Thomas Roe, Rush Street
By Leslee Komaiko
For dineLA.com
It’s a good time to be a cocktail aficionado in the City of Angels.
“LA is starting to come into its own,” says local cocktail authority Natalie Bovis-Nelsen, a.k.a. The Liquid Muse (theliquidmuse.com). “It has been lagging behind London and New York and San Francisco. It’s been a vodka Red Bull culture for a long time. There was not as much attention paid to quality mixology. Now both restaurant and bar managers are realizing a restaurant is not complete without a quality cocktail menu and bartenders who know how to create quality drinks and make the classics properly.”
Alas, this doesn’t mean you can walk into any local watering hole and get a proper drink. It takes a bit of exploring. Furthermore, a great bartender offers up more than an expertly made tonic. They should be good for a bit of banter, recognize regulars and get you to expand your cocktail palate. The following professionals meet those criteria and more.
Thomas Roe, Rush Street
“I’m the only bartender in LA that’s not an actor,” jokes Roe, who has been bartending upwards of 20 years, ever since his college days. But he does have a whole other life. He’s a personal trainer with a following as loyal as his bar regulars.
Roe is especially committed to working with the chef to create cocktails that pair well with the food. (His light and citrusy Pear Flower Martini, for example, goes beautifully with the restaurant’s crispy Parmesan calamari.) And he believes that cocktails should “stimulate the visual senses,” so he does a fair number of layered drinks. His Bikini Martini has a “float” of grenadine that sinks to the bottom of the glass.
Roe is a regular at the Wednesday and Saturday Santa Monica farmers markets, looking for the next thing he might turn into an infusion. (He’s used basil, bay leaf, Serrano chile and cinnamon, among other things.) He believes a great dessert drink can easily and deliciously sub for the real thing. And he has an uncanny memory for names.
Danielle Motor, The Hungry Cat
Motor, a New Orleans native, is one of three women on the Hungry Cat’s bartending team, and it’s very much a team. Everyone is involved in coming up with new drinks based on the season. But before you start envisioning a trio of Charlie’s Angels, stop.
“I’m not a typical looking woman behind the bar: the busty blonde club bartender,” says Motor. “I have to rely on other traits to get people to open up.” Those other traits include a healthy sense of humor that comes in handy when fielding comments from male patrons such as, “I don’t like anything sweet.”
“It happens a lot,” says Motor. But she assures them, “It’s all right. You’re not going to get a cosmo.”
“Usually after the first sip we’ve got them in the palm of our hand,” says Motor. That’s little wonder, considering Motor’s approach to mixing drinks. “I like to treat a drink like a meal, like a song, something that’s complete in itself,” she says, whether it be a sazerac or something a little more eclectic, like the “Fall Forward” with muddled dates, pomegranate juice, lemon and vodka.
Joel Black, Comme Ça
Black is kind of like the sushi chef who doesn’t do California rolls or spicy rolls, except he’s really nice about it. He doesn’t make cosmos for example. “They’re not well balanced,” he explains. Not to mention he doesn’t have fresh cranberry juice on hand and uses only fresh juices. Instead, he might suggest a raspberry vodka daisy.
“My greatest satisfaction is converting people over, getting people excited about cocktails again,” says Black, who learned his craft from one of the country’s most celebrated mixologists, Sam Ross of Milk & Honey and Little Branch in New York.
Not sure what to order? Consider the “Dealer’s Choice.” Tell Black your liquor, maybe a flavor profile, and leave the rest to him. We gave him “tequila” and “sweet.” He came back with a “Blackberry Firing Squad,” and had us at the name alone. (For the record, that’s blackberry juice muddled with lime, a little simple syrup, soda, orange bitters and, of course, tequila.) And don’t worry, he’s not inventing anything on the spot. He and his colleagues share a repertoire of 300 drinks and they pride themselves in consistency. So if you fall in love with whatever Black whips up—and chances are good you will—rest assured you can enjoy it again the next time.
Prefer the familiar? Not to worry. Black and company do the classics beautifully. Their house martini, for example, is stirred because shaking results in a watery martini. “James Bond screwed us all saying, ‘Shaken not stirred,’” Black says.
Ian Porter, blue on blue
Because blue on blue is in a hotel, The Avalon to be precise, a fair number of its patrons are out-of-towners. It is not unusual for Porter to field calls from these guests, after they’ve arrived home, pleading for a drink recipe they are eager to recreate. The most recent request was for his Key Lime Pie Martini recipe with a graham cracker crust rim. Usually the callers are in luck. Porter, a 16-year veteran of the biz, is happy to share. The exception is his Bloody Mary. Porter honed his mix recipe years ago, even flirted with bottling it at one point—a notion he has not abandoned—and consequently feels proprietary about it. He even waits until the wee hours of the night to make batches, so it remains top secret.
In addition to the aforementioned Key Lime Pie Martini and Bloody Mary, one of Porter’s most popular creations is the Blue Avalon. “It’s a simple drink,” he says, a combination of Bacardi rum, Malibu rum, pineapple juice, Blue Curacao, Sprite and lemon juice. “But it catches people’s eyes,” perhaps because it’s nearly the exact hue of the barside pool, which was in fact Porter’s inspiration.
Marcos Tello, The Edison
It may seem cliché, but Tello, who recently took and passed the rigorous Beverage Alcohol Resource exam in New York, was at least in part drawn to bartending by the TV show Cheers. And naturally Sam Malone was his favorite character. But the bartender whom he aspires to be goes back to pre-prohibition: “the renaissance man from the 1890s golden era,” he says.
So committed is Tello to his line of work that he has two cocktail glasses tattooed on his arms. He is also responsible for starting a consortium of local bartenders called The Sporting Life. “It’s for people who are into it but who are feeling like their own separate island,” says Tello. The group meets every few weeks. “We geek out with the pressing cocktail issues of the day.”
If you do find yourself at the bar when Tello is working, here’s a bit of advice: be polite. “What doesn’t work is when someone has a credit card or a bill and they’re reaching across the bar,” he says. “I will ignore that. Or standing on the bar rail and leaning over the bar, I’ll ignore that. Or if they use a nickname like Buddy or Skip, I ignore that too.”
Rush Street, 9546 Washington Blvd, Culver City, 310.837.9546
The Hungry Cat, 1535 N. Vine St, Hollywood, 323.462.2155
Comme Ça, 8479 Melrose Ave, West Hollywood, 323.782.1104
blue on blue at Avalon Beverly Hills, 9400 W. Olympic Blvd, Beverly Hills, 310.277.5221
The Edison, 108 W. 2nd St, Los Angeles, 213.613.0000
