Raising the Bar

[KatieLoeb]

Grrrrrr....Can you see the steam coming out of my ears??? I can't seem to find a link to the article, but this week's food article is called Raising the Bar, and in it, Mara Zepeda talks about the "workaday heroes of the Philly bar scene" being the graduates of the Mixology Wine Institute out on City Line Avenue. They use colored water in bottles to learn how to mix drinks. Is it me, or is this the equivalent of asking culinary students to cook plastic porkchops and rubber chickens and use colored water to approximate sauces?

And we wonder why Philly is so far behind the curve with ingredient focused cocktail bars. Pfft!

I suppose I should take comfort that these "graduates" are proudly posing behind the bar at Applebees and TGI Fridays in their framed photos gracing the school. I'm pretty certain they wouldn't last too long anywhere that required some skill. Still, the market is flooded with these bartending school graduates so I suppose that is just bringing down the general expectation level of the public.

It's an uphill battle, but I'm fighting as hard as I can...

[hathor]

That's just plain stupid.

What does colored water teach you....blue + yellow = green? What would be the point??

[KatieLoeb]

Directly from the article.

After his lecture instructor Alex Garrison III...directs students to the four bar stations and throws out rapid-fire drink assignments: "Singapore Sling!", Desert Dry martini!", "Tom Collins" A flurry of hands mix, measure, shake and pour from liquor bottles filled with colored water, topping the drink off with a plastic cherry or olive...

WTF? Colored water? Plastic cherries and olives? Seriously???

Hathor, I suspect you're correct. They know the drink is properly proportioned when it's precisely the right color. Yeah. That's got to be it.

I have penned an email to the author that I'm saving so I don't send it before carefully reconsidering my language. Once I've calmed down, reviewed and sent it, I'll post it here.

[mrbigjas]

it's here:

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=14455

[KatieLoeb]

Thanks James! I couldn't find that link to save my life.

Please, everyone read the article and confirm my sanity.

Well OK. That might be asking a bit much, but seriously. Am I wrong or is there more to what I do than memorizing flash card recipes and learning how to mix colored water? There are so many legitimate academic avenues for bartending knowledge. Why would anyone pay to learn how to mix colored water?

[mattohara]

/me apologizes for bringing said article to the moderator's attention.

killer drink last night btw. Parisienne? glad i stopped drinking after just one.

[JanMcBaker]

Grrrrrr....Can you see the steam coming out of my ears???  I can't seem to find a link to the article, but this week's food article is called Raising the Bar, and in it, Mara Zepeda talks about the "workaday heroes of the Philly bar scene" being the graduates of the Mixology Wine Institute out on City Line Avenue.  They use colored water in bottles to learn how to mix drinks.    Is it me, or is this the equivalent of asking culinary students to cook plastic porkchops and rubber chickens and use colored water to approximate sauces?

←

Maybe the students are under 21 and aren't allowed to work with the grown-up stuff.....

[HD73]

Just to play devil's advocate for a second-

The article does distinguish between "more upmarket" bartenders and the graduates of this school. It says right in the beginning that these kids are heading out to work at Appleby's TGIFriday's, etc.

While it might be nice to live in a world where one could saunter in to a Chili's and find someone of Katie's caliber behind the bar, that's just never going to happen. And I've been to plenty of bars supposedly "more upmarket" than those mentioned where the bartender had no idea what they were doing. This place probably does actually do the world some good, in that it cuts down on the blank stares and undrinkable beverages handed out by bartenders around the city and the suburbs.

Now, I think I understand why this article rankles. It's not its content, it's the simple fact that it was printed, when there are hundreds of more interesting alcohol related stories that could have been told in the same place. It certainly does read like space-filler to me.

I think the right answer isn't mixology school reform. It's getting in gentle contact with the person that wrote the article and suggesting some more interesting alcohol related stories lurking around the city. I think she might be glad to have them. Just my two cents.

[Andrew Fenton]

I rather $u$pect there'$ a $en$ible rea$on for using fake spirits while training these folks... they're able to learn the "correct" proportions for drinks; it keeps the cost of materials down; and there's way less liability for the school. In a way, it's appropriate for bartending at Applebee's or wherever; it's the alcohol equivalent of pre-mixed, heat-up dinners that lots of chains serve.

The really ironic bit, as I see it, is how that fits together with the "pro-booze" hook for the article... I don't quite know how that's supposed to work...

