Today, Bon Appétit is at Mírate in Los Angeles to experience a Friday night from a bartender’s perspective. Mírate is a Mexican restaurant and bar offering an extensive menu of experimental cocktails and was named among the 50 best bars in North America. We strapped a camera to the Bar Director, Maxwell Reis, to get a closer look at what a busy Friday night looks like at one of LA’s hottest bars.
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00:00At Mirate, we do what I consider to be volume craft cocktails, which means we're providing
00:07a craft cocktail experience, but at a much larger volume.
00:11We're serving around 260 seats, which means we have to utilize technique and technology
00:17in order to execute at the same level of quality at the volume.
00:21Throughout this video, you'll get a glimpse of what it's like to be a bartender at a bar
00:23serving around 500 to 600 cocktails on an average Friday night.
00:28Hopefully by the end of the video, you'll get some ideas around the incredible amount
00:30of thought and care that goes into each cocktail.
00:34But for now, let's get back to these drinks.
00:43So I'm making two rounds of cocktails, two of them are going to be served on the rocks
00:46and two of them are served up.
00:48Looks like I'm making the yaki, then it looks like I'm making two of our house margaritas,
00:53which is Tommy's Margarita, but we don't use agave syrup.
00:56We use what's called no agave, which is our house-made, more sustainable version of the
01:01agave nectar, which is not processed.
01:04I'm at the third well, so there's like three wells back there.
01:08One's the service well, which provides the most for the actual restaurant.
01:12And then this is, I'm working at the one where I'm shaking up some drinks for some actual
01:16guests that are sitting in front of me, which is always the most fun.
01:18Normally when I'm shaking, I'm not worried about hitting this little camera on my chest,
01:27so I had to be very conscious of it.
01:29And then also, what's hilarious is you could do something a million times and constantly
01:33do it perfectly, and the second someone's watching you, you're like messing up and overthinking
01:39things.
01:40Oh, as I knock everything over, oopsies, camera pressure.
01:46So what I'm doing, basically, like normally with egg white, you would do what's called
01:49a dry whip, which means that you shake the cocktail without any ice first, and then you
01:54shake it with ice, and that creates the froth, right?
01:58So instead, what I'm doing is I make a simple syrup out of methylcellulose that we use to
02:01create a foaming agent that is a replacement of egg white or aquafaba.
02:07Use a Hamilton Beach blender, that one's looking a little corroded because the citrus hitting
02:10it all the time, but it functions great.
02:12And basically what I'm doing is we shake the cocktail, and then I hit it with the immersion
02:16blender, and that's what whips all that air into it and creates that super dense foam.
02:22Essentially, when you're building cocktails, cocktails that are served on the rocks are
02:26designed to be sustained at a cold temperature because they'll continue to chill and dilute,
02:32whereas an up cocktail is served at the ideal quality and temperature from the moment you
02:36set it down.
02:37If you're having a cocktail that's going to continue to evolve, you'll want that to be
02:41timed out so when you're serving it with an up cocktail, they're served at the exact same
02:45time, that way they're both at peak quality when they're dropped down, because they are
02:48going to continue to develop in opposite directions.
02:51And then a little fennel pollen on top is what you're seeing here.
02:54Alright, this is for the folks here?
02:57These guys?
02:58Okay, perfect.
02:59We have two yakis.
03:00Those are the yakis, those are the sours, and then these are the mezcal margaritas right
03:07here.
03:08What you're seeing here is me making four tequila number twos.
03:19And then you'll notice I made a little divot on top of the ice with a copper ball.
03:23We fill that full of cilantro avocado oil for aromatic, and that also, if you slosh
03:29into the drink, is super tasty.
03:34A lot of prep goes into all of our cocktails, but the tequila number two is no exception
03:37to that.
03:38Actually, I'll just show you how my team prepped it yesterday.
