Dale degroff bartender game

It wasn’t hard to spot him. On a scorching Wednesday in July, I strolled into Figo, a hotspot in the heart of Toronto’s theatre district. Its sleek, expansive dining room teemed and rumbled with the lunchtime rush crowd, but a quick glance toward the bar was all I needed to find the person I was there to meet. Sprawled comfortably on a bar stool — flanked by the restaurant’s manager and head bartender, both leaning in, listening intently, wholly captivated — was Dale DeGroff.

That name might not mean much to you, but rest assured, the 67-year-old Rhode Island native has almost certainly had a major influence on the way you spend your idle hours. Best known in bartending circles as “King Cocktail,” DeGroff is credited with founding modern mixology culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s, bringing classic recipes, thoughtful experimentation and a gourmet sensibility back behind the bar for the first time in decades. That delicious Sidecar, made with fresh lemon juice and sugar on the rim, you enjoyed last night? That’s all DeGroff’s doing. The Whisky Smashes you guzzled down last weekend? Him, too.

“When I started out in the ‘70s,” DeGroff recalls, “everybody was using artificial mixes and soda guns. Nothing was real. My only goal in this industry was to get back to real recipes and real ingredients.”

He succeeded, and then some. “These guys left me in the dust a long time ago,” he chuckles, gesturing to Figo’s young bartenders. “Marinating their own garnishes, building their own vermouth — it’s gone so far beyond where I expected it to go.”

After a storied career spanning LA’s Hotel Bel-Air and legendary New York spots Aurora, Rainbow Room and Blackbird — picking up a prestigious James Beard Award along the way — DeGroff retired from bartending in the early ‘00s. Today, he serves as the founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, and travels the world educating and inspiri

If there’s any person we’d ask for advice on mixing a drink or throwing a party, it’d be the man who’s known as the King of Cocktails. At 70 years old, Dale DeGroff is one of the most respected figures in bartending, with a string of credits to his name, from shaking up America’s cocktail scene in the dark days of the 1970s and ’80s to popularising the Cosmopolitan and spreading the term mixology. Many of the things we look for in great bars today can be traced back to the drinks DeGroff was mixing in Manhattan decades ago, most famously at the Rainbow Room from 1987 to 1999.

During his Australian tour last month with De Kuyper Liqueurs, DeGroff sat down with Charlie Lehmann, co-owner of Sydney’s Ramblin’ Rascal Tavern, to talk about the art of making a delicious drink and share a few tales from his time in the business.

Charlie: Let’s talk about home bartending. What are the key things we need if we were to replicate at home what people do in a bar?

Dale: Make yourself a little bar, number one.

What do you mean? The kitchen bench isn’t fine?

Well you could do that but it’s more fun to make yourself a little bar that’s your own. [Here he measures out with his hands the size of a bar, suggesting it to be one metre deep and almost two metres long.]

Is it necessary to have quality ice?

The beautiful thing about home refrigerators is that they actually make big ice cubes. And they’re solid because they stay in there a long time. You’re pretty fixed up for ice if you’ve got a big refrigerator. You can always go buy a block of ice if you’re having a party and then carve whatever you want. You can chip off blocks and smash them in a Lewis bag if you want to make Juleps. I make Martinis so I have a freezer full of Martini glasses ready to go.

Vodka?

Oh yeah, that goes witho

DeGroff’s cocktail menu at the Rainbow Promenade Bar featured 24 cocktails–later pared down to 14 favorites–that harkened back to the turn of the century and New York’s gilded age. The menu was a master class in craft cocktails that included Sazeracs, Singapore Slings, Between the Sheets, and the Hemingway Daiquiri, all mixed by hand with fresh ingredients and premium liquors–no mixes allowed. 

While one of the bar’s most popular offerings was the quintessential eighties Long Island Iced Tea, another toasted the early days of Broadway. Sweet, tart, and pretty in pink, the Flora Dora cocktail was put on the menu by DeGroff in honor of the chorus girls in Broadway’s hit 1899 musical by the same name. The Flora Dora is made by mixing 1 ½ oz gin, ½ fresh lime juice, and ½ oz crème de framboise liqueur, straining it over ice in a highball glass, and topping it with four oz. of ginger ale for a spicy kick.