[KatieLoeb]

/me apologizes for bringing said article to the moderator's attention. 

killer drink last night btw.  Parisienne?  glad i stopped drinking after just one.

←

Yes Matt. This is all your fault for leaving your copy of the Weekly with me.

Glad you enjoyed your Parisienne. Always nice to have an appreciative recipient of my mad science on the other side of the bar.

Maybe the students are under 21 and aren't allowed to work with the grown-up stuff..... 

←

It says that many of the students work in other careers. Paralegals, retirees, etc. Age is definitely not the issue.

Just to play devil's advocate for a second-

The article does distinguish between "more upmarket" bartenders and the graduates of this school.  It says right in the beginning that these kids are heading out to work at Appleby's TGIFriday's, etc. 

While it might be nice to live in a world where one could saunter in to a Chili's and find someone of Katie's caliber behind the bar, that's just never going to happen.  And I've been to plenty of bars supposedly "more upmarket" than those mentioned where the bartender had no idea what they were doing.  This place probably does actually do the world some good, in that it cuts down on the blank stares and undrinkable beverages handed out by bartenders around the city and the suburbs.

Now, I think I understand why this article rankles.  It's not its content, it's the simple fact that it was printed, when there are hundreds of more interesting alcohol related stories that could have been told in the same place.  It certainly does read like space-filler to me.

I think the right answer isn't mixology school reform.  It's getting in gentle contact with the person that wrote the article and suggesting some more interesting alcohol related stories lurking around the city.  I think she might be glad to have them.  Just my two cents.

←

Thanks for that. I think you're right. This is what's chapping my ass about this article. It's filler. It's badly researched. If it was meant to be a commercial for this bartending school then they should be upfront about it and let folks read it with the grain of salt required. If they wanted to write about where to learn to be a bartender there's way more legitimate academic channels in which to do that. And yes, there are plenty of more interesting stories around.

I rather $u$pect there'$ a $en$ible rea$on for using fake spirits while training these folks...  they're able to learn the "correct" proportions for drinks; it keeps the cost of materials down; and there's way less liability for the school.  In a way, it's appropriate for bartending at Applebee's or wherever; it's the alcohol equivalent of pre-mixed, heat-up dinners that lots of chains serve.

The really ironic bit, as I see it, is how that fits together with the "pro-booze" hook for the article...  I don't quite know how that's supposed to work...

←

The pro-booze thing makes NO sense whatsoever. If the women that own this school know so much about spirits and mixology and are trying to promote responsible drinking etc. what's up with the fakery? Could it be what you've suggested? More money for them and less spent on materials? I don't know about their liability issues, but certainly one needn't possess a "personal" liquor license to teach about wine and spirits in PA. Marnie Old teaches her classes at the Penn's View Inn, and has done wine tastings and seminars all over the city. The Wine School of Philadelphia teaches classes as well. Tria's Fermentation school has wine and beer classes. All of these professionals use real wine and beer and spirits in their classes. So it isn't a PLCB problem.

I just don't get it.

[ferky]

They use colored water in bottles to learn how to mix drinks.   

I'm interested in knowing how else you would suggest running a mixology class when you've got anywhere from 5 to 15 students at a time practicing everything from pouring to shaking to stirring to garnishing. . . . Given the shear volume of liquid that I know my class went through when I was certified so many years ago, I can't imagine how expensive the class would have been. There is something liberating to a student when they know that they can experiment with their own techniques and not have to be concerned with how much those 17 previous screw-ups actually cost.

Number of fake Long-Island Iced Teas made in practice: 350.

Number made during my short professional bartending career: 2.

On the other hand, any good teacher worth a cent will be able to identify which particular drink ingredients have a specific affect so they can caution against relying too much on what the "fake" version looks and feels like. I would hope that teacher would acknowledge that you may have the right technique for making a grasshopper, but it sure isn't going to look right when made without cream and liquor. Is it really such a bad teaching method to use water, water and a plastic olive when making a martini?

[Vadouvan]

The intrinsic and insurmountable problem with the whole Idea of a mixology class that doesnt actually use real spirits is that it has no basis for feedback that in essence it is 95% a waste of time.

You may learn all the attributes that makes you a good bartender such as speed, prioritizing and multi-tasking but ultimately you have zero basis to determine if the product you are making is good.

The ONLY way to determine if a drink is good is to taste it.

Without taste there is Nothing.

Smoking Mirrors.