03:43So what we start with is we take our house mezcal, we take conchonita pibil fat at about
03:48a one to five ratio with the alcohol, and we take old tostadas, we break them up and
03:53put it in there.
03:54We sous vide it at 135 degrees for one hour, agitating it every 15 minutes, and this is
04:00just to make sure that the fat remains liquidated at all times and consistent, and also releases
04:05the flavor of the tostada.
04:07After about an hour of that, we remove the alcohol, which is mixed with the fat, and
04:12the tostadas, and we put it into the freezer so the fat gets frozen back out.
04:16And then we combine that with Oaxacan pineapple brandy and Amaltepec, which is the Pistilla
04:21Mije liqueur, and that becomes our liquor batch.
04:23So that's all the liquor components pre-batched together and pre-infused with the meat and
04:27the tostada.
04:28Whenever you're building a cocktail, you want to put in the least expensive ingredients
04:35first, which means you put in things like juice, and then you put in alcohol last, because
04:39if you mess up the juice and you have to toss it, that's a lot cheaper than if you're tossing
04:43the alcohol.
04:47We did a test when we opened, which is a temperature check.
04:51Basically what we did is we shook cocktails with our ice, and we measured how we could
04:57get the lowest temperature with the ideal dilution.
04:59So adding the perfect amount of water and getting it as cold as possible, and we found
05:03that mixing with four cubes, or shaking with four cubes, gets the coldest temperature we
05:08can possibly get with the ideal dilution.
05:11So I'm mixing two in each, which means I'm going to be using six, which is the ideal
05:14for two in a tin.
05:16So everything I'm doing is incredibly deliberate.
05:19Most 50 Best bars that you come into are not two and a half floors.
05:22They don't have 260 seats.
05:23So our challenge is to make cocktails of this quality and caliber, but make them consistent
05:28and pump out a ton of them.
05:34Not every cocktail has to be for everybody.
05:35I just need to have a cocktail for everybody.
05:37So it's like, I want someone to come in and go, oh my god, there's pork in that drink.
05:41That is insane.
05:42And I want them to talk about it, you know?
05:44And even if they don't get it, and they're like, I'm a vegetarian, I went to Mirte, it
05:48was crazy.
05:49They had a pork cocktail in it that I couldn't have.
05:51But I'm going to tell my friend about it, because that's freaking nuts.
05:54Pardon me, are we at Forte Kedos?
05:57Yes.
05:58Thank you so much.
05:59You're welcome.
06:00How's it going, everybody?
06:02Thanks, everybody.
06:03Have a great night.
06:04Enjoy your meal.
06:05One of the two.
06:06No, they wanted to come down here, but we're full.
06:07Oh, bummer.
06:08OK.
06:09And then we started getting pretty busy out of nowhere.
06:10What's funny about being a bar director is I get to do bar stuff a lot, but when the
06:11ship is running smooth, like, I've been in the restaurant industry for a long time, and
06:12if I see a dirty glass on the table, I'm like, oh my god.
06:13I'm like, oh my god.
06:14I'm like, oh my god.
06:15I'm like, oh my god.
06:16I'm like, oh my god.
06:17I get to do bar stuff a lot, but when the ship is running smooth, like, I've been in
06:21the restaurant industry for a long time, and if I see a dirty glass on the table, I'm like,
06:24oh my god.
06:25I'm like, oh my god.
06:26I'm like, oh my god.
06:27I'm like, oh my god.
06:28I'm like, oh my god.
06:29I'm like, oh my god.
06:42You have people coming in already having a good time.
06:45You have people that come in looking to have a good time.
06:47You might see the executive chef prepping a goat for an event.
06:50You see the whole goat?
06:52I mean, really, anything can happen.
06:55And my team, they're here because they love what we do.
06:58If I take care of them, they take care of me.
07:00And we have an amazing shift, which
07:02means we can take care of people.
07:03Hey, get back to work.
07:04I'm trying here.
07:06Yeah.
