According to bartenders, managers and owners across New York, bar space at most restaurants has become de facto dining space.
Consummate bartenders, managers, and servers, dazzling with their knowledge of arcane liquors and scientific processes — along with a spectacular view of Central Park from a rather staid hotel-lounge perch, on the thirty-fifth floor of the Mandarin Oriental — can almost make you forget your troubles.
Hunter was interested in two different positions, bartender and manager, and in June, for the manager role, she interviewed wearing a buttoned-down shirt and slacks, a typical outfit for company managers.
Steve Ehresman, a bartender and manager at the Turkey's Nest, a bar just steps from the development, said he was not worried about competition from the hotel's rooftop bar, because he serves $4, 32-ounce draft beers.
More than a dozen restaurants and pubs in the Chicago area have a cicerone-certified bartender or manager on staff, including the Bristol, a chic bistro in the trendy Bucktown neighborhood.
Aidan Graham, who has employed Ms. Waters at his pub as a waitress, bartender or manager for much of the past two decades, said, "She's a very private person; she doesn't like the limelight".
Meanwhile, Colin Stewart, former bartender and manager at Dempsey's in New York's East Village, watched gentrification sweep through the neighborhood – once "punkier and edgier", as he describes it – from his spot behind the bar.
Ms. Banks, whose business is four years old, has worked in the hospitality industry since the 1970's "in every position -- bartender, waiter, manager -- you can imagine," she said, and she knows what attitudes are.
Holding court by the bar, in skintight dark jeans, a black leather vest and a bandanna, Mr. Carl yelled over the music, "I'm in my element!" Mr. Carl was a bartender and manager at St. Jerome's for five years, starting in 2005.
A West End bartender or manager serves as the tour guide and shares the inside scoop on each brewery between stops.
