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" Greg Buttera, 31 The Barrelhouse Flat Chicago Why do people go to a bar? People go to find compassion. People go to find sympathy, a sense of belonging, and a sense of solidarity with their fellow man \u2014 a sense of their place in the universe. What&amp;#039;s a bartender&amp;#039;s role in that? The bartender is a friend when you don&amp;#039;t have one at your side. The bartender is someone that you implicitly trust, and that you can be open with. What&amp;#039;s the craziest thing that&amp;#039;s happened at the bar? A woman who was quietly sitting at the bar flipped her phone around for me to see when I walked by, and it was a picture of her in lingerie. And then, every time I passed by, she&amp;#039;d show me another picture, and did a striptease on her phone until she had a full-frontal shot. That was odd. Not entirely unwelcome. If you could share a drink with anyone, who would it be? I don&amp;#039;t know how it&amp;#039;d work out, because he didn&amp;#039;t really drink, but Abraham Lincoln, for sure. I&amp;#039;ve been passively developing this notion lately that there are these eternal souls that come into the world once in a while, and they have a kind of innate cosmic comprehension of everything that comes before and everything that will come. They just spring up into life and impact the world in profound ways. I think Lincoln was maybe the timeliest man who ever lived. What&amp;#039;s your favorite drink? If I had to drink one drink for the rest of my life, it&amp;#039;d be a Manhattan. Just a classic two-to-one, Wild Turkey 101 rye, which isn&amp;#039;t made anymore, sadly. I&amp;#039;m going through my personal stash more quickly than I would like. Two ounces of that, an ounce of Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth, and a couple dashes of Angostura bitters. And I like my Manhattans a little under-stirred. I like a drink that punches me in the face, so I like a Manhattan to drink a little bit hot. What&amp;#039;s going on in the Chicago drinking scene? I think we&amp;#039;re incorporating more of a culinary angle into very classically styled drinks. A lot of the top bartenders in Chicago have spent a decent amount of time in high-end kitchens, so they take a Manhattan as a base and say, &amp;quot;I wanna get coffee notes.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;re taking a culinary angle that differs pretty radically from the San Francisco market-fresh idea, and we&amp;#039;re using a lot of kitchen techniques. What&amp;#039;s a bartender&amp;#039;s most indispensible tool? Patience is the most important thing. You have to be a Buddha or a Ghandi behind the bar, absorbing negative energy, converting it to positive energy, and pushing it back out of your body to feed it into a positive-energy continuum that hopefully the whole establishment benefits from. Why do you drink? Working at a bar, or being at a bar, I think of it like a pirate ship. There&amp;#039;s a very jovial, strangely democratic, and very fraternal sense that I get. I usually drink to share. What do you toast to? My friend will frequently offer a toast to the sea. I&amp;#039;ve toasted to the railroads. I&amp;#039;ve toasted to the progress of technology. I feel a connection not only to the people who are immediately present, but also to all of human history \u2014 to Egyptian pyramid builders drinking primitive beer, to ancient Romans at bacchanalia drinking wine together. There&amp;#039;s something that stretches back to the earliest ideas of modern society, how we interact with each other, how we relate to each other. It&amp;#039;s part of the social grid of humanity in an infinite, essential way. What would you never touch in a liquor cabinet? I have generally cheap tastes and low standards in life across the board. There aren&amp;#039;t many things that would pass my lips and lead to regret. Hangover cure? B vitamins, a multivitamin, bunch of water, coconut water, and Pedialyte. PLUS: Read More Bartender Questions on Eat Like a Man &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/bars/interviews/a17396/barrelhouse-flat-chicago-bartender-14853538/>