought his publisher on it. He's like, Listen, I've written 10 books. This is a literal encyclopedia. Do you want me to read an encyclopedia? And they're like, Yep. So there is an audiobook of the Encyclopedia of Cocktails by Robert Simonson available at all your good booksellers.
SPEAKER_00Well, good to know. Good to know. And yeah, well, now that you've asked me that, I probably will reach back out to the publisher to ask if if that's something that's ever in the works. So no, but why not?
SPEAKER_05It's it's now a thing, it's a way to get a little bit of extra money. But audio audiobooks are so big now, like they're kind of stealth. Like I uh I actually knew Adam Curry, who invented podcasts. He literally invented podcasts, and I remember podcasts being a thing, and then they went away like leggings, right? And then they came back just like leggings through two things. One, technology, they were integrated into iPhones, and two, I began, I don't know, eight years ago. I began hearing a podcast, and I'm like, Podcast? And I was in Japan taping a podcast with a couple of really clued-in American dudes. It was about showchoo. And before we started, I'm like, you guys know your stuff, right? You're you're in the podcast world, like, yeah. And I'm like, how did it come back? And they named it wasn't called taken, it was a it was a true crime podcast about like a false conviction.
SPEAKER_00Yes, um, I did. I think I listened to that.
SPEAKER_05Like a symbol or taken or broken or murdered or so. Anyway, anyway, it was a true crime podcast. They say that rejuvenated podcast, a podcast brought people back because women began learning how to identify their predators. Interesting, or how to conceal murdering their predators. I'm always terrified when I find my wife listening to a true crime podcast, but but that that was it, and it came back because of that. And I think audiobooks are really just alternative podcasts at this stage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I also think honestly, I think because I used to listen to a lot of podcasts because I mean, obviously, we all just multitask all the time. We can't just fucking walk down the sidewalk. It's like um that's a real interesting thing. I know. I'm I'm watching Philip make a very interesting face after taking a sip of that. Um, but you know, we can't just walk down the sidewalk and be listening, we've got to learn things, we're gonna do a podcast, podcast. Um, but the proliferation of podcasts, and there's kind of a lot of crap out there with podcasts right now. So I have really pared down what I listen to, but I think that there is a little bit more of a filter with audiobooks to be getting quality stuff in your ears besides music while you're kind of walking or doing other things, because there is that generally that filter of okay, has this book been published? Now with self-publishing, we're also getting a lot of uh I'm not against self-publishing, but that it just leaves the door open for more crap to be put out there. And and now, thanks to all kinds of platforms like you know, Canva and things, we can make things look real professional regardless of how well researched they are or well thought out or well put together. But I do think there's a tiny bit more of a barrier on the audiobooks, and um, so sometimes I just feel like it's um a little more maybe an assurance of quality, but I definitely think, yeah, those those kind of spin off spun off of the um the podcast. I'm still trying to think about this true crime one because it was really big. Um, but yeah, audiobook. I'll let you know what if I hear anything back from the podcast.
SPEAKER_05No, I think uh imagine how amazing it would be to walk around Paris in the Arondissimon listening to you talk about it in your voice. This would be an amazing thing, and all I want is 10% of the IPO when you float your audiobook corporation.
SPEAKER_00Uh no problem, no problem. Um, I had people reach out to me recently. They do um audio, they publish it's a platform that publishes audio tours, uh tour guides. You know, you download it from I can't, I can't remember, I would say them, but I can't remember the name. And so I've had a couple meetings with them because they're really trying to encourage me to create a walking guide in Paris, which would obviously be something around drinks. Uh, the only reason I haven't is because you can't just walk people past bars and go, look, there's dirty dick. Look, there's you know, classic. Um, so I've been spending more time doing research into sort of some of the historical drinking venues. By the way, cereal. Serial, thank you. I was I I was actually just talking, I was Googling, I was trying to find exactly what it was.
SPEAKER_05Serial, the true crime. Well, I know people uh who actually do cocktail walking tours in New York City and uh uh New Orleans. Yeah, they're amazing. Like, did you ever do one in New Orleans?
SPEAKER_00Um, the last time I had one in New Orleans, it was like one of the first times I went there. I was probably 20, and it was a real crappy tour, and it was more yeah, it was kind of a bar crawl. So I wouldn't call it like a real cocktail tour. Um, so no, I've actually never done like an organized cocktail tour. Like I've done the gen bus in the UK, but like this one would be more it, it's not yeah. I mean, it pulls in history, it pulls in but no.
SPEAKER_05I mean, the best people, um obviously I go to New Orleans every year for I don't know, 15 years or more. Um, and my wife, God bless her, is American, she has no culture, so she always wants to learn, and she's always after, you know, let's let's learn more. So one time we stayed an extra day in New Orleans after Tales of the Cocktail, and she booked us on the cocktail walking tour. This is six or seven years ago. Oh my god, it was amazing. I thought because I went to New Orleans and I knew every cocktail bartender there, and lots of the diet bars. I thought I was the dude. Oh my god. I mean, the guide was amazing, I think his name's Joe, and he'd been doing it for years.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_05He would take you in a bar, he knew everything, he'd walk you along to the bar and tell you all the history of that, and you'd have a drink, and but you would also see things you'd never see. So we went into Arnauds, you know, Arnauds? Yep. So Arnaud was a French immigrant and he came to America, and the uh you know, Antoine Carême School of Cooking, the classic sauces, this was sorcery back then. This was tastier food than anybody in the world had had outside China, and nobody went to China back then. So he was a god, you know, he caught, he had captured fire from the heavens, and he started off with a tiny little restaurant. He wound up owning the entire block. And if you go into Arno's, you sit in the front room, the tourist room, which is also extremely nice, by the way. And there's a bar that they set up about 30 years ago called the French 75 bar, which is also very pleasant, right? There are private dining rooms upstairs at Arno's that you can never visit. Each dining room is the ownership of a carnival crew with a K. You may only dine in that dining room if you are a member of that crew.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_05Now, downstairs, the French 75 might fit 50 people, and the big dining room and the overflow might fit a hundred. But if you add in the private dining rooms upstairs, the entire place, if everybody sat down at once, would house 900 people. It's a lot wild. And when you go on the walking cocktail tour of New Orleans, you can see those private dining rooms. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, well, I I will keep that in mind for next time I'm there. I haven't been for a while, so I'd like to get back. I don't want to do walking tours. I mean, I I don't mind going on them, but I would not want to be the person guiding those walking tours because it does not seem fun having to walk around a bunch of people around through bars.
SPEAKER_05So my but if you narrated it, that's exactly when you're like, go in and buy a martini. Yeah, you know, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Stop here, have a drink, get this. That's what you know, that's what Hemingway drank, and go sit at his table when you're over at the Croiserie de Lila, etc. That I can get on board with. So, but I will I will check out, I will go on the walking tour when I next time I'm in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_05Beautiful. So drink like a local in Paris from Cider Mail Press, available to all good booksellers. Um obviously, everybody who goes to Paris is allowed to call you up on your private phone number and take you after.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. I we put it in the in the credits on the book, so that's don't hesitate. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Phone number, everything. Uh Forrest, how can people find you otherwise online?
SPEAKER_00People can pretty much find me everywhere as 52 Martinis. I'm 52 Martin, and that's 52 Martinis on Instagram. My site is 52martinis.com. Uh, you can find all of my other activities through the site. The podcast is called Paris Cocktail Talk. Uh, the iOS app is called Paris Cocktails. Um, but yeah, 52 Martinis, you'll find me.
SPEAKER_05Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, Faraz Collins. Thank you very much.