HIGH SPIRITS
Flair bartender Steve Benson on the art of the toss
Bathed in iridescent blue from the venue’s mood lighting, Steve Benson paces behind the bar. It’s a rare break in the action during what has been a busy night. “This is about the time when I start getting bored and do things I probably shouldn’t,” he jokes. And sure enough, moments later he’s juggling three liquor bottles in a tornado of twisting glass and skin. “I won’t hit you … probably,” he says, somewhat unconvincingly, to the busboy. A jet of white cranberry juice flies from one of the bottles and cascades to the floor, causing the busboy to scurry away like a cockroach escaping a boot heel.
Benson stops when he catches sight of a young woman — chestnut curls, short black cocktail dress — approaching the bar. “Want a beverage?” She nods and smiles. “Well, you have to watch the show first,” Benson teases as he grasps two stainless-steel cocktail shaker tins. With a flick of his wrist, he launches one of the shakers into the air.
Flipping bottles and shakers, juggling, elaborate drink pours, and tricks that involve flaming spirits are all examples of “flair,” a style of bartending in which entertainment is king. Flair rakes in the tips for bartenders who do it right, but for the inexperienced or the careless, mistakes are costly. Broken glass and spoiled liquor equal money out of pocket, and various cuts and bruises are inevitable. As Benson puts it, “Ninetynine percent of the time, everything goes perfectly, but there’s always the chance that a bottle is going to drop.” Ottawa boasts only a handful of flair bartenders, but Benson says demand for flair in the city is high. “People really like flair because it’s something different, if it’s done right. It’s that fine line between showing off and getting them a drink. The second that you ignore somebody and you’re just flipping a bottle, they instantly hate you.”
Flair bartending can be traced back to late-19th-century bartender Jerry Thomas, the father of American mixology. More than 100 years later, flair has come a long way. Now there are flair bartenders working all over the world, many concentrated in North America. It started modestly, with bartenders executing the odd bottle flip or spin to impress patrons. From there, the practice evolved. Flair bars started to appear, and flair competitions, where bartenders showcase their skills to win cash prizes, became increasingly common. Today, the winner of a large international competition can take home up to $10,000. Flair is now divided into two separate strains: exhibition flair for competitions and working flair for everywhere else.
For Mike McLean, former flair bartender and current vice-president of the Flair Bartenders’ Association, it’s all about proper application. “Any bartender anywhere can add some working flair to what they do behind the bar,” he says. “The ultimate package is a bartender who can interact with their guests, entertain them, but also make them a great cocktail at the same time.”
As Benson says, “You can define flair as anything entertaining behind a bar. Telling a joke or flirting with people or joking around and bantering back and forth with the other bartenders, all of that is a form of flair. Either way, people dig it.”
I met Benson for the first time at Salt, an upscale steakhouse in Little Italy with a formidable cocktail list, designed by Benson himself. I find him in the lounge, a cozy area with five or six tables flanked by high-backed chairs with rich burgundy upholstery. Benson, 34, is sporting a wellkept beard, glasses, and a cream sweater. I order a Manhattan, but Benson sticks to coffee — the cocktails are strong, and he needs to drive home to Kanata at the end of the night.
In 2000, Benson started working at Jack Astor’s, the only flair bar in the Ottawa area at that time. He had applied to work behind the bar but ended up in the kitchen. When management started doing bar auditions, Benson saw his opportunity. He took the bartending course at Algonquin College, where he learned some basic flair. He was a fast learner and soon found himself behind the Jack Astor’s bar. “It was a party every night,” he says. “I’m actually a fairly reserved guy, so it was kind of an escape.”
Benson practised constantly, learning most of his tricks through trial and error. “I had rubber mats and that sort of thing and plastic flair bottles — practice bottles that don’t break — but you can’t really practise for a competition with nonbreakable bottles, so a lot of it smashes,” Benson says. “I used to have a big blue bin, like a big Rubbermaid bin, that was literally filled with broken glass.” During the summer, he would practise outside, and in the winter, he would brave -20 C temperatures to practise in his garage. “It wasn’t pleasant,” he says. “When you can see your breath and you’re flipping bottles, it’s not a good scene.”
