Friends of Eater Boston 2014 Year-End Questions: My Responses, Plus Some Honorable Mentions

Illustration courtesy of Eater Boston

Eater Boston, the local affiliate of the national Eater network of city-based blogs covering restaurants, bars and nightlife, is essential reading for local food dorks. Editor Rachel Leah Blumenthal and a cast of contributors cover the length and breadth of the Boston dining and drinking waterfront with impressive depth and welcome sly humor. I've participated in a few of these year-end retrospectives of and looks ahead at the Boston scene, featuring a small group of local professional food and drink feature writers, restaurant critics and bloggers. It's great fun, and I'm always honored to be included. I'm collecting my answers here, including some Honorable Mentions that didn't make it into the Eater features. Check out the whole motley group's responses as well as Eater Boston's other 2014-in-review coverage here.

Eater Boston: What were your top restaurant standbys of 2014? 

MC Slim JB: Friends envy me my restaurant-reviewing gig, not understanding that continually having to research the next new place crimps the time I have to devote to established places I already know and love. Here are a few I managed to get back to repeatedly in spite of that:

• Café Porto Bello, City Point, the kind of modest, old-school, red-sauce Italian place your grandparents would love, with a welcome bit of Old Southie sass in the service. Pro tip: upgrade to the house-made pasta.

• J.J. Foley’s Café in the South End, a nonpareil family-run Irish-American tavern with a palpable hundred-plus years of history. Puts the city’s countless dull fake-Irish bars to shame and disgrace.

• The Franklin Southie, a more modern neighborhood joint with a genuinely loveable bartending crew (one example here). I mourn its imminent passing, though I’m hopeful for its successor, Moonshine 152, from first-time chef/owner Asia Mei. Her cooking at Sam’s at Louis Boston was about the only thing I’ve ever liked about the Seaport.

• Gene’s Chinese Flatbread, DTX and Woburn Center, lonely local outposts of Shaanxi cuisine, with its emphasis on hearty wheat-based foods like astonishing hand-pulled noodles and mind-blowing accents of garlic, chilies and Sichuan peppercorns. Soulful, satisfying and cheap: a food nerd’s dream.

• Dumpling Café, Chinatown. I’d go just for the best soup dumplings in Greater Boston, but its long menu of Taiwanese fare is consistently rewarding and a great bargain.

• Moody’s Delicatessen, Waltham. The one new place on my list. It plugs a giant hole in our scene with astonishing Jewish deli meats like brilliant pastrami and corned beef, but offers so much more, drawing on French, Italian, Spanish, German and other notable traditions of cold cuts, sausages, and pâtés. If the Food Dork Gods are just, Moody’s expanded wholesale operation will mean you can buy their singular artisanry from your local market soon.

• The Hawthorne, Kenmore Square. Absolutely brilliant craft bartending on both the technical and hospitality sides of the coin, in a lovely, dimly-lit, hiding-in-plain-sight setting. The short menu of bar snacks is very nice, too. Long, slow kowtow to its sublimely talented bar manager Katie Emmerson (whom I called Boston's best bartender in this year's Boston's Best issue of The Improper Bostonian), who decamped to L.A. late this year.

EB: What were the top restaurant newcomers of 2014?

MCSJB: My favorite new places included:

• Alden & Harlow. Folks who have been reading me for a decade know I’ve long tried to bring attention to the assiduous work of Michael Scelfo, who elevated a succession of other owners’ restaurants out of deserved obscurity. His first place of his own got my Best New Restaurant of the Year nod in The Improper Bostonian back in July, and I stand by that in December, despite some stiff competition. A humble, dedicated craftsman is finally getting his due. About effing time.

• Sarma, which I know opened in late 2013 but I was slow to get to, so please indulge me. Running delectably around the Mediterranean, with some emphasis on one of my favorite underrated-by-Americans cuisines (Turkish), this ultra-cool Somerville place makes every sequence of small plates a memorable night out. Vik Hegde’s terrific bar program is another huge plus. One protracted, 20-plate, overstuffed January evening there – did we really say yes to four helpings of the Turkish-style fried chicken thighs with yogurt remoulade? -- was a close second on Single Best Meal of 2014. 

• La Brasa. Beautiful, eclectic, inventive food, much of it kissed by wood fire and smoke, with another fine bar program. I don’t live in Somerville, but places like this and Sarma make me wish I did.

• Thao Ngoc. Humble room, incredible Vietnamese fare from a huge menu, and prices so low it feels like theft. Don’t call yourself a food geek if you haven’t been here.

• Moody’s. I’m no longer bitching about the lack of a proper delicatessen in Boston, even if it means I have to extend my definition of Boston to Waltham. Feast on one of their shockingly good sandwiches on premise if you can, but regardless, don’t leave without an armful of sausages, charcuterie and salumi. No deli in my experience this side of New York or Montreal holds a candle to it.

EB: Describe 2014 in one word.

MCSJB: Smoky! The flavors of wood fire and smoke beguiled me at dozens of places, including Alden & Harlow, La Brasa, Pastoral, Viale, River Bar, the Stoked truck (with its genius wood-fired Neapolitan pizza oven on wheels), Row 34, and many others.

EB: What was the best dining neighborhood in 2014? 