I do applaud the owners of the concept for coming up with what is in essence the perfect crime.

Edited April 20, 2007 by Vadouvan (log)

[Alcibiades]

I don't think it's entirely useless to practice the technical proportions of cocktail making with placebos. For one thing, it is expensive to train and retrain with real booze. For another, spirits and the cocktails made from them can't necessarily be drunk ad infinitum--they make you drunk. Absolutely, one should be tasting the gnumenon and then aspire to proportionalize its approximation but using real booze to try and get a manhattan right seems unnecessary if one is making 10, 20 of them in class.

With no real disrespect intended to these schools' proprietors, the real problem with these "mixology" schools is that it's a waste of the students' money and time. Bartenders should learn on the job--one barbacks and learns the intangible elements of timing, product priority and service. These are the things a bartender needs that he/she can't read in the bartender's bible but spending one's time and money on the class is to be victimized by what V. describes correctly as the "perfect crime."

Edited April 20, 2007 by Alcibiades (log)

[Rich Pawlak]

Sweet mother of God, it's a silly, poorly written article in a free weekly paper. I cant fathom why you're giving it this much attention!

[Holly Moore]

At age twenty or so I took a weekly, two hour lecture course in Beverage Management that was referred to as "wine tasting" and usually ended with a lavish sampling of wines or booze supplied by manufacturers. (Drinking age in NY was 18 at that time.) The class was just before lunch, giving students the opportunity to sleep or walk off their research.

Students being students, it is probably a good idea that the majority of mixing at the Mixology Wine Istitute is done with colored water. From a practical and liability point of view, locking away the hard stuff makes good sense.

Other than taste - and we're talking basic formulas here, not cooking recipes - the colored water probably works fine. Especially if the colors are true. The only issues I see are in drinks where over shaking or stirring dilutes them.

The other issue is the variety in flavors of different brands of the same liquor. That is not really classroom fodder. It is best learned sitting across the bar from Katie or some other "gastro pub hipster."

Plastic garnishes on the other hand, though they may have more nutritional value than garden variety maraschino cherries, should not be used. The more practice students get prepping garnishes the better.

I'm guessing there is homework, assigned or not, where the real stuff gets used.

Edited April 21, 2007 by Holly Moore (log)

[jmbrightman]

Without taste there is Nothing.

Smoking Mirrors.

←

I believe the phrase is "smoke and mirrors", i.e. the distractions used by magicians to prevent the audience from seeing how the trick is done.

[Vadouvan]

For one thing, it is expensive to train and retrain with real booze. For another, spirits and the cocktails made from them can't necessarily be drunk ad infinitum--they make you drunk. Absolutely, one should be tasting the gnumenon and then aspire to proportionalize its approximation but using real booze to try and get a manhattan right seems unnecessary if one is making 10, 20 of them in class.

With no real disrespect intended to these schools' proprietors, the real problem with these "mixology" schools is that it's a waste of the students' money and time. Bartenders should learn on the job--one barbacks and learns the intangible elements of timing, product priority and service.

It's expensive to go to cooking school, photography school or Wine school.

You charge money and waste a lot of food,paper and wine.

That is the point if you are charging.

People dont learn with placebos.

Lets call a spade a spade.....

The real issue here is a "mixology school" using real booze would almost certainly have to get a liquor license which costs at least $75 grand not to mention the inventory of booze to practice with.

This is just a way of doing it on the cheap with minimal capital.

It's BS.

There are bartending schools that use real booze, not many in PA because of your liquor laws which somehow manage to be bothe arcane and archaic.

Edited April 21, 2007 by Vadouvan (log)

[Pacojette]

Mixology school, like culinary school, is a point of entry into a career. you don't graduate culinary school a chef (or even a decent cook, for that matter) and you don't graduate bartending school ready to get behind a serious bar. but what's wrong with practicing mixing fake drinks? the volume of "experience" you get in mixology school might take years to replicate as a barback, and in school you can do it behind closed doors with no fear of failure. there's no law that says you have to pay your bartending dues the old-fashioned way, except perhaps the laws of commerce which might dictate the bars behind which these mixology school grads find themselves.

years ago the american notion of culinary school was seen by many european chefs as an affront to the apprentice system they went through. but now culinary school is an effective and prolific farm system for the restaurant big leagues. Certainly, in culinary school one is not exposed to many aspects of "real world" restaurant cooking: you don't get to play with truffles and foie gras and wild asparagus in school (it's a business too) and you don't necessarily get to feel the pressure of the entire dining room getting seated within five minutes. but for a lot of people, the price of tuition is worth the years it can save in on-the-job training, and so i see nothing wrong with a mixology school that trains its students with colored water.

