THE NEW YORK TIMES: up close – The Anti-Banter Bartender
Photo by Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times
By Joshua David Stein
Jan. 11, 2011
With its pyrotechnics, suspenders and tattoos, the cocktail scene in New York appears, at times, to revolve around a troupe of Barnum & Bailey escapees. But those who frequent Weather Up, a Prohibition-style cocktail lounge, need not worry. Its 34-year-old namesake and owner, Kathryn Weatherup, is tall and blond, an unbearded lady. She is what, in some circles, is called a tall drink of water. Although here, a sloe gin fizz might be more appropriate.
Her first venture the original Weather Up, a tiny bar with subway tiles and a bronze bar opened in 2008 in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, and was regarded by connoisseurs as the borough’s first true craft cocktail bar. Her latest, Weather Up TriBeCa, opened on Duane Street in December and has brought a high dose of cocktail culture to the stroller-beset neighborhood.
Despite her unassuming presence, Ms. Weatherup has emerged as an effervescent but unlikely force in the city’s tight-knit mixology scene. Not only is she the rare woman in a male-dominated field, but she is also the rare bartender who doesn’t brook banter.
“I like to make cocktails because it makes it easier to not make small talk behind the bar,” said Ms. Weatherup, who was born in the English Midlands and speaks with the long rolling vowels of that region. “Besides, when you’re shaking a cocktail shaker, your face goes all wobbly, and you can’t talk anyway.”
Instead, she lavishes attention on her cocktails, which she approaches with the punctiliousness of a lab technician and the purity of a nun. In her hands, a classic manhattan is a four-minute rite.
First Ms. Weatherup takes a coupe, a saucer-shaped Champagne glass, from a barside froster. Then, into a cocktail shaker, she gently pours 2 1/4 ounces of Templeton rye, 3/4 ounce of Carpano Antica Formula vermouth and 3 dashes of Angostura bitters. She slips in 4 hand-cut ice cubes, careful not to upset the alcohol. Checking the temperature with the back of her hand, Ms. Weatherup gently cools the drink by stirring it with a bar spoon. She disdains shaking it. “Shaking,” she explained, “is for drinks with citrus.”
When the embryonic manhattan is appropriately chilled, she pours the amber liquid through a strainer into the waiting coupe. Then there is the cherry. Instead of a plasticine red maraschino, Ms. Weatherup uses a cherry soaked in brandy until dark red, almost carmine. The ambience at her bars is similarly exacting. They are quiet, intense, artisanal affairs. Even when they are full, the din barely rises above a murmur or the swishing sound of a drink being shaken. Both are sheathed in white tiles that could have been lifted from the Paris Métro. And the bars are wide enough for a Coyote Ugly line dance, though her intentions are less social. “A wide bar keeps a nice distance from the world,” Ms. Weatherup said.
The cocktail list is short. There are only seven drinks at Weather Up TriBeCa. The last item reads: “Keep Calm and Carry On: Just ask your bartender.” “It’s a cocktail made at the bartender’s discretion based on what the customer likes.” Ms. Weatherup said. “That’s what bartenders are supposed to do anyway.”
Ms. Weatherup began her bartending career in Paris somewhat ignominiously, serving shots at Stolly’s Stone Bar, a sort of Les Deux Magots for hard-drinking Anglophone expatriates in the Fourth Arrondissement. “Back in those days everybody wanted cranberry juice,” she said, with a hint of despair. “I made a lot of tequila sunrises and sex on the beaches.”
Then in 2002, Ms. Weatherup met Matthew Maddy, an American who was casting bronze at a foundry outside Paris. “As soon as I met Matt, we knew we wanted to open a bar together,” she said. By 2003, they had moved to New York. They married, settled in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and began looking for spaces to open their bar.
But Ms. Weatherup’s cocktail satori didn’t come until later, when she was waitressing at Les Enfants Terribles, a French bistro on the Lower East Side. It happened at Milk and Honey, a speakeasy-style den on Eldridge Street opened by Sasha Petraske, the mixologist who has built a handcrafted empire. “I just stumbled into Milk and Honey after my shift,” she said. “I instantly fell in love.”
“It was just so classy,” she added, still breathless after all these years.
Soon, Ms. Weatherup was training with Mr. Petraske in the bar’s basement. Imagine a “Rocky” montage intercut with scenes from “Cocktail.” “I learned about ice, I learned how to shake, I learned about cocktail history,” she said.
In 2008, she and Mr. Maddy now divorced, they remain close friends and business partners opened Weather Up in a former storefront church on Vanderbilt Avenue. Mr. Maddy built the interior. Ms. Weatherup upholstered the stools. Mr. Petraske helped with the cocktail program and training, and jumped behind the bar when needed.
“For a long time, we didn’t tell anyone we were open,” Ms. Weatherup said. “We didn’t want to be overwhelmed, but people found out.”
Her ambition has since grown. Weather Up TriBeCa is much larger, and is a collaboration with Mr. Maddy; Tyler Kord, of the Fort Greene, Brooklyn, restaurant No. 7 (there is a small menu); and Richie Boccato, of the Long Island City saloon Dutch Kills.
Moreover, Weather Up TriBeCa has an exceptionally rigorous in-house ice program.
On a freezing Saturday last month, Ms. Weatherup spent a chunk of the day in the low-ceilinged basement peering at the bar’s special ice machine, a $6,000 Clinebell CB300X2, which looks like the offspring of a time machine and immersion circulator. Patting its stainless-steel belly, she proudly explained that the Clinebell produces two 300-pound slabs of ice, free from impurities, every three days.
“Ice is one of the most important elements in a cocktail,” said Ms. Weatherup, clearly warming up to the topic, before starting a discourse on the different cuts of ice, and the drinks for which they are used. For a moment, at least, she was as chatty as a bartender.