MCSJB: I say it every year: Allston. The most diverse concentration of affordable restaurants serving amazing traditional cuisines from all over the globe. I’m hopeful it can sustain more grownup, Western-tradition restaurants like the fine new Glenville Stops, too easily overlooked in its location on an obscure side street. 

EB: What was the biggest dining surprise of 2014?

MCSJB: I was gobsmacked that in the age of Yelp and Instagram I could still uncover a new restaurant that had been open for eight months yet was entirely overlooked by the local press and barely acknowledged by amateur reviewers: Thao Ngoc, a homey Vietnamese place in Fields Corner. One of my favorite new restaurants of 2014: a place to bring six friends, feast like a king, and collect $20 apiece to cover the check, including a fat tip. I’m truly grateful that The Improper occasionally lets me review more modest places like this in sorely under-reported neighborhoods like Dorchester.

EB: What was your single best meal in 2014?

MCSJB: A tasting menu at Giulia in Cambridge. Gorgeous, ravishing yet subtle from start to finish, notably in the house-made pastas that were rolled out earlier in the day on the very table at which we dined. Just a fantastic, traditionally-centered, chef-owned Italian indie, with evident love and long-honed finesse in the cooking. Mike Pagliarini is another original who toiled for years in service to more-famous owners (I long admired his work running Michael Schlow’s Via Matta) that I’m really gratified got the chance to helm his own place.

EB: What was the biggest restaurant grievance of 2014?

MCSJB: The proliferation of popular but mediocre chain restaurants in tourist neighborhoods like the Seaport, which is inflicting a line cook and server shortage on far worthier independent restaurants around town. I cringe at the advantages that deep-pocketed nationals have over home-grown talent. Every dink city in the US has those chains; the quality of Boston’s currently-fantastic scene depends on its indies. Support them, I beg you.

EB: What are your headline predictions for 2015?

MCSJB: I'm not a prognosticator, but I'll offer a few hopes for the new year:

• I’m going to lean hopeful, pray that the recovering economy will support a worrisome expansion of restaurant seats in the city, and expect that new-broom Mayor Marty Walsh, with his appointment of an all-new Boston Licensing Board and purported commitment to the late, beloved Tom Menino’s ideals about providing access to better food for all Bostonians, will wreak some positive changes on our dining scene. We need that greenmarket, for starters, Mr. Mayor. 

• Against a welter of evidence to the contrary, I hope that Uber will retire the “Be Evil” plaque that seems to currently inspire its executives, and become a more ethical thorn in the side of our corrupt, deplorable taxi system. Affordable ride-sharing alternatives are not just a boon to customers, but to the many restaurant employees who work past the T’s closing.

• I firmly expect that the legacy of the great John Gertsen, whom I literally wept to see leave Drink for San Francisco this year, and still-here peers like Jackson Cannon of Eastern Standard, Row 34 and The Hawthorne – specifically, their indispensable training of successive waves of highly-skilled craft bartenders -- will continue to be felt in the presence of fine cocktail, wine and beer programs in bars and restaurants all over the city. The next time you raise a glass here with something really good in it, remember how uncommon that was ten years ago, and thank those folks and their gifted lieutenants.

My honorable mentions that did not make their way into Eater Boston's year-end questions:

• Shojo, already a unique venue for Chinatown with its hip atmosphere and superb cocktail program, getting a serious kitchen upgrade with Mark O’Leary’s smashing, street-food-driven cookery. The most memorable, delicious iteration of the wildly-overblown burger trend I had in 2014 was his witty, mantou-based gloss on a McDonald’s Big Mac. 

• Chef Chang’s on Back Bay, which offers Bostonians rare glimpses of the foods of Henan, Shaanxi and Xinjiang, among other more familiar regions of China. I’m hopeful that this represents growing local desire to visit the lesser-known corners of the world’s greatest collections of regional cuisines, but at the very least, it’s a huge addition to the Back Bay, a neighborhood that has long been a food-nerd desert.

• Erbaluce, to my mind the single most consistently soul-satisfying Italian restaurant in Boston, if for nothing else than the way that chef/owner Charles Draghi quietly makes the case for sustainable seafood. One sure way to get people eating less-familiar species is to present them so deliciously that you don’t necessarily notice that the chef’s sourcing choices are better for the health of our scarily-overtaxed and increasingly global-warming-damaged fisheries. Not hurting the cause: Draghi’s impeccable grounding in Northern Italian tradition, nor partner Joan Johnson’s heartfelt hospitality and extraordinary, idiosyncratic Italian wine list.

• Viale, for hitting the ground running with exceptional food, drink and service, admirably filling some very big shoes: the former home of the long-running, beloved Rendezvous in Central Square. Having a team of old pros at the wheel doesn’t guarantee that you will avoid some ugly shakedown-cruise bumps, but Viale crushed it from about Week Two on. 

Happy 2015: good eating and drinking in the coming year!

"Pouring Reign (The Director's Cut)", Part V: Tyler Jay Wang of Audubon Boston

Tyler Jay Want of Audubon Boston, Boston, MA
Photo courtesy of onthebar.com

In April 2014, I wrote a cover feature for The Improper Bostonian entitled “Pouring Reign”, in which I interviewed twelve Boston bartenders I admire. Six are veteran talents I felt had been overlooked by local media; six are newcomers promising enough to get themselves situated in some of our top bar programs. All had many more interesting things to say than I could fit in the space allowed.

