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If his potent cocktails
don’t floor you, his gorgeous dimples will. Andrew Pearson,
the 24 year old bar consultant for Rick’s at Taj Mahal
Hotel, explains in his Yorkshire accent (“Only Geoffrey
Boycott and I have it”) how his love affair behind the bar
began: “ After completing business management from the Leeds
University and majoring in financial management, I realized I
would be very bored being an accountant. “Not that he is
disappearing the profession, but it was something I just
couldn’t see my self-doing.
So, Pearson joined MKT, a group that owns a chain of
theme restaurants in London. “They take on 12 people every
year and I worked at their restaurant in King’s Road
Chelsea,” he says. He quit two years later because “
working with a group ones vision gets blinkered. A large chain
is only interested in speed and cost effectiveness. They used
Margarita & Martini mixes, and I realized that I
couldn’t stay in that kind of work environment.” But
Pearson has no complaints with the TAJ group. “I decided to
do freelance work, and got a call in the morning from Nigel
Grocock, GM of the TAJ MAHAL.They wanted me to come to Delhi
to help set up Rick’s,” he smiles, adding Rick’s USP is
unstinting quality. “ We don’t use any domestic brands,
and every cocktail served is the way it is supposed to be.
“Not just another smart marketing line--- Singapore sling
served as Rick’s comes straight from Raffels Hotel in
Singapore where it is invented in 1915. “A friend faxed me a
copy of the original and that’s what we use,” explains
Pearson.
A strict no-no for
him is Ian Flemming perpetuated myth of “ Shaken, not
stirred Martini” that James Bond loves. “ A Martini should
never be shaken. Only Cocktails with a fruit juice base should
be shaken vigorously, the rest are stirred gently,” he says.
Pearson feels “
nobody can teach you to be a bartender. You have to learn from
people who know the business and the rest comes from
experience.”
And with teachers
like Dale Degroff, who runs the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller
Center in New York and who’s called the greatest bartender
in the world, Pearson, who spent a week going through his
collection of 4000 books cant go wrong.
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