From growing up in a bar, to London, to running the award-winning Black Pearl, Cristiano Beretta has got the kind of knowledge that only comes with 20 years behind the stick. Here’s his advice for building a long career (and how not to be, you know, a dick).
As told to Sam Bygrave
When I started, there was no such thing as training — you were just working for the bartender you were with. So, you’re on the job. You go to a pub, you start pulling pints, you start learning about beers. You go to a club, that’s how you learn about speed, you take multiple orders, then all of a sudden you’re working in a cocktail bar or just a bar that makes some cocktails. You learn how to be barista if you work during the day — that was our training, just years of experience in different levels of service.
Everyone wants to be a cocktail bartender. I started bartending during the nineties when there were not as many cocktail bars as there are now, and it wasn’t as glamourous as it is now. You got new kids who come now, a lot of bartenders are learning the ropes in a cocktail bar, and they don’t know anything else. So if you put them in a pub, they’re lost.
In a pub, you’ve got a lot of locals — you need to remember names, what they drink. In a pub you learn that you have first, second, and third gear. When you’re working in a club, it’s always busy, busy, busy. But they will train you on how to stretch your memory for orders. I find myself at work sometimes where I jump behind the bar when they’re busy, and while my bartenders take one or two orders I take four or five — yeah, they may be beer and wine, but all of a sudden the bar is clear.
If he has two beers, and he has two cocktails — you give them the beers so they’re out of the way. Get them out of the way, get their money, thank you very much.
A good bartender is someone who gets things done. You can learn how to make a cocktail. You can’t learn how to be do things hospitably. You can be a bartender who can’t come up with great drinks — that’s fine by me, as long as you give him a task and he just does it. Making drinks, you can read a spec — if you can read, you can make a drink. You can do it in pictures as well [laughs].
I’ve got this guy who came in, I gave him a go. He comes from a pub environment and he has this pubby way of making drinks, which is fine by me — he has a good attitude. As long as you have a good attitude? Anyone can make a drink. It’s the same as learning to paint a house or how to cook. It’s not rocket science.
I put him behind the bar, making cocktails, and he was struggling. But I sat down with him and I said, I like the way you interact with the guests — I can’t teach you that. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it — but I can teach you how to make a cocktail properly.
I remember my first three bartenders who worked in the club in London: one was really knowledgeable on cocktails, on classics; one was the fastest bartender I’ve ever worked for; and the other one was clinical and anal on every single task. And I combined that all together, and I still remember what I learned from them.
Be humble. Ego is a little too much behind the bar.