How many more? My initial draft ran to 10,000 words, but the feature was allotted 2500; I begged my editors for more room, and they generously let it swell to 3500, a very long feature for the publication.

As happy as I was with the piece (and especially the gorgeous accompanying portrait photography by Adam DeTour), a lot of great material got left on the cutting-room floor. I got permission to run the unexpurgated interviews here. Here’s number five, my unedited interview with Tyler Jay Wang, whose bartending talents I’ve enjoyed for quite a while at places like Drink, the bar at No. 9 Park (particularly when I had an office nearby), and the Kirkland Tap & Trotter, but about whom I hadn’t seen much written. At the time of the interview, Wang was still at the Kirkland, though he would leave shortly to help launch the bar program at the just-rebooted Audubon Boston. I’m happy to present his unedited responses to my interview questions here.

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MC SLIM JB:  I’ve long praised [Kirkland Tap & Trotter chef/owner Tony Maws's other restaurant] Craigie on Main for its somewhat overlooked bar program, and think Kirkland has much the same thing going on, including my preference for dining and drinking at the bar. What does a KT&T customer get dining at your bar that she might miss sitting in the dining room? Are you a bar or a dining room customer on your own time? Does anyone ever come in for drinks and not get anything to eat? (Maws does some pretty alright food, after all.)

TYLER JAY WANG: The bar at Craigie is a staple for any thoughtful bar patron in the city. Their bar, like No. 9’s, is both elegant and enthralling. While the environment at the Craigie bar is more casual, Tony’s philosophies towards perfection in the kitchen are reflected in the bar program. The bar at Kirkland works the same way. And to cap it off, Tony is generally about three feet away from the service bartender, so his influence is always felt. At Craigie, the bar almost feels like another restaurant. It’s somewhat secluded from the hustle and bustle of the noisy kitchen. In the bar room at KT&T, and especially in the first few seats next to service bar, you can feel the heat from the grill. It becomes a much more interactive experience to sit at the bar.

Frankly, working the service bar at KT&T is the only time I’ve ever felt like no one is watching the bartender. The grill cooks over our shoulders are captivating, and Tony’s open kitchens are always a great show. So a bar patron gets that, but like most bars what really sets the experience apart is the interaction with my ‘tenders. The relationships forged between guest and bartender are always more interactive and personal than those at a table. That’s why I always choose to sit at the bar and one of the reasons I became a bartender.

Yes, we definitely get bar guests who just want to have a couple drinks and hang out with us. They are neighborhood folks and I honestly take their visits as a greatest compliment. To choose our humble bar as the place for your late night tipple against all the other great bars in the area means we really must be doing something right!

MC: Measure or free-pour?

TJW: Measure.

MC: Drink that you wish more customers would order?

TJW: Stirred gin cocktails, and shaken ones, and gin neat. Really any gin.

MC: Drink you wish customers would forget existed?

TJW: Dirty Martinis. I can eschew judgment on virtually any other beverage, but why do you want the leftover waste from old olives in your cocktail?

MC, aside: This!

MC: What is your most prized bartending accoutrement, e.g., spoon, ice tool, ice mold, shaker, mixing glass, knife, Lewis bag, cocktail book, serving glass, other piece of barware or glassware?

TJW: My muddler. My dad made it for me from Osage orange wood. It’s modeled after [Drink GM John] Gertsen’s.

MC: Most annoying customer behavior?

TJW: “Can I have [insert house cocktail] but with vodka, and just a little bit of citrus, and not too sweet, but also like a splash of grenadine?”

MC: Spirit that more customers should be trying?

TJW:  GIN! The “New World gin” category is vast and ever-expanding. People get hung up on Hendrick’s and then never get to try all of the wonderful new gins the craft spirit move is producing. Drink more gin!

MC: Your favorite cocktail or bottling to introduce a newbie to it?

TJW: Tom Collins. It’s a familiar name, but when made right, a Tom Collins really stands out.

MC: What’s the best day of the week and time of day for a customer to engage you in a leisurely, educational five-minute conversation about drinks?

TJW: Wednesday from 5:30-6:30, and then 10 to midnight.

MC: You may have seen this New York Times article on the in-house lingo of certain NYC bars. What’s one of your house’s code words/phrases for intra-staff communication in front of customers? 

TJW: We’re too new for any of those.

MC: What’s your typical end-of-shift drink?

TJW: Stout and a shot Monday to Saturday, a Sazerac on Sunday.

MC: What’s a great book / film / record / play / TV show you’ve consumed recently and recommend?

TJW: [Broadway musical] In the Heights. What can I say? I went to school for musical theater.

MC: Do you have a guilty-pleasure drink, the kind of thing you wouldn’t want your peers or customers to catch you drinking?

TJW: No. I’m not a bashful drinker.

MC: What’s the last astonishing restaurant meal you had (what and where) other than at your place?

TJW: Astonishing? Shit, probably Per Se last year. But astonishing has like a wow factor to it I wouldn’t attach to Per Se. Per Se was just perfect. Everything was perfect. Astonishing has like, a magical quality to it. On second thought, Ribelle.

MC: What are a couple of dives you favor on your own time?

TJW: I make it to Brick & Mortar once a month or so. That place is pretty divey.

MC: Dr. Bartender, what’s the best cure for my hangover?

TJW: Don’t drink so much, dummy.

MC: Most interesting current trend in cocktails (or beer or wine)?

