Lounge wizard: What’s subsequent for BarChef’s Frankie Solarik
That was the raison d’etre for a buoyant social gathering hosted by Netflix earlier this month. Drawing stressed scenesters and business vets, it was held at BarChef, Toronto’s premiere cocktail bar because it ta-dahed on Queen West in 2008. The event? The launch of “Drink Masters,” a significantly spiffy present on which 12 ace mixologists from throughout North America compete for the eponymous title and $100,000 (and it’s trending within the streaming service’s prime 10 worldwide). The person of the hour? Frankie Solarik, the brains behind BarChef, who’s additionally one of many sequence’ principal judges.
A number of days later, I checked in with the luxurious pourmaster. On a excessive from the present’s success (plus the shortage of sleep that comes with having a one-year-old), he was sneaking me a peek at his child on the way in which: the “little sister of BarChef,” as he calls the brand new spot, even additional west on Queen. Named Prequel, and set to open in January, it’s, he says, “a bit of softer, a bit of extra minimalistic.” On the 85-seater with an Artwork Nouveau design scheme – blue and gold tones versus the vampire’s den vibes of BarChef – Solarik says to count on a bar program with an emphasis on classics (“nothing modernist or molecular”) and one “primarily based on olfactory descriptors within the fragrance business: citrus and florals, woods and smoke.”
For this mixologist, each drink idea begins off as a drawing – he storyboards them! And his BarChef is such a vacation spot that well-known cooks like Chicago’s Grant Achatz make a beeline for it when on the town. What has Solarik at present excited? An immersive expertise being customized constructed inside Prequel. It’s all hush-hush for now, however he lets slip that this aspect is costing greater than the whole BarChef. “Assume 1890 Paris,” he teases.
Labour of affection
A humorous factor occurred on the way in which to the “Drink Masters” finale, filmed right here in Ontario, a few 12 months in the past. It’s a narrative that I used to be not anticipating. “Every episode took about two days to shoot,” Solarik says. “The final episode, we’re on day two, and it’s 4:00 within the morning. My spouse, who was pregnant on the time, wakes me up. She’s freaking out: ‘Frankie, my water broke.’” A automobile was en path to take him to set.
Off they went as an alternative to St. Joseph’s hospital, the place the medical doctors confirmed: yup, it’s occurring. To which Solarik countered, “So right here’s the deal: I’m taking pictures the season finale of a present for Netflix, this worldwide manufacturing. Any means I can realistically go shoot and be again for the delivery?” After getting the all-clear – most significantly from his spouse – he scrammed, agreeing to return by 9 pm. “So we shot the episode, they did all my pickup (photographs) quick. We topped the winner, sabred the champagne bottle, did our toasts, and I used to be out. I wore what I wore on the present, and my son, Lennox, was born an hour and a half later.”
“Loopy!” he provides. “I owe my spouse without end. Spouse of the 12 months Award!”
Converse simple
For a spot that already had been buzzing – BarChef typically has two- or three-hour waits on the weekends – “Drink Masters” upped issues even additional. “Yesterday, we began out with 48 (reservations) within the books and ended up at 200,” Solarik says. “We seen instantaneously that from the second the present was launched, enterprise elevated.” Name it the Netflix Impact.
It has been a time of evolution in additional methods than one. Just lately, Solarik purchased out his enterprise accomplice and is now sole proprietor of each his locations. The pandemic, mockingly, lifted his model additional when he pivoted to mailing out bar kits – at one level sending upwards of 4,000 to wannabe mixologists. “They obtain all of the substances and instruments to make the cocktail,” he says, “and I’d take them by way of a one-hour (Zoom) tutorial. Methods to obtain complexity in cocktails. As quickly as we reopened (BarChef), we had an on the spot new viewers. We doubled income from pre-COVID to post-COVID.”
We speak about his well-known “snow method” – principally, pulverizing dry ice in a meals processor “till it is sort of a very superb mud, finer than sand.” Then I ask in regards to the significance of vessels relating to particular drinks. “It’s the means you work together with the liquid, convey out the fragrant high quality,” he says. “Forty per cent of the expertise, a minimum of.” (Relating to consuming champagne, for instance, he’s anti-flute; a agency proponent, certainly, of consuming it from a white wine glass.)
Lastly, how was he in a position to deal with all that tasting on the present with out getting completely blotto on-camera? Solarik smiles.
“Tiny sips,” he says. “We’re professionals.”