[Vadouvan]

years ago the american notion of culinary school was seen by many european chefs as an affront to the apprentice system they went through.

That is simply not true.

How many years ago ?

There have been cooking schools in France since the start of this century.

Cordon Bleu

Ritz escoffier at Place Vendome

Yves Thuries

Fauchon

Pierre Herme

La_Duree

The notion of cooking school was not solely American.

Youngs cooks in Europe trained and apprenticed.

Some may have apprenticed alone but European chefs NEVER saw cooking school as an affront to the system.

Name one chef who did ?

Edited April 21, 2007 by Vadouvan (log)

[Pacojette]

years ago the american notion of culinary school was seen by many european chefs as an affront to the apprentice system they went through.

That is simply not true.

How many years ago ?

There have been cooking schools in France since the start of this century.

Cordon Bleu

Ritz escoffier at Place Vendome

Yves Thuries

Fauchon

Pierre Herme

La_Duree

The notion of cooking school was not solely American.

Youngs cooks in Europe trained and apprenticed.

Some may have apprenticed alone but European chefs NEVER saw cooking school as an affront to the system.

Name one chef who did ?

←

Most of the places on the list above are either relatively recent entrants to the culinary school market and/or are geared toward the enthusiast rather than the professional. you are correct that there have been cooking schools in France since the start of this century, but the notion of culinary school as vocational training for professionals is largely one that american schools have advanced en masse in the last twenty years. Many of my instructors in culinary school were chefs trained in the european apprentice system who felt that the american culinary school left something to be desired in comparison. there was a degree of resentment that american kids could become a commis in two years when it may have taken them much longer.

[Lisa1349]

There it is... we're officially off topic. Here's a question, how many of those 4 drinks ordered by the instructor are ordered in a restaurant on a regular basis? If Katie weren't there to set trends in bar consumption, what do the masses order when there's no guidance? martinis with no vermouth that aren't really martinis, cosmos, stuff and tonic?

Edited April 21, 2007 by Lisa1349 (log)

[Vadouvan]

Lisa is correct, the subject of cooking schools is for another thread but suffice to say Cordon Bleu Paris and Ecole Ritz is for enthusiasts is laughable......

What's shocking about this thread is how many people who sing the local-organic fresh-real food song and dance and agree with this absurdity of making mixed drinks with colored water.....

Edited April 21, 2007 by Vadouvan (log)

[HD73]

Lisa is correct, the subject of cooking schools is for another thread but suffice to say Cordon Bleu Paris and Ecole Ritz is for enthusiasts is laughable......

What's shocking about this thread is how many people who sing the local-organic fresh-real food song and dance and agree with this absurdity of making mixed drinks with colored water.....

←

I'm not shocked. My guess is that the "many people who sing the local organic fresh-real food song and dance" aren't bellying up to the bar at Applebees or TGIFridays very often. Why should they care? It's not like there are in-depth threads here discussing the inadequacy of training the "chefs" at Applebees receive. Or how the beverage service at McDonald's has really gone downhill since it went self serve.

If I don't go get drinks at these places, why should I care?

[Vadouvan]

I'm not shocked. My guess is that the "many people who sing the local organic fresh-real food song and dance" aren't bellying up to the bar at Applebees or TGIFridays very often. Why should they care? It's not like there are in-depth threads here discussing the inadequacy of training the "chefs" at Applebees receive. Or how the beverage service at McDonald's has really gone downhill since it went self serve.

If I don't go get drinks at these places, why should I care?

You dont have to care.

The acceptance of mediocrity doesnt exist in a vaccum.

Walk the talk.

Nuff said.

I'm out.

Edited April 21, 2007 by Vadouvan (log)

[Pacojette]

Lisa is correct, the subject of cooking schools is for another thread but suffice to say Cordon Bleu Paris and Ecole Ritz is for enthusiasts is laughable......

What's shocking about this thread is how many people who sing the local-organic fresh-real food song and dance and agree with this absurdity of making mixed drinks with colored water.....

←

What about these places?

Yves Thuries

Fauchon

Pierre Herme

La_Duree

I've never heard of them in the context of training culinary professionals. Please enlighten...