Julie Reiner Is Our 2023 Liquor Legend

As a bar trade veteran with a profession that spans almost three a long time, Julie Reiner is called a whole lot of issues: bartender, cocktail ebook writer, cocktail and spirits choose, canned cocktail proprietor, trade mentor, James Beard nominee, and most just lately, TV star. Reiner is most acknowledged, nonetheless, because the proprietor of a number of extremely influential craft cocktail bars in New York Metropolis that helped to form the trendy cocktail panorama and tradition. Amongst these iconic bars are the Flatiron Lounge, Pegu Membership, Clover Membership, Leyenda, and Liquor Awards 2023 Greatest New Bar nominee, Milady’s.

“It’s protected to say that this trade wouldn’t be the place it’s at present with out Julie,” says Ivy Combine, co-owner of Leyenda in Brooklyn, New York. “I definitely wouldn’t be the place I’m at present with out her.” 

Reiner minimize her enamel behind the bar in mid-90s San Francisco, the place bartenders had been already elevating the cocktail sport with contemporary juices, herbs, and spices, resonating with Reiner’s Hawaiian upbringing. By the point she landed in New York Metropolis in 1998, Reiner had developed her personal type of cocktail making and explored it additional because the bar supervisor of Greenwich Village’s C3 Lounge contained in the Washington Sq. Lodge.

“At C3 Lounge I began taking a extra culinary method to cocktails,” says Reiner. “It was actually what I used to be doing in San Francisco and I simply began doing it in New York. I spotted in a short time once I was there that New York Metropolis was behind San Francisco. The whole lot was nonetheless bitter combine on the gun and no person was utilizing contemporary components.” 

Individuals quickly took discover of Reiner’s method, together with her future mentor, famed bartender, and final yr’s Liquor Legend, Dale DeGroff.

“Dale heard about [what I was doing], and he was like, ‘I hear you’re making some good drinks in right here, child.’ I didn’t even know who he was.” 

DeGroff tipped off the media about Reiner’s noteworthy cocktail program at C3, and in 2001, the New York Instances featured her in a bit about cocktails round city. Her fame as a scorching, new, artistic bartender on the rise was sealed.

The eye Reiner was getting didn’t sit properly with everybody. 

“At C3 I used to be fired for doing too good of a job. That’s Dale’s favourite story,” Reiner recollects. “I believed it was my job to fill the place with individuals.” Fearful that she was going to open her personal bar and steal their clientele, the C3 chef and restaurant supervisor satisfied the proprietor to oust Reiner, satirically opening the door for the Flatiron Lounge to occur.  

In 2002, Reiner married longtime love Susan Fedroff, and a yr later they opened the Flatiron Lounge with 4 different companions to instantaneous success.

“I really feel like a whole lot of the start of my profession was proper time, proper place, proper thought,” says Reiner.  

The bar attracted a slew of press, and “there was a line out the door to get in,” says Reiner. At a time when the culinary method to cocktails was far much less frequent, “we modified the menu seasonally, and we acquired individuals addicted to those drinks that they couldn’t get wherever else,” she says.

The craft cocktail motion was simply getting began and the Flatiron Lounge helped to kick it off. It was much less of a speakeasy than its predecessors similar to Milk & Honey or Angel’s Share, and extra of a high-volume program, which didn’t actually exist within the craft world within the early aughts.

“A variety of the individuals we had been coaching at the moment had been individuals who went on to do unimaginable issues within the trade,” says Reiner.  

Some Flatiron Lounge alumni who turned energy gamers within the bar world in their very own proper embody Lynnette Marrero, Guiseppe González, Phil Ward, Katie Stipe, Toby Maloney, and Tonia Guffey, amongst others.

Certainly one of Reiner’s most notable roles is as a mentor within the trade. In 2013, Reiner received World’s Greatest Bar Mentor at Tales of the Cocktail. 