07:11So here I am prepping the glass of our in-house canned
07:13cocktail, the Tucumpa.
07:19The Tucumpa, even though it might appear simple
07:21in its serving, is actually the most labor-intensive cocktail.
07:25A lot goes into it.
07:26And the canning is made so it's perfect every time.
07:29All right.
07:30Tucumpa, this is our Paloma variation here.
07:33Super, super tasty.
07:34Salted grapefruit cordial, a little bit of high-proof
07:37tequila, pulque, Mexican sake, a bitter pomegranate.
07:40Is this like a new brand, or?
07:42These are canned cocktails that we make here in-house, actually.
07:45Really quickly, let's go back to a day before when
07:47we were prepping this drink.
07:54Normally, if you were to get a Paloma, a gin and tonic,
07:57tequila soda, whatever it is, you're
07:59taking carbonated liquid that you
08:01want to be super carbonated.
08:02And you're adding flat ingredients
08:04into it, which makes it into a flatter cocktail.
08:06The goal behind these canned drinks
08:07is we're carbonating every single ingredient altogether.
08:11But that presents a lot of challenges, too.
08:12So the ideal target temperature on this beverage
08:15is between 20 and 23 degrees.
08:17So the tricky thing here is that fridges don't get down that
08:21cold, and freezers don't get that warm.
08:23So you need a fridge that doesn't exist.
08:26But what we do is we take a temperature regulator
08:28called an Inkbird, where we plug it into the wall.
08:31We take a freezer, and we plug it into that.
08:33And then also, you can't carbonate anything
08:35with material in it.
08:36So first, we start with grapefruit juice.
08:38If you ever leave watermelon juice out,
08:39you'll notice that it naturally separates.
08:42Lime juice doesn't do that.
08:43So we need to make it separate.
08:45We treat it using three natural clarification components.
08:50So those components do that.
08:52We spin it in a food-grade centrifuge.
08:56Now we're left with completely clear grapefruit juice,
08:58in this case.
08:59We also make the pulque paint for the rim of the glass
09:01here in-house.
09:03This one, we don't use fresh pulque.
09:04We use a bottled pulque.
09:05That way, it won't develop.
09:06We want the flavor, and we're going
09:07to create the texture anyway.
09:09So we want it to be stable.
09:10So what she's doing now is she's taking titanium dioxide,
09:13which is going to dye it white.
09:14And then she's going to add the pulque.
09:18She's going to take Ultratex, which
09:19is the tapioca-based derivative.
09:22And she's going to blend it using the immersion blender
09:24to make it into our salt rim, an alcoholic salt rim,
09:27I might add.
09:29So 7% alcohol.
09:30I don't want you to have to know what goes into this
09:32to be amazing, but we're going to make
09:34you an incredible product.
09:35We're an award-winning bar.
09:36And if we're going to do it, we're
09:37going to do it right, which means
09:38if you're getting a carbonated beverage,
09:40we're going to carbonate it the most we could possibly
09:42carbonate it.
09:43And this is how we do that.
09:49Can I get this out of your way?
09:50Oh, yes, of course.
09:51You got it.
09:52Of course.
09:52Would you like another cocktail or anything?
09:54You already did?
09:54What'd you get?
09:56The coconut.
09:57Coconut marm?
09:58I put that on the cocktail menu.
10:00I forgot.
10:00Your ghost beer.
10:02Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:03Hi, I'm Max.
10:04Alex, good to meet you.
10:05It's nice to meet you as well.
10:06You're fast.
10:06There was this really lovely couple.
10:07I ran out some of their drinks, and the guy, I guess,
10:10is an at-home cocktail nerd.
10:11Are you in the industry?
10:12No, I just like a geek.
10:14Yeah, same.
10:15Same.
10:15They were saying that they've been fans.
10:17It was really cool because it was
10:18like a very natural interaction.
10:20Like, it almost felt like a plant.
10:21Yeah, it's like, it's going.
