3 Bartenders of Note Flashcards
“Professor” Jerry Thomas
Jeremiah (Jerry) P. Thomas(1830 – December 15, 1885) was anAmericanbartender; because of his pioneering work in popularizingcocktailsacross the United States, he is considered “the father of Americanmixology.” In addition to writing theseminal work on cocktails, his creativity and showmanship established the image of the bartender as a creative professional. As such, he was often nicknamed “Professor” Jerry Thomas.
Thomas was born in 1830 inSackets Harbor, New York. He learned bartending inNew Haven, Connecticutbefore sailing for Californiaduring its mid-19th centuryGold Rush.
While in California he worked as a bartender,gold prospectorandminstrel showmanager.He moved back toNew York Cityin 1851, where he opened asaloonbelowBarnum’s American Museum; it would be the first of four saloons he would run in New York City over his lifetime. After a time running his first bar he went on
the road for several years, working as the head bartender athotelsand saloons inSt.
Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, Charleston, andNew Orleans. At one point he touredEurope, carrying along a set of solid-silverbar tools. He was well known for his showmanship as a bartender: he developed elaborate and flashy techniques of mixing cocktails, sometimes while juggling bottles, cups and mixers. He often wore flashy jewelry and had bar tools and cups embellished with precious stones and metals. At the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco, Thomas was earning $100 a week—more than theVice President of the United States.
In 1862, Thomas finishedThe Bar-Tender’s Guide(alternately titledHow to Mix DrinksorThe Bon-Vivant’s Companion), the first drink book ever published in the United States. The book collected and codified what was then an oral tradition of recipes from the early days of cocktails, including some of his own creations; the guide laid down the principles for formulating mixed drinks of all categories. He would update it several times in his lifetime to include new drinks that he found or created. The first edition of the guide included the first written recipes of such cocktails as theBrandy Daisy,Fizz,Flip,Sourand variations of the earliest form of mixed drink,Punch. The
1876 edition included the first written recipe for theTom Collins, which appeared just
afterThe Great Tom Collins hoax of 1874.
Thomas’ signature drink, theBlue Blazer, was developed at the El Dorado gambling saloon in San Francisco. The drink involves lighting whiskey afire and passing it back and forth between two mixing glasses, creating an arc of flame. Thomas continued to develop new drinks throughout his life. His development of the “Martinez”, which first appeared in the 1887 edition of his guide, has sometimes been viewed as a precursor to the modernmartini(though the two do not share many common traits). Thomas claimed to have invented theTom and Jerryand did much to popularize it in the United States; however, the history of the drink predated him.
Upon returning to New York City, he became head bartender at the Metropolitan hotel before opening his most famous bar onBroadway, between 21st and 22nd Streets, in 1866.Thomas was one of the first to display the work ofThomas Nast, and in his famous saloon he hungcaricaturesof the political and theatrical figures; one notable drawing, now lost, was of Thomas “in nine tippling postures colossally”. The saloon also includedfunhouse mirrors. This historic bar is currently aRestoration Hardware.
Thomas himself was an active man about town. He was a flashy dresser fond of kid gloves and a gold Parisian watch. He was also known for tending bar with two white rats perched on his shoulders, Tom and Jerry. He enjoyed going tobare-knuckleprize fights,
and was anart collector. He enjoyed traveling. By middle age he was married and had two daughters. Always a good sport, he was one of the lighter members of the Fat Men’s Association at 205 pounds.[2]He also had a side interest ingourds; at one point in the late 1870s, Thomas sat as president of The Gourd Club after producing the largest specimen.
Towards the end of his life, Thomas triedspeculatingonWall Street, but bad judgments
rendered him broke. He had to sell his successful saloon and auction off his considerable art collection; he tried opening a new bar but was unable to maintain the level of popularity as his more famous location.He died in New York City ofstrokein 1885 at the age of 55. His death was marked by substantial obituaries across the United
States.In their obituary,The New York Timesnoted Thomas was “at one time better known to club men and men about town than any other bartender in this city, and he was very popular among all classes.”He is interred in The Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
Harry Craddock
Harry Lawson Craddock was the youngest of five children, born on 29 August 1876, in the Cotswolds village of Stroud. His family worked in the garment industry, but he sought to carve out a different life when he grew up. Sailing from Liverpool on board the vessel Teutonic, Harry landed in 1897 in New York City.
Within three years of his arrival, Craddock was employed as a bartender at the Hollenden Hotel, Cleveland’s grandest luxury hotel. Some say he made his way to Chicago’s Palmer House for a time before returning to Manhattan, in 1906, where he stood behind the mahogany at the Hotel Knickerbocker alongside Eddie Woelke and Adam Heiselman under the guidance of James B Regan. There he finessed his style at making a variation on the Bobby Burns Cocktail, called the Thistle Cocktail.