“[Julie] has impressed, employed, and mentored extra within the cocktail trade than almost another. The household tree of which she is the bottom spreads far and broad,” says Combine.  

“I really feel like over time, studying who to rent and easy methods to rent is among the biggest expertise, and one thing I’ve gotten superb at,” says Reiner. 

Just some years into the huge success of Flatiron, Reiner and her companions sought to open one other bar. As a silent accomplice, Reiner personally chosen Audrey Saunders to run the present. One other DeGroff protégée, Saunders was making a reputation for herself at Bemelmans on the time, and mixing up the sorts of cocktails that individuals had been excited to drink.

Pegu Membership opened in 2005, and all through its 15-year run (the bar closed through the pandemic), it turned probably the most influential cocktail bars on this planet, spawning one other era of bar stars, and a menu filled with cocktails which have since develop into trendy classics. 

After conquering Manhattan, Reiner and Fedroff set their sights on Brooklyn, and in 2008 opened Clover Membership, one of many first of its type within the borough. The subsequent yr it received World’s Greatest New Cocktail Bar at Tales of the Cocktail. Pegu Membership received that very same yr within the Greatest American Cocktail Bar class. A number of awards had been to return for each bars in subsequent years, however that by no means slowed Reiner down. Neither have the challenges. 

Lani Kai, a bar impressed by Reiner’s Hawaiian upbringing, opened in 2010 in New York’s Soho neighborhood. The bi-level tropical escape churned out pu pu platters, Mai Tais, and large bowls of rum punch. It was an bold area and a distinct segment idea, and it closed two years later. 

When requested what has been the largest problem all through her profession, Reiner doesn’t skip a beat. “Partnerships and discovering the proper partnerships,” she says. “Flatiron Lounge, Pegu Membership, Lani Kai, the unique Clover Membership—these had been very difficult partnerships, however we lastly acquired it proper,” says Reiner. “It took a very long time. We misplaced lots from not being those who had the cash and the higher hand.”

By the point Reiner and Fedroff partnered with Combine in 2015 to open Brooklyn’s pan-Latin bar and restaurant Leyenda, they had been capable of have full autonomy. Combine had been a part of the opening workers at Lani Kai and a longtime bartender at Clover Membership. She can also be one among Reiner’s most completed protégées.

“[Julie] continues to reinvent and create this far into her profession, taking what it means to be a bartender to totally different heights and many various instructions,” says Combine. “It has been the dignity of a lifetime to have the ability to name her my enterprise accomplice and buddy.”

“I believe that what I’m most pleased with is our longevity within the trade,” says Reiner. “I used to be 18 once I began cocktail waitressing in Waikiki. I really like the cocktail and bar world and I’m pleased with all the initiatives we’ve accomplished as a result of they’ve all been part of the journey.”

DeGroff has had a front-row seat on this journey and has witnessed Reiner’s influence on the cocktail trade firsthand.

“Julie Reiner and Susan Fedroff had a imaginative and prescient of what bar hospitality, cocktails, and repair ought to appear like,” says DeGroff. “They had been uncompromising, and over years of labor, they introduced their imaginative and prescient to life. At present, that imaginative and prescient is a actuality, not simply within the bars they created, however within the lives of the women and men who shared their imaginative and prescient and prospered with them,” he says. “They constructed a neighborhood round these companies. Multiply that neighborhood occasions a thousand and that may be a metropolis all of us need to name house.” 

“She could also be a legend, however she’s nowhere close to slowing down,” says Combine. “Who is aware of what different tips she has up her sleeve, however we’ll be studying from them for the remainder of cocktail historical past.”

As Reiner places it, “I’m not going wherever.”

“We love what we do, we love town that we reside in, and I’m actually pleased with our place within the basis of cocktail tradition in America, and the truth that we’re nonetheless right here and we’re nonetheless related,” says Reiner. “We simply opened a model new place final yr that was nominated for Greatest New Bar. And that’s fairly superior.”