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"  Trace Conway, 31, Beverage Director The Red Cat New York City Part of being a good bartender is throwing a good party. I tend towards the Manhattan, personally. But I&amp;#039;m very experimental. I do an ancho chile Scotch that I make into Rob Roys.  To make any drink better at home, add some sort of fresh fruit or a fresh herb. If you have citrus lying around, muddle it into an old fashioned. Or if you have some basil leaves or some herbs, shake them with the drink.  209 is my favorite gin right now. These people bought a winery in California and when they were cleaning up the barn in the back they found this thing that said &amp;quot;Register #209&amp;quot; and they looked it up and it was the 209th registered distillery in California. So they ended up dumping the whole winery and making gin. It&amp;#039;s in the middle of St. Helena and they make gin. It&amp;#039;s a softer, more floral type of gin, which is good for mixing.  Bartenders are trained to listen. People think you&amp;#039;re wiser when you&amp;#039;re actually just listening.  There are those few \u2014 especially regulars in the neighborhood \u2014 who I know way too much about. And then some people just want to come in and have a good time.  They don&amp;#039;t know much about me.  Sometimes I&amp;#039;ll know someone for a year or more and suddenly I&amp;#039;ll mention that I have a baby too, and they say, &amp;quot;You have a kid?&amp;quot; The less they know is probably better. That way you can be whatever they want you to be.  A good bartender will always look like they&amp;#039;re having a good time.  People probably think we&amp;#039;re always like that \u2014 we&amp;#039;re always the life of the party \u2014 when really we&amp;#039;re just at work.  If you&amp;#039;re trying to get my attention,  stay in one spot.  It&amp;#039;s almost a game,  when people walk in we try to guess what they&amp;#039;re going to have. Which table is going to order four chickens, or who the cosmo girls are. Of course it&amp;#039;s more fun when you&amp;#039;re wrong.  If someone is sitting there for an hour waiting for a drink,  you&amp;#039;re a bad bartender.  Our job is to serve as many drinks as possible.  More drinks is more money. We&amp;#039;re not ignoring you.  I was just in San Francisco and we went to the Water Bar.  There&amp;#039;s something about being outside and on the water and drinking that go hand in hand.  At a bar on the water? Margaritas.  There&amp;#039;s nothing better than a good margarita,  but it has to be good. None of that sour mix. And in general you don&amp;#039;t need to go higher than a reposado when making a margarita.  The best drink in the morning is a rum punch.  I lived in Belize for a couple of years, and we would often start our mornings with a nice rum punch. It&amp;#039;s sort of like juice, right?  If the bartender is wearing a vest and has a handlebar mustache,  I don&amp;#039;t want to be drinking there. I don&amp;#039;t want to be educated about what the cocktail was like in 1933. I just want a drink.  Drinking is supposed to be a good time and fun and casual.  I like shots and beers, and being able to get silly, and nobody cares in a dive bar. The music&amp;#039;s usually too loud, the people are always interesting, and the drinks are cheap. Yeah, I admit, I go to dive bars.  No matter how atrocious a bartender is,  I couldn&amp;#039;t not tip. I would tell you what I didn&amp;#039;t like, but I&amp;#039;d still leave you money.  Yes, when I&amp;#039;m not working, my friends always ask me to make the drinks. People say, &amp;quot;Great, you&amp;#039;re here! You can make the margaritas.&amp;quot; Hey, you can make them.  If I didn&amp;#039;t drink so much I&amp;#039;d actually have a good bar at home. I have one bottle of rye and one bottle of vermouth, I think. And some port. But I have every utensil you could possibly want.  My two-year-old does know how to say &amp;quot;wine.&amp;quot; And unfortunately she actually likes it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/bars/interviews/a32919/bartender-the-red-cat-060410/>