I’m visiting Boise, Idaho. That means I get to engage in a favorite pastime, the unnamed hobby that has something to do with collecting people. Not in a Jeffrey Dahmer kind of way, you understand; more a Dorothy Parker kind of way.
I once collected a hairstylist named Edith who worked in the salon at a Texas Wal-Mart, wore black cat eyeglasses and owned a bottle of red hair dye she used as the weapon of choice against her sixties.
There was a bus driver I collected in San Francisco. He bulged from his gold-green uniform, greeting children as they boarded the 31 Balboa with an Eddie Murphy smile and a Louis Armstrong voice.
Last night, I collected Patrick. Patrick, a 30-something man with eyes designed to take everything in and an Abe Lincoln beard that Crayola might have called Dark Ochre, was the bartender on duty at the Bardenay Restaurant and Distillery.
I learned that Patrick and his fiancee have a baby and that he’s been tending bar for five years, before which he worked in a closely related job. I mentioned that when I visited in July I ordered the Manhattan, made with Bardenay’s own rye, and had been perfecting the recipe at home ever since. Patrick agreed that the Manhattan is deceptively pretty, an autumn sunset viewed through a frosted window, but is, in my wife’s spectacularly accurate parlance, a big-girl drink.
My remembrance led Patrick to an excited discussion of the Manhattan’s endless variations, including one he eventually mixed for me that involves Maker’s Mark bourbon and flaming orange, a process that requires squirting the juice of an orange peel through a flame so the sugar crystallizes atop the drink.
Patrick can enthusiastically recommend the right martini for someone who likes the taste of Absolut Tangerine; it’s called a Perfect Orange and the recipe now resides in my wallet.
He can talk vodka from Ciroc (made from French grapes) to Skyy (Kansas wheat) and bourbon from Blanton’s to Booker’s. We shared our admiration for Hendrick’s gin and, scoring the only point I took on the night, Patrick took careful note of my recommendation that he try French gin Citadelle, a close second to Hendrick’s.
Patrick had me taste a few drops of his finest ryes and bourbons and took apparent delight in explaining the Idaho liquor laws that required the distillery inside the restaurant to have a separate address.
We were being liquor aficionados, or possibly whisky snobs, but it was a slow night. A gaggle of girls sat down and Patrick was a little awed that one produced an ID showing a 1990 birth date.
Patrick showed just as much enthusiasm for her interest in a pomegranate champagne cocktail as he had in the perfect Old-Fashioned and his own, carefully crafted Manhattan recipe.
Here, I thought, is a man who loves his work, who is dedicated to being the best bartender he can possibly be. Then I thought the folks who own Bardenay are fortunate to employ a bartender who is so clearly passionate about his job. And how fortunate Patrick is for the very same reason.