Unlike many bartenders in the trendy food-and-beverage city of Portland, Ore., Brandon Lockman actually grew up there. In fact, he has been at the same restaurant, Red Star Tavern at the Hotel Monaco, part of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, since 2003. He started bussing tables there and has spent the past 10 years tending bar.
“I’ve kind of seen things change, evolve and come back around,” said Lockman, who was recently in New York City for cocktail research.
He met with Nation’s Restaurant News to discuss what he’s working on at Red Star, and what trends he’s seeing.
You said trends in Portland have changed, evolved and come back around. What do you mean by that?
I’m seeing a lot of requests for old-school drinks. We’re talking about things like amaretto sours, Long Island teas, cosmos — things that the [typical] Portland bartender kind of scoffs at.
What everyone who orders those drinks is used to is [bottled] sour mix and cranberry juice and things like that. So what we’re trying to do at Kimpton is use better ingredients. So in our cosmo people recognize that I’m using fresh-squeezed lime juice. We’ve got this great local cranberry juice that’s cold-pressed and super-fresh and bright red color. If you mix it with that lime juice it comes out neon red. It looks beautiful. We put a little orange peel on there and give it a little flame, too — something that people aren’t expecting.
So it’s a cosmo for grownups.
Exactly, and that’s the way we look at it. Our amaretto sour’s not what you ordered when you were fresh on the drinking scene and didn’t want to taste alcohol. Now instead of a [standard] amaretto we use a house-made orgeat, lemon juice, egg white for the sophisticated folks, and it has a better flavor profile. We also put a little whiskey in there.
To booze it up a little.
Exactly. But it gives guests familiarity — something that they’re asking for, first of all, and that they don’t have to feel like a child ordering it.
So these classic drinks from the 1980s and ’90s are what your customers are interested in?
Yes, more so at my place than at other Portland bars, because they’re travelers. We get people from out of the country who saw “Sex and the City” and say, “Let’s get a cosmo!”
And Moscow mules are popular right now, and Mojitos. We can definitely do those drinks, and we’ll do it better than what they’re used to.
And some bartenders forget that not everyone’s on top of all the trends, and they might like a Mojito.
And it’s a classic cocktail that deserves respect. But we get [orders for] Long Island teas a lot. And they’re not necessarily ordered by 22-year-olds — we don’t get a lot of that clientele at our restaurant.
We make it with fresh lemon balanced with our own simple syrup. A Long Island’s essentially a sour, made with vodka, gin, rum and tequila, with a splash of Coke on top. It’s a well-balanced drink.
People are starting to relax more. The good Portland bartenders are kind of loosening their ties and saying, “We’re going to have fun.” The tiki drink trend took us in that area. We were scoffing at umbrellas and other fancy garnishes, but that’s proven to be back.
Tiki drinks were especially popular this summer, right?
Yeah, and people are trying to ditch the over-creative mai tai and going back to the Trader Vic’s 1944 recipe of just lime juice, Cointreau, orgeat and rum.
But probably house-made orgeat.
Of course. We had a tiki promotion this summer and our management team provided us with all the old recipes and told us, “When you can, do it yourself.” Good crushed ice, mint garnish and not overdoing things.
How long will your guests wait for you to make them a cocktail?
This is a thing that’s going on with my management team: Five minutes from order to table, and that’s reasonable. But in Portland, everywhere I go it takes at least 10 minutes to get a drink if I’m at a table. Sitting at the bar it takes five, six minutes.
What about giving guests a little starter drink to tide them over while waiting for their cocktail?
We do that. We give them a little bottle of Miller High Life. And at The Dead Rabbit [a trendy cocktail bar in New York City] they bring you a little sample of their punch to get you going. That’s really smart.
The Miller is part of our new boilermaker program that we’re starting.
As bartenders, when we go out we tend to keep it simple: a shot and a beer. That’s what a boilermaker is, but we’re doing stuff that’s a little bit nicer, with good local beers and cocktails.
How much do you charge for them?
We’re just introducing it and haven’t put a price on it yet. My go-to is Miller High Life and George Dickel Rye, which I’ll probably price at $8 or $9.
I see the boilermaker menu has some classic combinations like tequila and sangrita.
Yeah. It’s not just whiskey and beer, which is typically what a boilermaker is. Mezcal and Stiegl Radler — that’s amazing. Stiegl Radler is a super-low-alcohol beer with grapefruit.
So the combination is like a Paloma.
Exactly.
When are you rolling it out?
When I get back. I’m just waiting to get the Stiegl Radler in.
What else are you working on?
Portland’s a very seasonal place, so as fall comes along we’re moving on to warm drinks, spiced drinks and our spirit of the season at Kimpton is eau de vie. We’ve got a pisco coming, an Armagnac coming, and the rest are cognacs. It’s a fun time to look at something else on the menu. We don’t spend a lot of time with cognac drinks. It’s an underutilized spirit, and when people come in and ask for a dealer’s choice I find myself dipping into that when I can. Brandy old fashioneds are very popular with Midwesterners.
And now that everyone’s been trained to drink Bourbon, it’s an easy move to cognac.
Especially in the wintertime. It was genius of Kimpton to choose rum and tiki in the summer. Last winter they did Scotch, and this fall it’s cognac.
What does Kimpton do to enable you to use it?
They provide us with education and all the tools we need to know what we’re selling, and recipes if we want them. They give us a list of spirits that we should offer. Usually every property has a bar guy and they leave it up to that to craft the menu, so it’s specific to that property.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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