‘King Cocktail’ playing with fire
Bartending great has seen industry take off
The first time I met Dale DeGroff, he was throwing ice cubes at a crowd of bartenders in a hotel ballroom. Today, instead of ice, the world’s most celebrated bartender — who is also known as “King Cocktail” — is playing with fire as he demonstrates how to master his signature technique, the flamed orange peel.
“I think people are using really big peels in the glass and these are better,” he says as he deftly slices small coins of orange zest behind the bar during an appearance at Prohibition in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, in Vancouver.
He squeezes a slice of peel gently and, as the essential oil sprays out, he lights a match. The oil bursts into a puff of flame that sends caramelized orange essence fluttering onto the surface of his (Imperfect) Perfect Manhattan.
He takes a sip, smiles and says, “That works.” Of course it does.
DeGroff is, after all, the bartender who, back in the 1980s at New York’s swanky Rainbow Room, launched the gourmet cocktail revolution that revived classic and handcrafted drinks. In so doing, he also transformed bartending into a serious career for thousands of men and women. A profession that has finally begun to welcome and acknowledge women who are shaking things up behind the bar.
It’s a far cry from the old days at the Rainbow Room where DeGroff, who wrote the groundbreaking book, The Craft of the Cocktail (2002), wasn’t allowed to put women behind the public bar.
That’s not the only change he’s seen in the more than three decades he’s been making drinks.
“I remember when bartenders would show up for work without even a paring knife,” he says, and looks around at the gleaming copper shakers and crystal mixing glasses that line the bar at Prohibition.
In 2009, DeGroff won the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Wine & Spirits Professional Award. He was recently inducted into the foundation’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America.