Bartender Leslie Ross Shares Her Bar Trend Pet Peeves

Yesterday we shared bar manager and consultant Chris Frankel's bar trend pet peeves. Here now is Leslie Ross telling us her industry observations. Ross is known for helping start the beer cocktail program at Saint Arnold's, winning the Caorunn Gin Storyteller's Competition at last year's Tales of the Cocktail and for recently having co-launched Ladies of Libation, a bar catering and training company that served up drinks at Houston Chronicle critic Alison Cook's Top 100 Restaurants reveal. Ross tells Eater:

My pet peeve is that there are so many bartenders that will not dare to venture outside of their bubble. Sometimes they have only worked in one city. Branch out! Explore! You have absolutely NO idea what all is really going on around you until you go and investigate. Put yourself out there, make a name for yourself. I have only a handful of experiences compared to some, but I find a way to get out there, and I'm always there to learn.

If everyone I knew could experience one-tenth of what I have, I would feel like my message was received. At the end of the day, and as crude as this sounds, all we are doing is mixing booze in a glass, and some people are really good at it. Every time I put a drink out, I think of it as a possible legacy. That cocktail has the potential to out-live me. We make drinks now that have long outlived the person that invented them, and I think it is the ultimate tribute to have others all over the globe make and remake something that has the potential to spread a particular feeling, mood and flavor. You can even go so far as to consider it something of a time capsule. You don't choose this industry, it chooses you. So do it some justice and get out of your comfort zone. It took me a while before I really believed I was on the right path, but now that I know, I feel that part of that path includes encouraging others to become a little more introspective.??????????

We'll be asking more bartenders what bugs them as part of a Cocktail Week series. If you have an industry person you'd like to hear from, shoot us a message here.
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