New Jersey native Bill Norris got his start behind the bar at Bennigans in Ocean Township and graduated to Manhattan before making his way to Austin. For the past six-and-a-half years, he’s helped to elevate the Austin cocktail scene, previously at Fino and now at Haddingtons. Oh yeah, Norris is also a published author. His novel, titled “Snapshots,” appeared in 2001. We recently met at a café called Walton’s, which is located next to Haddingtons, where Norris enjoyed a pre-shift coffee while explaining his background and approach.

What brought you to Austin?

I was in New York for a decade or so, and I had some friends who were down here in graduate school, and I came down here for the ACL Festival. I had a rough year personally in New York prior to coming down, and I liked it here. You know what, I’ll give it a shot for a year and see what it’s like. Six and a half years later, I’m still here. I came for ACL and never left.

What was your first bar job?

Bennigans in Ocean Township, New Jersey.

How did that come about?

In the summer after college I was working as a cook on a boardwalk stand in Bradley Beach, New Jersey, and my girlfriend at the time was waiting tables at Bennigans, and I was earning $6 an hour and sweating and working hard, and she was working five, six hours a night, coming home with a couple hundred bucks in her pocket, and I’m like, “I’m on the wrong end of this thing.” So I went in and applied for a job as a waiter. And got it. I was quickly bumped up the chain to assistant training coordinator. One day the day bartender was arrested, so they said, “Do you think you can do this?” I said, “Let me have the recipes. I’m sure I can figure it out.” That was that. Then I moved to London for six months and worked at a couple different bars in London. Nothing fancy, and when I came I was in grad school and got behind the bar again.

Where were you in grad school?

Sarah Lawrence, in New York, for a Master’s in fiction writing.

Do you still write?

Yeah, but not enough. I published a novel in 2001 and have been working on the follow-up ever since.

The same characters?

No, different stuff.

What was your novel about?

It was a book called “Snapshots.” It traced a family over 25 years through eight specific days. Those events kind of shaped the nature of the people.

Do you have a first cocktail memory, good or bad?

Well I worked at a place in SoHo in the mid ’90s called Bar 89, and just cases and cases and cases of Absolut Citron and Cointreau, making Cosmos. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine. He’s about the same age, he’s living down here now, and he was a bartender in New York. He’s now working for Maker’s Mark, and he was like, we bad mouth this stuff, but without that drink, none of this stuff would have ever happened. None of this stuff would have gone anywhere without that mid ’90s tini or Cosmo explosion. But the first good drink memory was a Sazerac.

Where was it?

Napoleon House in New Orleans.

Okay, I hope they would get it right.

I just remember, such a simple thing, sugar, bitters, spirit, herbsaint, no ingredients, no fuss, just very simple and the way that changed in the glass was insane.

I had your Duck Fat Sazerac last night.

You like it?

Yeah. It was good. So that goes back to the original memory?

Partly. I didn’t think that drink was going to work. Our chef at Haddingtons is an old friend, and he used to host parties at his house called Meaty Monday Madness, the first Monday of every month, and it was a chefs’ thing. Everybody pretty much had that night off, so they’d get together with a theme and cook out of his place. Everybody would do a dish, and he invited me to one called “Creatures of the Sea That Are Not Fish,” and told me I had to bring something. I don’t really want to cook for this crowd. I’m not a bad home cook, but these are some good professional, solid chefs. We had to bring something, and I was walking down the street after having a conversation with him, and I’m like, Duck Fat Sazerac. It sounds like a funk song, Duck Fat Sazerac, so I got some duck fat and fat washed the rye. I made it and it came out better than I could have possibly hoped, and I just landed this job. It was the planning stages, and this was like the first menu item. Done.

Did you become interested in spirits or cocktails first?

I don’t know that I can separate them. Like most of the people I know who do this for a living, I don’t drink a lot of cocktails unless I’m going to someone’s bar that I want to experience how they do it, or what they do. In my downtime, it’s mostly Jameson on the rocks and a beer.

Where do you like to do the Jameson on the rocks and beer?

In Austin? I don’t go out as much as I used to because I’m here so much, but my deck is not a bad place to do it. In terms of the cocktail bars, the Second Bar + Kitchen and Bar Congress, are outstanding. I like the Eastside Showroom. My old place, Fino, does really nice drinks. The Tigress Pub does really nice drinks. But for basic relaxing drinking, it’s probably two bars on East Sixth: The Grackle – my friend Aaron runs it, and he’s the consummate host – nice whiskey selection, nice beer selection, and another place called the Liberty Bar, which is kind of an industry standard. You go to see all your friends kind of place.

Liberty Bar? That’s where Eastside King is?

Yeah, Eastside King is a trailer at both of those bars, which is part of the appeal.

Would you say you have any mentors?

Yeah, books first. When I left New York, it was right at the beginning of that explosion, and I missed. I didn’t know any of those early people, Audrey, Sasha and the men and women who were blowing the doors off for the first time. But Charles Joly from the Drawing Room, four, five years ago, we were teamed together at the Cocktail World Cup in New Zealand, and I learned more from watching that guy in five days than I probably had in three years. Just a consummate professional with a great palate. Then a lot of books. Dave Wondrich’s books are hugely important. Down here, we kind of crafted our own thing because we didn’t have anybody telling us what to do. I learned a lot from Bobby Heugel at Anvil, both as a colleague and a friend. He’s a stellar bartender.

What was the last cocktail you developed, and what was your approach?

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