10:22This is the best side of his life right now.
10:23Oh, there you go.
10:24I'll pour you a taste.
10:25And, you know, it's like when people come in,
10:27and they're like that, it's like, dude,
10:28I want to show them so much attention and reward for being
10:31into what we're doing.
10:32And he was engaging with me.
10:34He was asking lots of questions.
10:36I noticed that they were having our short rib
10:40dish, which comes out with bone marrow on the side.
10:42You guys got this done.
10:43We're arranging a luge that we put on the menu,
10:45if you guys want to try it.
10:46You want to try it?
10:47It's really good.
10:47OK, cool.
10:50Pizza luge, pizza luge.
10:53Normally, what they do is they take rum or brandy.
10:56They infuse it with raisins by letting
10:58it sit for a couple of weeks.
10:59And then they add water and sugar to it,
11:01and they make it into like an after dinner Giusevo.
11:03I do one where I use a technique called a Justino, where we're
11:07basically rapid infusing these house private barrel
11:10rums with raisin in the centrifuge.
11:12So all the sweetness naturally comes from the raisins
11:14rather than added sugar.
11:15And we can make it in about half an hour
11:17instead of the multi-week process.
11:18This is like something I've always wanted to do.
11:21Well, tonight is your night.
11:25So basically, the marrow is coated
11:28with all the fat from the bone marrow,
11:30and we're essentially washing it out with the pasita
11:32into this woman's mouth.
11:34A lot of delicious, ideally.
11:38Feeling OK?
11:39Oh, that's hella good.
11:41Good?
11:41All right, awesome.
11:42Here you go.
11:43Oh, they got the big boy camera out.
11:45Are you OK with that?
11:46All right, let's see.
11:47Let's go.
11:48All right, and there we go.
11:52Oh, wow.
11:53That is delicious.
11:54Good stuff?
11:55Thank you so much.
11:56So this is fun because I get the benefit
11:58of getting to try this out and see their genuine reactions,
12:02which they enjoyed, which means that my research and development
12:05was a success, and we could put it on the menu.
12:07And they get to feel special because they
12:09get to try something that's off menu, which is awesome.
12:11And we get to reward them with that.
12:13And they were super, super lovely.
12:15And she was super blown away by some of our custom drink
12:19wear for our mezcals.
12:22She fell in love with them.
12:25Basically, we could have sent out some food items that
12:28would have cost the restaurant $10 or whatever it is.
12:31And I was like, I would rather send them home
12:33with two of these copitas.
12:35And every time they drink mezcal out of them at home,
12:37they're going to think about us, and they're
12:39going to want to come back.
12:41You made our night so great.
12:43I mean, you guys, too.
12:44That was awesome.
12:49I know I had the camera on me, but there's
12:51a lot of great bartenders here at Mirate.
12:53So I wanted to show you guys one of my bartenders, Adam.
12:55He's working upstairs at the Up Bar, and he's making the huero.
12:58First, he's chilling the glass, and he's
13:00rimming it with our sea bean salt.
13:02We chill all of our glasses with liquid nitrogen
13:04because it makes it so the part that the drink touches
13:07is colder than a freezer could possibly get it.
13:09But the handle where you would be putting your hand
13:12is at room temp.
13:13And that would never happen out of a freezer.
13:15Then he's building it reverse order of cheapest ingredients
13:19to most expensive.
13:20So first, he put in the lime juice.
13:22Then he put in our agua chile syrup.
13:25And now he's adding in a pre-batch mixture
13:27of our avocado fat-washed high-proof tequila
13:30and Mayan coconut liqueur.
13:32He's going to be adding about four to five cubes in there.
13:34Perfect.
13:39Shaking it up.
13:46And then, yeah, he's going to be pouring it in there
13:49and topping it off with that nice ice cube.
13:50That's it.
13:54And then, of course, a blood sorrel garnish on top,
13:57which is indicative of our chef's garnishing of his agua chile.