TJW: Can’t say I’ve ever been trendy.

MC: Most ridiculous / overhyped / bullshit trend?

TJW: Having every whiskey or amaro that has ever been produced. Curate those lists a little!

MC: As a bar customer yourself, what’s one aspect of Boston’s bars that you wish more operators would do a better job of?

TJW: Standing up for what they believe in! Don’t just buy shit spirits for no reason. Advocate for better products. Advocacy for our guests and our craft is the most important part of our job. Be excited about something behind the bar and then sell it to me with enthusiasm.

MC: What Greater Boston bar (besides your own) is absolutely killing it right now? Of all their qualities, what’s the single standout attribute that makes you want to drink there?

TJW: Visiting Katie at Hawthorne is one of life’s great joys.

MC, aside: Amen to that.

MC: What are the top destinations on your Bars of the World Bucket List?

TJW: Bar High Five - Tokyo, Polite Provisions - San Diego, Wherever Scott Marshall is working.

MC, aside: For the curious, the brilliant Scott Marshall is now at 22 Square in Savannah, GA.

MC: What’s the most ridiculous thing a Yelper has ever said about you or the place you work?

TJW: Plead the 5th

MC: What bartender or bar manager, currently working or retired, is your first-ballot lock for entry into Boston’s Bartending Hall of Fame?

TJW: Misty [Kalkofen]. Scotty [Marshall]. Josey [Packard]. John [Gertsen].

MC: Offer a sentence or two of advice to aspiring bartenders.

TJW: Slow down! If you want to be good at what you do, slow down. You can’t call yourself a craft bartender if you don’t take the time to learn about the craft.

MC: Say a few words about your most influential bartending mentor.

TJW: I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the best bartenders in the world, let alone our little town. I would not be who I am today without the patience of Ted Kilpatrick.

MC, aside: For the curious, No. 9 alum Ted Kilpatrick now runs Manhattan's Roof at Park South bar for Boston restaurateurs Tim and Nancy Cushman of O Ya. 

MC: What’s the most surprisingly useful life skill that bartending has taught you?

TJW: Sweat the small stuff, make it perfect, and then say fuck it and take it like a shot.

MC: Compose the question you think I should have asked, and answer it.

TJW: Boston needs a small bar that focuses on rum, agave and Latin food. That’s the answer. I’ll take half credit.

"Pouring Reign (The Director's Cut)", Part IV: Frederic Yarm of Russell House Tavern

Frederic Yarm of Russell House Tavern, Cambridge, MA
Photo courtesy of  Maggie Campbell of Privateer Rum

In April 2014, I wrote a cover feature for The Improper Bostonian entitled “Pouring Reign”, in which I interviewed twelve Boston bartenders I admire. Six are veteran talents I felt had been overlooked by local media; six are newcomers promising enough to get themselves situated in some of our top bar programs. All had many more interesting things to say than I could fit in the space allowed.

How many more? My initial draft ran to 10,000 words, but the feature was allotted 2500; I begged my editors for more room, and they generously let it swell to 3500, a very long feature for the publication.

As happy as I was with the piece (and especially the gorgeous accompanying portrait photography by Adam DeTour), a lot of great material got left on the cutting-room floor. I got permission to run the unexpurgated interviews here. Here’s the fourth one, my unedited interview with Frederick Yarm, a relative newcomer to the bartending scene whose work as a cocktail writer I’ve been reading for years, both for his blog and his 2012 book Drink & Tell: A Boston Cocktail Book, a historical tour of Boston's cocktail scene. His was another interview that space constraints forced me to slash drastically, so I’m glad to be able to offer the unwhittled version here.

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MC SLIM JB: Improper readers may not know about your Cocktail Virgin blog, or how it has found you sampling and documenting thousands of cocktails from Greater Boston bars for over six and a half years. Russell House Tavern is your first professional bartending gig. How has being a prolific cocktail blogger shaped your experience and outlook as a bartender? And vice versa: how has manning the stick professionally changed your perspective as a cocktail blogger?

FREDERIC YARM: Tasting and writing about a lot about drinks has not shaped my outlook as a bartender so much as the experience of sitting at lots of bars in the process; observing both the good and bad of hospitality, techniques, recipes, and interactions has been an invaluable learning experience. My work with the blog has given me a lot of exposure to a wide variety of styles out there and the pros and cons of each. Discussing my knowledge about cocktails, techniques, and local establishments does help with guest rapport and has helped to solidify some regulars.

Manning the stick professionally has encouraged me to be a more easy going guest, and this has caused me lighten up a bit both in my attitude and the posting rate. If I do not see something on the cocktail menu that I wish to write about, I often will order a beer. If it is a slower night, I will see if the bartender has some off menu items that they wish to make, but I will not push the issue. I definitely want to keep the blog going, but it has become one of my cocktail outlets instead of the main one.

MC: Measure or free-pour?

FY: I originally thought I was only going to jigger everything, but after working a few busy brunches, I got tired of the amount of washing it took to get all traces of serrano pepper-infused mezcal that we use in our Mezcal Mary out of a jigger. I tested out my free pour, and my count is pretty solid for a 2 ounce pour. I will not free pour for anything other than simple drinks like Highballs and Bloody Marys though.

MC: Drink that you wish more customers would order?