Like Woelke, who made his way to Havana’s Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore, Craddock left the celebrity hangout after the hotel’s owner John Jacob Astor IV died, in 1912, in the tragic sinking of the Titanic. He went to Nassau, to work at the Hotel Colonial bar in Nassau before he landed a managerial position, by 1916, at the famed Hoffman House. It was then that he became a naturalized American citizen.
The First World War broke out during those years. Harry did his part—after taking a bartending job at another Manhattan landmark, the Holland House—by registering for the draft in September 1918. There was little chance that the 42-year-old barman would be called to serve. But the next major event in his life sent him back home.
Prohibition was enacted in the US in 1920, putting Craddock out of work. After 23 years in America, Harry applied for a passport and moved his wife Annie and step-daughter Lulu to the more permissive shores of London, althoughnot before reputedly shaking the last legal cocktail to be served in New York.
It was then that Harry’s star shined brightly. The newspapers chatted up Harry’s attitude about cocktails noting in London’s Catering Industry Employer that the “great American exile among English potations may not yet have broken through the phlegm of the Englishman. But the check is only temporary.” He had already placed 200 “American” drinks on the dispensary bar’s menu.
Versed in the ways of the increasingly fashionable American cocktail—typified by the use of strong spirits, several ingredients and, most novel of all,ice—Craddock was quickly snapped up by the Savoy, where he soon graduated to head bartender at the fulcrum of London’s high society: the American Bar.
Here, in the intimate art-deco surroundings—which still, today, evoke a 1930s liner—the white-jacketed Craddock cultivated a loyal following, with customers often paying daily visits for a pre-dinner drink laced with his pithy views on the issues of the day.
“Harry Craddock’s bar was at times the pulpit and the soapbox,” acknowledges Jared Brown who, along with fellow historian Anistatia Miller, recently publishedDeans of Drink, the biography of Craddock, which has brought many of these new facts to light. “But he also went beyond the call of duty,” adds Brown, detailing a story in which Craddock spent $60 on a transatlantic call just to supply a loyal customer with a favorite cocktail recipe. “That is the essence of being a hotel bartender,” he says. “You extend the caring for your guests beyond the time they are under your roof.”
Craddock’s dedication to service was such that he went on to establish the UK Bartenders Guild, an organization that introduced London to the alien concept of bartender training. Imbued with this new (and rather American) spirit of hospitality, London saw its dusty hotel bars transformed into world-famous cocktail destinations. Suddenly the likes of the The Savoy, The Dorchester (where Craddock also worked in later life) and the Café Royal were teeming with cocktail-savvy Americans in search of a drink.
Today, almost every craft cocktail bar in London—and probably the world—has a well-thumbed copy of Craddock’sThe Savoy Cocktail Bookon the back bar, asthis collection of more than 700 recipes remains, 83 years after its publication, an incredible influence on London’s bartenders.
“It is quite simply the benchmark,” says Alessandro Palazzi, a former bartender at The Savoy and now bar manager atDuke’s Hotelin Mayfair, commonly known as Martini Mecca. “In the 1980s it was regarded as old fashioned, but that simplicity is now the style of a new generation of bartenders.”
One of the most enduring Craddock recipes is theCorpse Reviver No.2, a zesty mixture of gin, Lillet Blanc, lemon juice, triple sec and a dash of absinthe. Technically simple, but complex in flavor, this is a recipe that lends itself readily to reinvention, which is no doubt why it remains a favorite of bartenders from the molecular temples of East London to the five-star hotel bars of Mayfair.
At theHawksmoorin Piccadilly—a cocktails and steak restaurant renowned for its world-class take on the classics—the Corpse Reviver No.2 is the cornerstone of a whole list of “anti-fogmatics,” a family of drinks developed in the 19thcentury specifically for morning drinking.
Possibly even more famous than the Corpse Reviver No.2 is Craddock’s White Lady—a recipe of gin, Cointreau and lemon juice, which looks suspiciously like a precursor to the Cosmo.
Dale Degroff
Master Mixologist Dale DeGroff,akaKing Cocktail,developed his extraordinary techniques and talent tending bar at great establishments, most notably New York’s famous Rainbow Room, where in the ‘80’s, he pioneered a gourmet approach to recreating the great classic cocktails. DeGroff has since been credited with reinventing the bartending profession, setting off a cocktail revival that continues to flourish.
Winner of theJames Beard Awardin 2009 for Wine & Spirits Professional and author ofThe Essential CocktailandThe Craft of the Cocktail(Random House), DeGroff’s enormous influence in the bar world has spanned three decades. He is also a partner in the award-winning bar training program,Beverage Alcohol Resource(BAR)and founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail.
“Dale DeGroff, who has done more than anyone to bring baroque standards back to the bar, encounteredJerry Thomas’ [work] for the first time in the early 1980s, when Joe Baum, who wanted a different kind of bar for his new restaurant Aurora, directed him to “The Bon-Vivant’s Companion.” -William Grimes, New York Times
