Interview: bartender Matt Wallace (Harvard & Stone)

Bartender Los Angeles

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What do you think makes Harvard & Stone unique compared to other bars in town?

The R&D program is really what sets us apart from other bars. You’ve got your normal bar going on in the front and you can get your vodka soda or whatever you want out there, but you can get your real geek on in that back bar, if that’s what you’re into.

How many times have you been behind the R&D bar at this point?

I stopped counting at 30-something. We actually used to put what number menu at the bottom of the menu, for the night. I stopped. I couldn’t keep track of it anymore. So probably like around 50 times.

What do you like most about doing it?

I like the weird pressure it puts on me. I have to come up with something interesting, at least one interesting cocktail, that night.

It’s four cocktails per night, typically?

We’ve done three and a beer and shot combo if that week, “I’m tapped out, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.” Or we’ll do five if we’re really feeling it, but the median is usually around four. I usually try to do four.

What was the last one you did and what was your inspiration?

It was last night. I didn’t really have an inspiration. I’ve been working with my juicer a lot at home, trying to find weird things, everything except, like, my shoes, or the dog, something like that to put in there. I found a bag of cumin seeds by a bag of jelly beans in my apartment yesterday. I thought it would be fun to make syrup out of it.

What cocktail did you come up with?

I was actually really happy with it. It didn’t sell that great. I think people were a little turned off by not really knowing what cumin was, or not thinking it was a cocktail thing. I made a basic simple syrup with that, then it was tequila, lime, some maraschino, a little cumin dust over the top.

What’s the criteria for a drink that goes on the menu up front?

We’re still kind of operating on some of our stuff from the original menu. I usually go by, if I can pull it off in R&D – me personally, the two cocktails I have on the menu – if I can pull it off in R&D for two nights, and it sells really well. Like the gin cocktail we have on there now, I needed a gin cocktail because our front menu was really whiskey heavy, and the fact that in this kind of bar, that a gin cocktail did really well in a small environment back there, told me that’s something we can put on the front menu and actually do well enough with it that it validates having it there.

What’s that one?

It’s the Frequency Fizz. This Armenian-Russian market next door – and they’re pretty much throughout the whole neighborhood – has this stuff called black currant nectar, and it’s really fantastic stuff. They have all these crazy juices made out of fruits people aren’t used to eating over here. It’s that, sugar, lime and ginger ale, so it’s a nice Collins-y fizz sort of thing.

Is there anybody that you haven’t worked behind the bar with that you’d like to work with?

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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