One shift behind someone else's bar, and the realization that the drink is the easy part.
My friend asked me to work a shift for a birthday party and I said yes without asking what the bar looked like. It was a folding table in a garage with a cooler, four bottles, and a blender that had seen things. There were about forty people and no plan.
I made one drink and kept making it. That is the entire secret of bartending for people who are not bartenders: you do not offer a menu, you make the thing you know how to make, and you make it well. It was dark rum, lime, cane sugar, and a lot of ice, and I was on my fourth batch before I realized nobody had asked me for anything else.
The blender was for frozen things, which I was not going to attempt, and there was no shaker, so the sugar went into the glass directly with a spoon while I acted like that was a technique. It was not. It worked anyway, because the drink was cold and strong and the people were busy being pleased with themselves.
I made about sixty of them and got paid in a slice of leftover birthday cake. If you are going to bartend for a friend once, the advice is this: pick one drink, buy twice the ice you think you need, and never let them see you open a second bottle.
My friend asked me to work a shift for a birthday party and I said yes without asking what the bar looked like.
It was a folding table in a garage with a cooler, four bottles, and a blender that had seen things. About forty people, no plan, and a cake with a number of candles on it that seemed to be a dare.
I decided, standing there, that I was making one drink and nothing else. I have made exactly one drink well, and a menu is just a list of things you are bad at.