This was not necessarily a crime. It is how many cocktails were originally created, to hide the appalling flavours of cheap hooch, bathtub gin or unholy moonshine.

Today it’s happening all over again with flavoured sugar syrups, jams & a whole variety of stupid cookery ingredients. Unfortunately this time around bartenders aren’t using the cheaper poorer quality spirits but instead choosing top end boutique liquor. This menagerie of ingredients can actually mask some really poor cocktail making.

Bartenders who don’t understand their basic principles of sweet & sour that can’t regularly produce a balanced drink often mask their inabilities by simply adding more ingredients.

The same mistakes are often made with cookery – there are only a small percentage of chefs around who can improve the flavour of a freshly caught fish or a well sourced steak.

The solution to this problem in my opinion would be a well made classic drink. However I recently read an article stating that you needn’t put classic cocktails on a bar menu as everyone should know that they would be available anyway.  I would love to agree but the reality is quite different.

You have to travel a long way to find a decent Margarita, Mai Tai or Manhattan & even further if you wish your second drink to taste anything like your first.

Drink with integrity, stay wet!

Mal x

It’s not much to ask is it really?  For a waitress or bartender to treat you like a human being. But it’s exactly this that will be the failure of the UK bar industry if we allow it to continue.

Recently I was in a bar in London of notable cocktail repute. I had taken a young bartender there to show him around. We sat at the bar and ordered two drinks, which were swiftly delivered with the absolute minimal amount of conversation required to serve a drink.

The bartender plainly showing off had turned his back on us to have an overly loud conversation with his co-worker about who he had been starfucking the night before.

When I asked my young colleague what he thought of the place he was suitably impressed with his drink & the surroundings.

It was clear that we were in the trade and that we were keen to chat as we had sought out this place for that very reason. I was pissed off with the blatant cold shoulder shown to us. So much so I wanted to make a point.

I said to my colleague that yes this is a nice bar but “watch this” I stood up and proceeded to jump up and down ten times waving my arms in the air before sitting back on my barstool to finish my drink. Not one of the two members of staff noticed. We sat just in front of them at the bar and we were their only two customers.

The point was well made. I understand that customers can get their booze cheap from a supermarket and drink it at home but you just cannot recreate the banter that exists in a great bar.

Unfortunately it is all too often taken for granted.

Oh and god forbid if this ever happens to you in MOJO, please let me know who it was that served you so I can make a point out of it!

Stay wet.

Mal