FY: Drinks with vermouth. For some reason, the Manhattan drinker does not shy away from vermouth nor specify the proportions, but the Martini drinker does. Fresh vermouth is delightful, and I often opt for a 2:1 or equal parts Martini at home. And many guests look confused when you tell them that vermouth and other aromatized wines are a delight to drink on the rocks with an orange twist.

MC, aside: Right on!

MC: Drink you wish customers would forget existed?

FY: I have a section in my bar notebook dedicated to “those 70s drinks.” I cannot (or choose not to) remember the difference between a Bay Breeze and a Sea Breeze, and most of them are just fruit mixtures to hide the flavor of vodka.

MC: What is your most prized bartending accoutrement, e.g., spoon, ice tool, ice mold, shaker, mixing glass, knife, Lewis bag, cocktail book, serving glass, other piece of barware or glassware?

FY: A beautiful inlaid three-wood ice crushing mallet made by CME Handworks that I have at home. Actually, it’s a furniture wood carving mallet and they were surprised and amused by my application. I also bought one for Ryan Lotz when he was at Lineage for I felt that he deserved better than the camping mallet he was using to crush ice at the time. At work, I have access to crushed ice from our Kold-Draft machine, so the mallet stays at home.

MC: Most annoying customer behavior?

FY: Impatience, feelings of entitlement, and lack of sense of humor when things get busy. If guests want a more perfect experience, they should go on the off hours and slower nights. Then again, that suggestion would fall on deaf ears to those types.

MC: Every bartender has a collection of Fiasco Moments, e.g., the tray of glasses smashed into the ice bin, the flyaway tin that resulted in a guest wearing a shakerful of cocktails, the strangers you introduced at your bar that ended up in a murder/suicide, your proud original creation that customers hated, etc. What’s a particularly egregious / entertaining one of yours?

FY: So far there has been little that has gone too wrong bartending-wise save for a few customers who have gotten a little splash of water from our glass washer or other minor mishaps. Therefore, I’d have to say go with not refusing service to disruptive customers. There was one guest who kept harassing customers more so with each return to the bar during the day, and had to be ejected after the third return. Or the two townie drunks who made such a mess of the place. Besides sucking up a lot of my time, it can make the other guests rather uncomfortable to the point that they transfer from the bar to the table or leave the establishment completely.  I am getting better at dealing with these characters but it is sometimes difficult to switch from a hospitality mode to a more authoritarian state. And this discomfort to guests is probably far -worse than splashing a customer or spilling some drinks.

MC: What’s the best day of the week and time of day for a customer to engage you in a leisurely, educational five-minute conversation about drinks?

FY: Lately, I work mostly day shifts during the week that only can get busy during the lunch burst and the pre-dinner rush. Still, I can generally find time to talk to guests at length save for some Fridays, holidays, and brunch shifts, especially if they are fine with interruptions as I attend to drink tickets and other guests.

MC: You may have seen this New York Times article on the in-house lingo of certain NYC bars. What’s one of your house’s code words/phrases for intra-staff communication in front of customers?

FY: Yes, we have them, but they are usually tied to a bartender’s, bar back’s, or regular’s name (making it into a verb), so no I don’t feel at ease mentioning them.

MC: What’s your typical end-of-shift drink?

FY: When I have worked nights, it has been Fernet Branca and/or a shift beer from our bottle and cans collection. During the day, my shift drinks have to be done elsewhere. Often, I just wait until I get home, but on a bad day, it’s often stopping in somewhere close by or on the way home for a beer unless I can think of an out of the way place that has a new cocktail on their menu to check out for the blog.

MC: Do you have a guilty-pleasure drink, the kind of thing you wouldn’t want your peers or customers to catch you drinking?

FY: Not sure I have guilty pleasures like that save for drinking High Lifes although I do that without shame. And when lowbrow things like Fireball or blackberry brandy shots are consumed, I am often with my peers. I do remember when Josh Childs interviewed me for Boston.com after Drink & Tell: A Boston Cocktail Book came out, he forced the question and I answered a Rusty Nail, although that’s a legitimate enough drink that I am not embarrassed about consuming.

MC: What are a couple of dives you favor on your own time?

FY: Last dive I went to was Paddy’s Lunch for one of the Russell House Tavern bartenders does a few shifts there. But that falls into the realm of why I go out drinking which includes being in front of a specific bartender.  Luke O’Neil included Charlie’s Kitchen in his dive bar book [Boston's Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in Beantown], so I’ll add that, but I generally go there with co-workers instead of choosing it on my own.

MC: Dr. Bartender, what’s the best cure for my hangover?

FY: For settling the stomach, ginger beer or Angostura bitters works well, as does dried candied ginger. For the headache, Advil and coffee will be your friend. Getting fluids is key, but water alone will not provide the lost electrolytes. I am a fan of toughing it out, but if the malaise cannot be shaken by mid-afternoon, sometimes a single drink can even things out.

MC: Most ridiculous / overhyped / bullshit trend?

FY: I deleted my response – I don’t want to speak negatively about anyone’s bar program or things they include in their bar program, at least publicly.

MC: As a bar customer yourself, what’s one aspect of Boston’s bars that you wish more operators would do a better job of?

FY: Turning over bar menus. It has become rather common at many establishments that cocktail menus stay static for great lengths of time indicating a lack of focus on the program.

MC: What’s the most ridiculous thing a Yelper (or other amateur reviewer) has ever said about you or the place you work?

