Bartender’s Choice Awards
The bars, cocktails and the people who make them.
Surely the most coveted prize in all of the Nordic bar industry, The Bartender’s Choice Awards aren’t allowing a simple pandemic to prevent their annual celebration of our burgeoning bar scene. Of course, the usual gala night will look slightly different this year, not as much of a social gathering as it usually is, but instead something perhaps even more people can partake in, even if it’s from a safe distance. The event will be all digital, and live streamed on December 6, and you can follow the somewhat constrained razzmatazz from the comfort of your home, preferably with a martini, sazerac or classic hot toddy in hand.
“The hospitality industry is currently suffering due to the heavy pressure of the pandemic, and the political restrictions that have been set because of it. However, we will continue to celebrate and highlight the many prominent bars and bartenders that are doing a fantastic job every day,” says Joel Katzenstein, co-founder of Bartenders’ Choice Awards.
And even if you don’t care too much about the awardshow itself, we’re pretty certain that you will appreciate the essential guide that their nominations are to where you should go to grab a good drink.
The Bartender’s Choice Awards were established back in 2010 and are the most prestigious awards in the Nordic bar industry, voted for by more than 360 industry professionals. So whatever they say, we obey.
This year, a string of Stockholm establishments and bartenders have won acknowledgement for a job greatly done, and you deserve to know who they are, and where to go.
Johan Evers
A Bar Called Gemma is nominated in three categories, Best Cocktail Bar and Best Cocktail Menu, on top of Johan
Evers being nominated himself for Best Bartender. We asked him a couple of questions about the makings of a good cocktail menu, plus checked in to see what’s different in his world during these virus times.
Your concept of a cocktail menu, with the categories shaken, carbonated, thrown, stirred and swizzled, differs substantially from other bars. How come you went in this direction and just exactly how happy are you with the menu?
Something we absolutely didn’t want to do was to lock ourselves into a theme, for example Nordic tastes, a Spanish team, just having gin cocktails or whatever. We wanted to find a creative freedom in taste, ingredients and types of spirits, and showcase a wide range from the approximately 40 different bottles of liquor we have here, which is possibly half or even a third of what most Swedish bars have. Our five techniques give us plenty of possibilities, our limited supply presents us with challenges and possibilities, we work as sustainably as we can and try to avoid any wastage.
We are incredibly proud of this menu, it took us about seven months of workshops, research, illustration, copy, printing and everything for it to ooze the ABC Gemma brand. Now the process has already begun for the next menu, which will be launched around May or June of 2021. Actually 96 percent of all the cocktails we serve are from our menu, which I think says it all.
What are normally the most important considerations when constructing a cocktail menu?
There are several aspects to take into account. It’s to be perceived as obvious together with the theme, the graphic idiom, the feeling and so on. The relation between the visual product (the factual menu) and what is being served from the menu needs to be perfect. Just because you have an enormously well thought-through visual menu, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a good end-product. When we go out to eat, we don’t order food from the best-looking menu but the one menu serving the best-tasting food.
The bar industry hasn’t exactly had the best of times lately due to corona and its effects on society. How do you work differently now and what do you think will change in the future because of this?
We continue as usual! We have since our very beginning (May 2019) only had seated guests - we only do table and bar serving. Something that is important to us is to not talk about the situation, but instead let the guest disappear from the outside world for a little while, and relax and enjoy themselves. That’s what a bar is supposed to do, right? To take good care of each guest, create well-being and a stress free surrounding.
Blast from the past
In Totally Stockholm Issue 12, we profiled Michael Borgström of the Bartender’s Choice Awards, when it still was a pretty new event. Michael said “We strive to take the bartenders of Stockholm to the same level as the city’s highranking chefs”. And among other interesting things Michael said at the time, there’s one question and answer that I think still applies today:
“Can you name an area in which the Stockholm bar scene lacks refinement?
A clearly defined area where we are lacking in skills revolves around how to take good care of the customer. Personally, I would even like to go as far as hiring psychologists to analyse our interactions with patrons, in order to find a path to a proper sense of true customer service. In Japan, the bar customer is almost treated like royalty and in the United States bartenders keep working for tips and realise the direct correlation between happy customers and their own earnings. This is where we’ve got a lot to learn.”