At Melbourne’s Yugen Dining, bar manager Alejandro Archibald loves the challenge a fine dining venue brings to creating a cocktail menu.
Tell us about Yugen and your role.
I am the bar manager at Yugen, but my role is a little bit hybrid, which I enjoy. During the day, I take care of day-to-day bar operations, menu development, ordering, menu printing, meetings with reps, trainings, spreadsheets and so on. But in the evening, I could be anywhere from behind the bar to hosting or floating where needed and assisting the sommelier.
Tell us about your process in developing new cocktails.
Creating new drinks starts with several questions – what is selling, what isn’t, what is in/out of season, what cool new ingredients or products do I have to work with, and what is the kitchen doing. Then I will decide on a flavour combo, map out what applications to use for which flavours – for example what will be a syrup or an infusion – and go from there.
What streamlines my process is that I generally have a select few styles of drinks that stay the same, so all I have to do is update the flavours and ingredients. I also work with kitchen a bit in terms of what “waste” they might have to offload or what cool ingredients they’re willing to share with me.
At the moment we’re using shokupan offcuts, pickled ginger brine and scraped vanilla pods. The biggest challenge I face at this style of restaurant is that R&D time is limited. We need to be show ready right before service, and there’s no cooking syrups or prepping garnishes on a quiet night. It’s just service, at a high level.
A restaurant bar has its own unique traits – how does Yugen differ from other places you have worked?
I think the biggest difference between working in a restaurant as opposed to a more dedicated bar, is that you don’t have the same freedom when it comes to menu concepts and drink ideas. You really need to stick to the venue concept/theme. You’d never see a margarita menu in a Japanese omakase restaurant. It’s also a lesson in restraint, high ABV drinks and super powerful flavours just don’t work with food all that well (nuclear bijou with scallop sashimi anyone?). If you’re ruining someone’s dining experience with your drinks, then you’ve failed at your job.
I do enjoy the restraint and limitation though, it gives you something to focus and home in on. Plus, I love flavour pairing, why should the somms have all the fun?
What is your favourite part of your job?
The culture for starters, it’s not super common you find a restaurant of this calibre where everyone is so supportive and genuinely nice to each other.
Also, I enjoy working with lots of different Asian ingredients and products I haven’t previously worked with before. So, I’m still learning and expanding my knowledge and palate.
We need to be show ready right before service, and there’s no cooking syrups or prepping garnishes on a quiet night. It’s just service, at a high level.