FY: I have only made it into one Yelp review; it was more praising the brunch food and it happened to mention that the bartender was great. Between the food order and the party size, I was able to deduce it to the crew of eight who showed up to my ten seat bar on New Year’s Day a few minutes before open.

MC: What bartender or bar manager, currently working or retired, is your first-ballot lock for entry into Boston’s Bartending Hall of Fame?

FY: John Gertsen for having a vision and enacting on it to elevate Boston’s stature in the cocktail world, and Josh Childs for showing that keeping it simple and focusing on warmth and hospitality is just as important as what is in the glass if not more so.

MC: Offer a sentence or two of advice to aspiring bartenders.

FY: Two sayings that stick in my head are Sam Treadway’s “Bartending is about watering down spirits and babysitting adults” and John Gertsen’s “If you know where everything lives and know how to smile, you’ll be a great bartender.” Both of those sayings remove the ego-driven ideals that plague a lot of bartenders, for a great bartender is one that makes the guests feel special and not one that reinforces the idea that the bartender is the star. And lastly, always keep learning. Read, taste, discuss. And know when guests just want a drink instead of even a hint of pleasantries much less a lecture.

MC: Say a few words about your most influential bartending mentor.

FY: I would be remiss if I did not name Sam Gabrielli who helped shape me from a restaurant industry newbie into a bartender. I am also thankful for fellow bartender Adam Hockman; when I have complained about certain situations, instead of just giving me a “that sucks” reply, he offers solid advice gathered from his years of experience behind the stick.

MC: What’s the most surprisingly useful life skill that bartending has taught you?

FY: Always be closing. Bartending is a job that relies on salesmanship, and less about glorified ideals.  Success at previous jobs meant completing projects by a deadline, but that was not tied to my salary which was pretty much fixed. One of the bar backs agreed that learning to close is an important life skill, whether for money or for romance, that should be learned as early in life as possible. Indeed, the movie GlengarryGlen Ross has taught me that coffee’s for closers.

"Pouring Reign (The Director's Cut)", Part I: Ezra Star of Drink

Ezra Star of Drink, Boston, MA
Photo courtesy of Ezra Star

In April 2014, I wrote a cover feature for The Improper Bostonian entitled “Pouring Reign”, in which I interviewed twelve Boston bartenders I admire. Six are veteran talents I felt had been overlooked by local media; six are newcomers promising enough to get themselves situated in some of our top bar programs. All had many more interesting things to say than I could fit in the space allowed.

How many more? My initial draft ran to 10,000 words, but the feature was allotted 2500; I begged my editors for more room, and they generously let it swell to 3500, a very long feature for the publication.

As happy as I was with the piece (and especially the gorgeous accompanying portrait photography by Adam DeTour), a lot of great material got left on the cutting-room floor. I got permission to run the unexpurgated interviews here. Here’s the first one, my unedited interview with Ezra Star of Drink, one of my personal favorites among an absurdly talented staff at one of Boston’s most popular and acclaimed craft cocktail bars.

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MC SLIM JB: Drink (the bar) is arguably Boston’s most nationally-famous craft cocktail destination; it’s been a while since I’ve been by when there weren’t dense crowds and a line out the door. How do you balance the demands of high-volume service with the ideal of a personalized cocktail experience?

EZRA STAR: Balancing the demands of high volume service and individual attention can be very difficult especially in a place that doesn't have a menu. The first way I deal with this is to not think about making drinks. We have to make a ton of drinks, but the more focused I can be on the people at my bar the better. I rely on creating and refining systems that allow the team as a whole to execute and refine the standards of Drink.

MC: Measure or free-pour?

ES: Drink uses OXO stainless steel cups for measuring, which I find to be very quick and easy measuring tools. The problem with them, though, is that as you use them, the numbers eventually wear off, so essentially we are free-pouring our drinks. My personal preference is to free pour, but I trust myself when I make a drink. At this point I have made at least ten thousand cocktails and know by sight and feel generally what a quarter-ounce, ounce, or whatever is when it comes out of a bottle. When I go out, unless the person seems as though they know what they are doing, I prefer to see them measure.

MC: Drink that you wish more customers would order?

ES: I would love to see people ordering more brandy-based drinks, especially women. Nine times out of ten, if I have someone who claims to not like whiskey or dark alcohol, I can always surprise them with a brandy-based drink and they love it.

MC: Drink you wish customers would forget existed?

ES: The Long Island Iced Tea. I love them, but come on... I know you want to get drunk; let's be a little more aggressive. How about a 151 all-dark-alcohol Long Island?

MC: What is your most prized bartending accoutrement, e.g., spoon, ice tool, ice mold, shaker, mixing glass, knife, Lewis bag, cocktail book, serving glass, other piece of barware or glassware?

ES: My most prized bartending tool is my ice saw. I love the thing, I even engraved some stars on it to make it known to whom it belongs. Plus it looks pretty bad-ass sticking out of my bag when I'm walking to work. I feel like an Edo-period samurai walking through the city.

MC: Most annoying customer behavior?

ES: Asking about my tattoos, or grabbing my arms while I'm making drinks to ask about my tattoos.

MC, aside: Kids, remember the ice saw.

