My guest on this episode is Julie Reiner: you may know her from any one of the New York bars she’s opened since 2003: Flatiron Lounge, Pegu Club, Clover Club, and most recently, Milady’s. She’s written cocktail books, judge cocktail comps around the world, and won numerous accolades for her bars and herself. Or if you’ve just come into the bar world, you might know her from TV and the Netflix show Drink Masters, which debuted in October last year to much success.

Drink Masters is a competitive bartending show — like Masterchef for bars — and it’s really the first of its kind — I do remember seeing a show about Diageo’s World Class comp on TV once, but I think it was an ad more than a show. Drink Masters is a new thing, and when it came out there seemed to be two takes: one, that it all molecular and foams and airs smoke and mirrors, and that it wasn’t real bartending — and the other, that it was great to see bartending get this kind of exposure. For what it’s worth, I’ve been watching it recently, and I think it’s a net positive — I mean, it’s very American in tone, as I say to Julie in this chat, but I think it’s pretty genuine and I’d like to see more of it.

So I talk to Julie about the show of course, and what that experience was like behind the scenes. But I also talk to her about how she makes decisions on which opportunities to pursue, about the qualities she has that have set up her up for this remarkable career, what it takes to open a bar now as opposed to 10 and 20 years ago, what makes a great bar and more.