In Ridgewood, Park West Tavern’s bartender is reinventing cocktails
Monday, November 18, 2013
BY ESTHER DAVIDOWITZ
FOOD WRITER
The Record
Asked what is needed to be a good bartender, Andrew McIntosh, the 35-year-old Old Tappan native, who has been making and pouring drinks at the Park West Tavern in Ridgewood for the past two years and at other bars for a decade, answered, “When I started bartending, you needed four good jokes, to know every sports score, and to perform as a makeshift therapist.” And today, some 12 years later?
“You still need to tell good jokes,” McIntosh said. But a really good bartender nowadays has to have a tad more than a winning personality, he noted. He or she needs to take the profession seriously.
“This is a craft,” the Nanuet, N.Y., resident declared on a recent afternoon before his 8- to 10-plus hour evening shift was to begin. “If you are going to make drinks, make them correctly, the way they should be made. Treat the craft with respect.”
McIntosh certainly does. Watch him behind Park West’s 30-foot-long bar, which he shares with one to two other bartenders depending on the night, and the words “intense” and “methodical” come to mind. “I always say, You are not just making a drink,” said McIntosh. “You’re making a drink with meticulous attention to detail.” He adds, “Make drinks as if you’re making it for yourself or your mother, assuming, that is, you like your mother.”
What’s to reinvent.
1) Open bottle of decent whiskey.
2) Pour. Ice is optional. Don’t let some pretentious asshole tell you how to take your whiskey
3) Enjoy.
They need a better assortment of domestic beer. How about Miller Lite in a bottle??
Any lite beer is not beer and there are plenty of domestic brews to be had. #1 the bar tender is not pretentius just doing his job.
I was speaking generally about whiskey snobs who think “on the rocks” is a mortal sin.
I also like Miller Lite. It’s low carb, doesn’t taste as bad as that Michelob piss. It is the beer I drink when I’m drinking more than 10.