14:10So it's pretty close to last call.
14:12The night's starting to wind down,
14:13and I'm preparing one of our more popular items,
14:15our house-mess golf light.
14:18So here I'm doing the setup,
14:20which is gooseberries with sal de gusano and champolina,
14:24so Oaxacan crickets that we get when we finish in-house.
14:26And then I do some strawberries with some orange salt on the side
14:29just in case someone's feeling squeamish
14:30and they don't want any bug salt.
14:32This is an alternative to what most people would use,
14:34which would be sal de gusano, so worm salt, and orange.
14:39I find that majority of the time when you put that on the plate,
14:42it gets left there.
14:44And it's like, so I try to be intriguing
14:46and use things that they haven't seen.
14:48That way they engage with it, and we're not wasting.
14:51It's a palate cleanser, essentially, and snack.
14:53And then this is roasted agave from Oaxaca,
14:55so this is the base of that mezcal comes from.
14:58So this is an aspect of the experience
15:00that you can normally not get outside of
15:03when you're visiting these producers that we want to share.
15:07I picked that up from Mexico.
15:08We get it.
15:09We don't sell it, because technically,
15:11since we're bringing it back from Mexico,
15:12we can't sell it, but we give it away.
15:14Kind of like foie gras a lot, you know what I mean?
15:16You can't sell foie gras, but you can give it away for free.
15:19And then we're making our custom flight,
15:21so four different mezcals,
15:25most of them from Oaxaca and one from Durango.
15:29The reason I concentrate so much on our well,
15:31well has a bad connotation most of the time.
15:34It's like, if you go into a bar and you get the well,
15:36it means you get the cheapest stuff
15:37that they don't have on the back bar,
15:39they're not on display, it's hidden.
15:40And it cracks me up that it has become so normal
15:44that you have to upgrade to get something good.
15:47But my whole idea is,
15:48I don't think you should judge an establishment
15:51based on what's on their back bar,
15:52I think you should judge them based upon
15:54what they do the most of, right?
15:56So 95% of people are coming in
15:58and they're engaging with one thing,
15:59that's what I'm being judged on.
16:01And on top of that, we're working with a small batch spirit,
16:04which means that if 95% of my revenue is from the well,
16:09that means 95% of the money that I'm spending
16:12is going to the family that's producing the well.
16:14So this is going to be from Neta Mezcal,
16:16which is a mezcal project from Oaxaca.
16:18Most of these are going to be from Oaxaca.
16:20Then we're going to have,
16:21that's served with some gooseberries,
16:22with salted gustano,
16:23some trampolinas, so Oaxacan grasshoppers,
16:25strawberries with orange, oh yeah, they're good.
16:27We get them from Oaxaca,
16:28we finish them here in-house,
16:29they're like potato chips or something.
16:31Oh wait, legit grasshoppers?
16:32Oh yeah, yeah.
16:33You do it.
16:34You have legit grasshoppers?
16:35Wait, wait, wait.
16:36Yeah, I'm good.
16:37I'm going to get the potato chip.
16:40Okay, cheers.
16:41Cheers.
16:42We have the craziest frickin' job in the world.
16:45It's the service industry.
16:46Like, we are in service of people,
16:48and that notoriously does not have a good connotation,
16:51and it takes a very special type of person
16:54to find love in that.
16:56It's my favorite part of my job.
16:57You're getting to be hospitable,
16:58and you're proud of what you're doing,
16:59and you're getting to share it with people.
17:01It's like home field advantage.
17:03You're in your place of power.
17:04I'm like, I'm at my bar.
17:06I have all these things I love that I'm so proud of,
17:09and I get to share it with people.
17:11And that's awesome.
17:12All right.
17:16What do you guys want to try?
17:17Oh, I know it.
17:20Uh...
17:24Oh!
17:27Chingon?
17:28Is that okay?
17:29Salud.
17:30Good ship, guys.
17:36Cheers.