TONY CONIGLIARO
Philip Duff, of Dutch liquor house
Bols fame, and now owner of the first
speakeasy in Amsterdam was the brains
behind organizing the symposium in
2005. Philip has trained more than
8,000 bartenders around the world not
only in the art of fine bartending, but
the craft of MM. His view on MM is sim-
ple: it is still bartending, just a specialist
version of advanced bartending.
Molecular Mixology can be as hard or
as simple as you make it. Philip is one of
the most recognizable and prolific bar-
tenders in the field of MM in the world
and continues to push the envelope at
door 74 in downtown Amsterdam.
How about a Carpano brulee’d foam
on a Rowan’s Creek Manhattan with
bitters flamed through a little blow-
torch?
Eben Klemm’s role in MM actually
started long before his move to bar-
tending. Originally a Molecular
Biologist at MIT in Boston, Eben turned
his hand to bartending and fell further
still into the MM scene. His background
PHILLIP DUFF
EBEN CLEMM
at MIT and thirst for pushing the for the lasers, which in Martin’s opinion
boundaries of cocktail culture has influ-
enced his innovative combinations and
techniques, playing not just with flavor
but also with form and perception. His
experimental nature has lead him to
become Director of Cocktail
Development for B.R. Guest
Restaurants/James Hotels, a New York
City-based collection of concept restau-
rants, lounges and boutique hotels. He
oversees not only all the training for
bartenders and staff but also the devel-
opment of the group’s specialty drinks.
They say that chefs influence what
bartenders do in the bar, and when it
comes to MM this cannot be more true.
Eben Freeman began working with a
few burgeoning chefs that were tinker-
ing in the art of Molecular Gastronomy
and began to take some of the con-
cepts and ideas they were using and
applying them to the bar. His combina-
tions of flavors, textures, and tempera-
tures have made him a household
name in MM and his role as Bar
Manager at wd-50 in New York has
brought MM to the masses. His main
goal is to show the simplicity of MM
and give the customers an exemplary
experience. Most recently he was com-
missioned by Bacardi to create the
Mojito of the future. His example is a
mixture of lime and mint flavored
spheres suspended in a Bacardi, soda,
and xanthum gum liquid.
Martin Lange and Dustin Davis of
Sling Lounge in Brisbane, Australia
have brought MM down under and
taken it to the extreme. Their list of 350
cocktails has a section of about 30 that
are completely devoted to the art of
MM, and the first Tuesday of every
month they hold an intimate seating
for their cocktail degustation menu.
They practice all forms of MM except
EBEN FREEMAN
is too expensive for the final results.
Items that stand out on their MM list are
deconstructed classics such as the
Deconstructed Hemingway Daiquiri
and the Bloody Mary in different tem-
perature layers. The locals have
responded so positively that the bar
goes through three liter canisters of
their signature Kaffir Lime and Pickled
Ginger foam a week. Both Martin and
Dustin are pushing the envelope of MM
in Brisbane and think that it will proba-
bly plateau soon, which they feel will
be a good thing as it will have time to
mature and become more user-friendly.
New Mexico may not particularly
seem like a place where you would
usually find a Molecular Mixologist at
work, but head to La Casa Sena Cellar
Lounge in Santa Fe and you’ll find Chris
Milligan creating something new for
his clientele. Chris thinks that MM will
one day be like any other aspect of the
trade, similar to flair or bar magic. He
believes that bartenders will find a way
to use these practices in everyday life
and almost “pick and choose” what
works for them, very similarly to how a
bartender breaks flair into “working
flair”. At Chris’s bar though, he dazzles
guests with textures and sensations.
Jellies, foams, sorbets and caviars top
his list for giving his guests something
they can’t get anywhere else.
GIN AND TONIC BY EBEN FREEMAN
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