MC: Every bartender has a collection of Fiasco Moments, e.g., the tray of glasses smashed into the ice bin, the flyaway tin that resulted in a guest wearing a shakerful of cocktails, the strangers you introduced at your bar that ended up in a murder/suicide, your proud original creation that customers hated, etc. What’s a particularly egregious / entertaining one of yours?

ES: I had been working for about ten days straight and had just finished making six Ramos Gin Fizzes when on my seventh, the shaker slid from my hand and went into the lap of the person across from me at the bar and covered her in cream and egg. She was really nice about it (though I don't think she'll ever order another one), but I was pretty embarrassed.

MC: What spirit, wine or beer should more customers be trying, and what do you suggest to introduce a newbie to it?

ES: Armagnac, grappa, Cognac, anything made from grapes. A great introduction is Pierre Ferrand Ambre Cognac. I love it so much I actually have a habit of signing the back of every bottle I see.

MC: What’s the best day of the week and time of day for a customer to engage you in a leisurely, educational five-minute conversation about drinks?

ES: I am always down to talk about booze and making drinks, but because of how busy we get, I tend to ask people to come in early on Tuesday, Wednesdays or Thursdays (and by early, I mean when we open at 4pm).

MC: You may have seen this article on the in-house lingo of certain NYC bars. What’s one of your house’s code words/phrases for intra-staff communication in front of customers? 

ES: My favorite one is "In the pool", as in someone who is only getting water or is too drunk to have drinks.

MC: What’s your typical end-of-shift drink?

ES: Pierre Ferrand Ambre Cognac in a glass.

MC: What’s a great book / film / record / play / TV show you’ve consumed recently and recommend?

ES: House of Cards for a show, but I have been reading this amazing book called What the Nose Knows by Avery Gilbert and it has been blowing my mind.

MC: Do you have a guilty-pleasure drink, the kind of thing you wouldn’t want your peers or customers to catch you drinking?

ES: Apricot Sour: 2 ounces of Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot liqueur, half an ounce of simple, and half an ounce of lemon. It is so good, so sweet, and so wrong.

MC: What’s the last astonishing restaurant meal you had other than at your place?

ES: I recently went to Fairsted Kitchen and was blown away by what they are doing over there!

MC: Dr. Bartender, what’s the best cure for my hangover?

ES: An Italian Greyhound cocktail and pho. Recently after an incredible night of birthday drinking, I had to come in at noon hungover to cut some ice. The salt rim of the Italian Greyhound and the soup were the only things that got me through it.

MC: Most interesting current trend in cocktails, wine or beer?

ES: Loire Valley reds seem to be popping up all over the place. Love it!

MC: Most ridiculous / overhyped / bullshit trend?

ES: Drinking orange bitters.

MC: As a bar customer yourself, what’s one aspect of Boston’s bars that you wish more operators would do a better job of? 

ES: Good sound. So many places have shitty sound systems or sound proofing.

MC: What Greater Boston bar is absolutely killing it right now? Of all their qualities, what’s the single standout attribute that makes you want to drink there?

ES: Sarma. Amazing food, wine and cocktails. I love what these guys are doing, just wish I lived a little closer to them.

MC: What are the top destinations on your Bars of the World Bucket List?

ES: Happiness Forgets (London), Artisan (London), Callooh Callay (London), William and Graham (Denver), Honeycut (LA), Experimental Cocktail Club (Paris), The Black Pearl (Australia), Alembic (San Fran), Rick House (San Fran), Trick Dog (San Fran), Anvil (Houston).

MC: What’s the most ridiculous thing a Yelper (or other amateur reviewer) has ever said about you or the place you work?

ES: "They have a line to get in. Why don't they just let more people in?"

MC: What bartender or bar manager, currently working or retired, is your first-ballot lock for entry into Boston’s Bartending Hall of Fame? 

ES: John Gertsen and Misty Kalkofen

MC: Offer a sentence or two of advice to aspiring bartenders.

ES: Work hard, read everything you can about what you do, forget what you read, find a person who will yell at you to forget, then look at the people on the other side of the bar and get to know them.

MC: Say a few words about your most influential bartending mentor. 

ES: I have had the privilege to work for some of the industry's most amazing people, and I am still blown away by Scott Marshall [formerly of Drink, now at 22 Square in Savannah, GA.] The things I learned from him are still echoing in my mind to this day.

MC: What’s the most surprisingly useful life skill that bartending has taught you?

ES: Learning to listen to other people.

Drink: Boston's Single Most Essential Craft Cocktail Bar

[This is a reprint of a piece I wrote for Serious Eats, originally published on March 31, 2011. All photos by MC Slim JB.]

Walk half a mile from Boston's South Station, over a bridge into the Fort Point section of South Boston, and you'll happen upon a bleak former warehouse district that is slowly being rehabilitated into an upscale residential and destination-dining neighborhood. Enter a door marked Sportello, an Italian eatery in local celeb-chef Barbara Lynch's empire, and head not upstairs to the restaurant, but downstairs and through a door, and you will arrive at Drink.

This spare, industrial-looking room still has much of its warehouse-basement skeleton of exposed brick, big wooden beams, and rough-hewn granite intact. Three U-shaped, connected bars line the front wall, forming three service and five seating/standing areas. With large soapstone workspaces behind the bars (recalling chem-lab tables) and bottles stowed out of sight, the space is remarkably uncluttered, a spanking-clean mise en place. Aside from bowls of fruit and fresh herbs, there's little to distract the eye beyond a collection of vintage barware and tools along the back work counter. Customers sip cocktails from unique vintage glasses and mugs.

