Saturday, October 06, 2007
Food, "Behind the Bar"

Simply the best

Restaurant Eugene’s master mixologist

Greg Best of Restaurant Eugene
CREDIT: Spark St. Jude
By Hope S. Philbrick

Greg Best does not simply mix cocktails. He’s a self-described “mad scientist” dedicated to freshness. His preference for homemade and from-scratch ingredients over shortcuts and ready-made mixers has gained him notoriety behind the bar at Restaurant Eugene.

Best didn’t intend to work in the restaurant industry. He studied advertising and commercial design, got into acting and then worked for a radio station in New York. His brother, a chef, encouraged a move to Las Vegas, where he got a part-time restaurant job. After a couple of shifts behind the bar, “Everything changed,” Best says. He’d stumbled upon his perfect career: making drinks, interacting with people and delving into the history of spirits and cocktails. He studied at the Academy of Spirits and Fine Service before moving to Atlanta, working at Emeril’s and then Restaurant Eugene.

Q What’s the difference between a mixologist and a bartender?
A Bartenders are anybody who can pour a drink; mixologists are more intrinsic in their knowledge of spirits and flavor balance. Basically it’s more exposure to a wider variety of spirits and cocktails.

Generally to follow that path [to become a mixologist], it’s studying a lot, reading on classic cocktails and not just working with alcohol, but also gaining knowledge of food and flavors. It’s almost like a journey that you decide you’re going to go all in for.

We’re lucky and fortunate that the focus has shifted from wine and food so cocktails are having their heyday. Programs are starting to take root and pop up; I think in the next few years, you’ll see more.

What is your approach to cocktails?
Actually, when I started down this path of enlightenment—or obsessive-compulsive insanity—I became committed to authentic ingredients. Fresh-squeezed fruit juice is only part of it. Mixers are so jacked up with high-fructose corn syrup they don’t taste what they’re supposed to taste like. I decided it would be exciting to get to the root of what items are supposed to taste like. I started tinkering.

Tonic water is a pretty simple matter of finding the right proportions of quinine, water, sugar—and of using cane sugar instead of corn syrup—with bitters. I also make my own bitters, soda water, different tinctures—which are essences of different botanicals like cardamom, lavender, saffron, fennel and spearmint; just a couple drops changes the complexity and flavor of a drink—and ice cubes. We have four different sizes of ice for six different uses: We chip large block ice for certain drinks, plus have standard bar ice and two different size cubes. To make our large perfect cubes, first we distill the water then freeze them in layers. The result is a cube that’s super dense and clear; it looks like glass.

The bar at Restaurant Eugene is so perfect; we’re like mad scientists. It’s an intimate space with only six seats, so we have a lot of room to play and take time with cocktails. It’s the best date bar in the world. And the bar menu changes seasonally, so there are always new cocktails.

What’s next?
Actually, my partners and I are opening up Holman & Finch Public House next door to Restaurant Eugene in mid- to late November. I’m passing the torch here to Nick Hearin; I started training him four and a half years ago.

Holman and Finch are Linton Hopkins’ and my mothers’ maiden names—we came up with that when we started making tonic water and invented a back story about these two crazy apothecaries in Louisiana.

The Public House will have about 58 seats. Our goal is to expand on what we’re doing at Restaurant Eugene. Two of my partners are mixologists—one opened the bar at Repast and the other is running the bar at Posh—so we can maintain the attention to detail and have the manpower to do it.

We want to build a place that we want to eat and drink in—with artisanal food, everything fresh and made to order. SP