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Who are some other bartenders that you really admire, and how come?

There are a couple guys in the city doing really cool stuff. Keven Diedrich at Burritt Room is an awesome person, really humble and makes complex cocktails. Chase Williamson, he works at Prospect and Zero Zero, he’s just a good bartender. He works hard all the time. He’s one of the only guys now who inputs the cocktail list. He does good work all the time, and he’s super reliable. He also picked really hard places to work. We’ve got 25 cocktails, Brooke’s got 11, and then the food on top of it. I wouldn’t want to do it.

Kevin Dowell, Chase and Jorie Morales, without those three guys – they’ve been with me since the beginning – the bar program wouldn’t be where it is, because I can’t be on the bar every moment. If something isn’t made right, they throw it out and make it again and don’t just waste the cocktail.

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

We just put on our winter citrus menu. We’re militantly seasonal. It’s kumquats and Meyer lemons. I’ve screwed around with blood orange before, and it’s a really difficult ingredient to work with. I wanted to do a cocktail with blood orange and Meyer lemon, and it wasn’t working. I went into Prospect, and Brooke had winter seasonal stuff too, using reposado, Cara Cara orange and bergamot. The reposado worked really well with orange, so I made a blood orange cocktail. I made a cordial with the juice and let the peels steep in reposado tequila with Meyer lemon and a quarter ounce of Cointreau. You get reposado tequila up front, then finish with Meyer lemon. People like dark names like Blood and Sand, because you don’t see that a lot in restaurants. It’s the Blood of Mayahuel. Blood for blood orange, and Mayahuel, because there’s a bar in New York named for the god of intoxicants and love. The reason it’s love is because it’s the god of intoxicants. It isn’t two separate things. It’s the same. I thought that was pretty funny.

What’s a great simple cocktail recipe for people to make at home?

People should stick with classics. We make Negronis and Manhattans for people. Make a Negroni at home and do it 1:1:1 and stir it longer than you think you need to stir it, and garnish it the right way. Get a channel knife and do the peel the right way. A properly made Negroni is still. Beefeater and Noilly. Make sure the oil gets done over the glass so the oil lands on top of the Negroni. That’s the thing a lot of people at home miss. It really does change the cocktail.

If you could only fill your glass with one more cocktail, what would be in the glass?

I would probably do a Brooklyn cocktail with real Amer Picon. It’s really difficult to get in the United States, but it’s just a phenomenal.

Who would make it?

Whoever’s bar I was at that night, because if I was having my last cocktail, I wouldn’t want to be sitting in my house.