I happen to be a very big fan of my page mate here at the IJ, Jeff Burkhart.
The reason is he seems like a throwback kind of guy. A bar guy. I am, too.
In fact, if you were born and raised in San Francisco back in the days when neighborhoods encompassed an entire quadrant of the city and weren’t divided into “sub-hoods” like Dogpatch, SoMa, NoPa and FiDi, you probably often chatted long into the night at the watering hole of your choice.
That’s where business took place, new friends were met and all the problems of the world were solved. And you needn’t run up thousands of dollars pouring out your problems to a psychoanalyst. That’s what bartenders were for.
Last week, Burkhart reminded me of those heady days and nights (sometimes both) when he spoke of a gray-haired man who did not want his Manhattan served in a coupe. “I want it in a ‘real’ glass,” he said. And, while I may not relate to that man in any other way that Burkhart described, I, too, want my Manhattan in a “real” glass (which I never fail to emphasize by ingeniously forming my hands into a V-shape signifying a “real” martini glass).
It seems like coupes are all the rage in today’s bar scene, and I understand the history. They were supposedly created during Louis XVI’s reign as king of France (and, rumor has it, they were given their shape based on his bride, Marie Antoinette’s, breasts).
The coupe disappeared (very much like Antoinette herself) for a couple hundred years, and then resurfaced in the United States in the 1930s as an alternative to the champagne flute.
My dislike for their being back in vogue stems more from the fact that growing up in my house, their only use was as a vehicle for Del Monte canned fruit salad. I can’t bear to drink a cocktail served in a coupe for fear of discovering a 40-year-old slice of cantaloupe in my Manhattan.
But, grudgingly, I get it. Bars have changed. And with it, so have bartenders. To the point that the very name “bartender” is starting to give way to a new breed of server called a mixologist.
Burkhart, last Sunday, described the difference in a far better way than I can. “A bartender asks, and a mixologist tells,” he wrote.
I had a friend in New York who considered himself a “professional drinker.” He was a distinguished guy with a high-level job, and dressed like he’d just stepped off the pages of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. His one personal edict: He would not drink in a bar that used a shot glass.
“If you can’t ‘free pour’ you shouldn’t be making drinks,” was his mantra.
If the throwback bartenders of the San Francisco I knew, Michael McCourt, Seamus Coyle, Bob Mulhern, Michael English, Morty Miller and their counterparts, ever heard the word “mixologist” associated with their profession, they’d spit up in their shot of Paddy’s.
The mere idea of an eyedropper, a spray bottle or the “essence” of anything being a part of the drink-making process would have brought peels of laughter.
The idea of a “designer” cocktail of some sort would have been met with an extremely direct, “What are you really having?”
McCourt would always say, “I refuse to make a drink the color of baby clothes.”
When Miller had his place on Union Street, he’d refuse service to a customer just because he didn’t like the color of his tie.
I loved the online headline on Burkhart’s column last week: “Some old dogs don’t need new tricks.” To that I have only one response — Arf!
Barry Tompkins is a longtime sports broadcaster who lives in Marin. Contact him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com
