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"  Caitlin Graham, 28Cure Rochester, NY Are you from Rochester originally? I grew up in New York City. My family came here for a job at the University of Rochester, and I left for a few years, came back, left again, came back. I seem to keep coming back here. How did you end up bartending? The first bar I ever worked in was in a big fine dining restaurant, Tonic, that would eventually turn into a nightclub at night. I was a bus girl there, and one day a server quit, and they said, &amp;quot;Go ahead, take tables.&amp;quot; A couple months later, a similar thing happened, and they said, &amp;quot;Jump back there. Make what you drink. Anything else, ask the other bartenders.&amp;quot; Has it been a calling? I&amp;#039;ve gone in and out of college more times than I want to admit for different things, but I keep falling back on this. Maybe this was it all along. What do you think makes Cure special drink-wise? We&amp;#039;re definitely focusing on cocktails that are ingredient-driven and conscious of the spirit of balance, just like the way a nice glass of wine or a well-crafted beer would be. We choose our ingredients really specifically, and they&amp;#039;re definitely great for people who are into cocktails, but we don&amp;#039;t want them to be so inaccessible that someone who&amp;#039;s new to the craft-cocktail experience can&amp;#039;t find something. I read an article in the paper that concluded, &amp;quot;Craft cocktails are coming to Rochester!&amp;quot; That was pretty funny to me. Craft cocktails are clearly not fresh to the industry, but that concept of cocktail-making, of liquor ordering, of ingredient use, of pairing, is fresh to Rochester. I&amp;#039;m in New York City a lot, and I feel that, no matter where I go, what we&amp;#039;re doing here stands up. Do you mind if I give my spiel? No, please do. To me, you go to a big city like New York, and it&amp;#039;s a place where the cultural landscape is constantly being tilled. In a place like Rochester, you don&amp;#039;t have that constant tilling and turnover. You have roots. It can be really hard to effect change, but for the individual who&amp;#039;s willing to do the tilling themselves, it can be an incredibly rewarding place to work. What&amp;#039;s your favorite drink to make? Well, I feel like everyone says a manhattan or a sazerac. Yep. Those are great drinks. My favorite drink to drink is a Negroni. So I&amp;#039;m going to go with that. It&amp;#039;s got three great flavors that can be expressed classically or you can mold them to your taste. Do you have a favorite ingredient to use? It&amp;#039;s changing constantly. I have so much to learn and so, as I&amp;#039;m exposed to new things, I get excited. I&amp;#039;m an ADD kid. When something gets into my hands, I want to play. But I love working with the sensory ingredients. Bitter, sweet, salty, sour, umami, all those herbal tones. What drink do you think everyone should know how to make? As long as you own a jigger, you can make any drink a really good drink. What&amp;#039;s a bartender&amp;#039;s most indispensable tool? Adaptability. You need to be able to move through a wide variety of personalities and treat each one as though you&amp;#039;re communicating specifically to them and yet retain your own character so as not to be a shape shifter. Actual tool? It&amp;#039;s gotta be the glass, because what else are you gonna put it in? Do you have a favorite fictional bar? I&amp;#039;m watching the HBO series Deadwood on DVD with my boyfriend right now, so if I could have a whiskey at The Gem, that would be pretty cool. What is Rochester known for drinking-wise? Genesee Beer. For sure. Although I&amp;#039;d like to proffer a modern second place. We&amp;#039;re running a riff on the manhattan right now that we&amp;#039;ve named the Goat Hill, which is the original survey name for where the [Rochester Public] Market&amp;#039;s situated. It&amp;#039;s Bulleit rye, Irish whisky, Carpano Antica, Cardamaro, and lemon bitters. But Rochester&amp;#039;s a beer town, through and through. What have you learned about friendship? Be open, because everyone&amp;#039;s always putting something on. &amp;quot;Everyone&amp;#039;s annoying to someone sometimes.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s a quote from my friend Theo. I like to keep everyone at the bar a very friendly, open-arms&amp;#039; length away. What have you learned about drinking? First, how to drink. Second, how to drink too much. Third, how to drink in control. Bartending&amp;#039;s taught me to drink with more sensibility. Hangover cure? I&amp;#039;d hate to have you poll my coworkers on that. I would say my hangover cure is B vitamins, aspirin, water, a popscicle, and pretzels. That&amp;#039;s also my stomach-flu cure. What do you toast to? The comedian Doug Stanhope says your vices are the most interesting things about you. So I guess I would say, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s to your vices.&amp;quot; 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/a17928/cure-bartender-rochester-14962646/>