We chat about his next flair gig, a fundraiser at the Shenkman Arts Centre in Orleans. I ask what kinds of tricks he’ll be doing. It varies from event to event, he explains, but there are some constants. “I always do some kind of multiple pour, so pouring five to 10 drinks at once out of a
bunch of tins. We call it the waterfall,” he says. “It’s easy to be the showstopper, but it’s literally one of the easiest tricks you could possibly do. I could have been literally juggling five bottles with a monkey on my head, and all of a sudden I do this and they’re like, ‘ That’s crazy!’ ”
Benson usually tries to be a little more dressed up than the people he’s serving, but at the Shenkman event, this would prove difficult. Men in pinstriped power suits, with perfectly coiffed hair, mill about beside women in elegant gowns and strappy stilettos; Benson is wearing a slightly wrinkled blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up just shy of his elbows, faded blue jeans, and stylish sneakers.
The room is buzzing with introductions and clinking champagne flutes. Tonight Benson is mixing only one drink, dubbed the “ARTini” by the event’s organizers. It’s a frosty mixture of rum, blue curaçao, and white cranberry juice that resembles Arctic waters mid-thaw. He builds this drink over and over, varying his routine each time to keep things interesting. For now, the tricks are simple — he’s just warming up. Soon the organizers ask everyone to move downstairs. “I’ll do even crazier stuff down there,” he promises.
Once Benson gets set up at the downstairs bar, the evening is in full swing and the crowd soon engulfs the bar like a pack of (impeccably dressed) hyenas. Benson immediately goes to work, hurling bottles into the air with renewed vigour and finesse. It doesn’t take long for his performance to earn him some fans among those in attendance. Calls of “Steve, you’re the man!” “I’ll order another drink just to see it again!” can be heard over the din. Eventually, it’s time for the waterfall. Benson lines up eight martini glasses stacked two high on the bar. He combines each of his ingredients before pouring the mixture evenly over a towering stack of tins. For extra effect, Benson jumps up onto the bar, much to the delight of the audience. Slowly, he tilts the stack of tins, unleashing eight streams of blue liquid, each finding its way into a glass arranged below.
Benson used to teach a flair course as part of the 15-week bartending program at Algonquin College. It’s no longer offered, except as an occasional weekend course. According to bartending program coordinator Antonios Vitaliotis, it was impossible to find a place to teach it. “Imagine being in a class next to a room where it sounds like people are just banging on metal pipes for hours,” he says. Benson has helped many of his former students get jobs in the industry, and a few of his most talented proteges work with him as part of his Ottawa Cocktails business. Founded in 2011, it offers flair bartending and high-end mixology for private events.
With his days of competitive flair and teaching behind him, Benson continues to manage Ottawa Cocktails. He is also a real estate agent. His career path is not atypical among flair bartenders.
“The life cycle of a competitive flair bartender is typically only about four to five years, and then they go on and do something else,” McLean says. “We’re seeing a lot of the older age group of flair bartenders, they’ve taken what they learned in flair bartending and they’re moving on to the mixology side of it. So they won’t be juggling behind the bar per se, but they’ll definitely be adding entertainment and offering better service and better cocktails at the same time.”
Benson admits he’s a bit worn out. “It’s nice not bartending quite as much. When you work in one spot for three or four years, for me personally, it always started to grate on me,” he says. “It’s pretty tiring.”
Flair is especially draining. “I’ll have a sore neck tomorrow,” he says as he packs up his gear at the Shenkman Arts Centre. “My shoulders will be tight.”
I can’t help thinking about all the extra effort flair requires — the years of practice, the bins full of smashed glass, the cuts and bruises. Entertainment doesn’t come cheap. But for each flair veteran like Benson who eases out of the business, there will be a young upand-comer waiting in the wings. “At the grassroots level, I’d say there’s more young people flairing than ever before,” McLean says. “If we’re able to show them that they can do their job, have a bit more fun, and make more money, then they’re willing to spend the extra time to do it right.”
“The ultimate package is a bartender who can interact with their guests, entertain them, but also make them a great cocktail
at the same time.” — Mike McLean, Flair Bartenders’ Association