American author and bartender Dale DeGroff on the tools and temperaments of the mixology trade
- He wrote the book on bartending and counts Rupert Murdoch and Madonna among those he has served
- But DeGroff originally wanted to be an actor, only giving up on that dream when he realised his talents lay elsewhere
How did you get into bartending? “I wanted to be an actor and went to New York in 1969. I did a series of crazy jobs – putting up posters, moving man, chauffeuring Zsa Zsa Gabor, packing Gideon Bibles to send to hotels, dishwashing.
“Then I worked as a waiter at Charley O’s, an Irish pub that famous restaurateur Joe Baum opened in the Rockefeller Center. One day after lunch service the manager came in in a panic. She needed a bartender to do a catering job at Gracie Mansion [the official residence of the mayor of New York City]. None of the regular bartenders wanted to do it. So I said I would but I had never tended a bar before. I asked one of the bartenders to write down 10 popular drinks and the recipes on an index card.
“I’m standing at the bar and nobody is drinking. Rupert comes over and I tell him I was there when he got the keys to the city. He laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry about the crowd, you’ll be working your a** off soon.’ Sure enough, after dinner they started drinking. At 2am, his son Lachlan, who was a minor in those days, came over and said, ‘Dad wants shooters.’ Rupert Murdoch wants shooters? So I started making shooters and they went until 4.30am. It was an absolute hoot.”
What was the cocktail scene like when you started? “In the 1970s there was no cocktail menu. The only ones that appeared on any menus were at brunch, like mimosas, bloody marys and champagne cocktails. The soda guns behind the bar gave out sickly juices that killed the cocktails. People didn’t want them, so they only drank martinis, chardonnay, Tab, Perrier, high balls.”