I'm greeted by Misty Kalkofen, one of the star-studded team of bartenders here that boasts names like Josey Packard and Scott Marshall. (This includes most of Boston's BAR certifications, the profession's most coveted credential.) There's no cocktail list, though a letter board on the wall lists recently-popular drinks, few of them likely to be familiar (ever tried a Maximilian Affair?) "What are you thinking tonight?" Misty asks.

"How about something with mezcal?" I reply, knowing she loves this spirit and has created many originals with it.

"Have you tried Nux Alpina? It's a walnut-based liqueur from Austria."

I'm game.

Misty precisely measures and stirs up one of her own creations, In Vida Veritas ($11), which combines Del Maguey Mezcal Vida, Zirbenz (an Austrian liqueur with the scent of pine resin), the aforementioned Nux, Benedictine (the sweet/herbal French monastery cordial), a dash of The Bitter Truth's Xocolate Mole Bitters, and a spritz of orange oil. It's mahogany-toned, smoky from the single-village mezcal, and reveals layers and layers of herbal complexity, something different hitting the palate with every sip. I've never tasted anything like it. This is exactly what I come here for.

Where on earth did this place spring from? Its origins lie in manager John Gertsen's prior stint at Lynch's restaurant No. 9 Park on Beacon Hill, where he combined polished bartending skills with a subtle showman's hospitality. What really distinguished Gertsen's program at No. 9 was his nerdy technical obsessiveness: sourcing high-quality spirits, bitters, and other ingredients from around the world; always using fresh juices and produce from No. 9's larder; studying and relating cocktail history and origin stories; reviving 19th-century classics and creating new cocktails in their mold; fretting over tools and garnishes and glassware and ice. No. 9 took Boston's then-embryonic cocktail renaissance up another level, and did it in very tight quarters with just a handful of seats. When Lynch embarked on an ambitious three-venue expansion plan in Fort Point, she opened Drink to give Gertsen a bigger, shinier stage.

Misty asks my companion what she's thinking.

"Something fresh and springy, like a Mojito?"

Misty probes further: "How do you feel about genever?"

"Um, not sure?"

"Give this one a try," she says, and returns with a Bols Smash ($11): lemon, sugar, a lot of genever and fresh mint shaken together and strained over hand-crushed ice, garnished with another bouquet of impeccable mint. It's beautiful and refreshing, and the malty, almost-whiskeylike undertone of the genever adds a heft and balance that the typically over-sugared light-rum Mojito lacks.

Next round? "How about something with gin?", I venture.

Asks Misty, "Have you sampled Ransom Old Tom gin? You must try a Martinez with this stuff: it's from Oregon, and it's amazing."

The resulting Martinez ($11) is a mix of Ransom Old Tom, Cinzano Rosso vermouth, Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, a dash of Jerry Thomas Decanter bitters, and a spritz of lemon oil. It's easy to see what Misty is excited about: this proto-Martini is much improved by the richer, dryer, barrel-aged Ransom.

Drink also serves punches, a specialty older even than Golden Age cocktails, one that few other Boston bars attempt. Most can be made to scale from two drinkers to much larger groups. One evening, Will Thompson concocts an unnamed punch for two ($24) that begins with lemon peels muddled with demerara sugar and macerated in tea. To this he adds Batavia Arrack, Jamaican and Barbadian rums, Cognac and fresh lemon juice. It's stirred with big, hand-carved chunks of ice in a lovely vintage bowl with a sterling ladle, finished with a flurry of fresh-grated nutmeg. It starts strong and delicious, gently mellowing over time, the ice cut large enough not to dilute it too quickly.

That highlights another detail that Drink sweats like no other Boston bar: ice. It sources 50-pound blocks from an ancient local icehouse, and makes Kold-Draft ice in crystal-clear, geometrically-perfect cubes. Bartenders wield antique ice tools to create a wide array of shapes and sizes carefully matched to the needs of each drink for cooling, texture, and dilution speed. It's a marvel to see a miniature blizzard of ice being planed off a giant block to make a mist, and startling to hear the thwack of a mallet on a Morris bag to produce ice with the texture of gravel.

Drink's no-set-menu philosophy aims to get drinkers out of their well-worn ruts, but I've noticed that some customers find it frustrating. They just want their usual, not a give-and-take to arrive at something unfamiliar. Vodka drinkers, beer lovers, and oenophiles are often flummoxed to learn that Drink offers them very few (and almost no familiar) options. I'm not certain why anyone would come here to pay $11 for a vodka and soda—it seems like going to a Chinese restaurant and ordering the hamburger —but Drink draws crowds of such drinkers on weekends, to the point where it must limit capacity, creating a queue on the sidewalk.

I guess they come for the cool vibe, not the chance to get into the spirit of the place. Quieter nights tend to attract more serious cocktail geeks, and that's when I encourage you to go. For although it has been joined since its opening by some fantastic places in the top tier, Drink remains the sine qua non of craft cocktails in Boston, the single best place to explore the near-infinite richness of the craft cocktail world. Having experienced it, you may never order another thoughtless Dirty Vodka "martini" ever again.

Drink

348 Congress Street, Boston, MA 02210-1236 (near A Street; map)

617-695-1806; drinkfortpoint.com