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Rajdeep Datta

More interesting tips and tricks on how to serve a good, memorable cocktail from Shatbhi Basu, the only woman bar consultant of India.

The secret of good cocktails is ice, lots of it. The basic ingredients can sometimes be invented. So says Shatbhi Basu, the only woman bar consultant of India.

"If you don't have Blue Curacao available in your cupboard (or in the market), don't you worry, mix some edible blue colour in a thick sugar syrup instead. This is cheaper and will give you the same colour in your mocktail," she says.

If you enjoy a drink in style, you would greatly appreciate Shatbhi's wisdom the way you would a good wine. The author of the bestselling book Can't Go Wrong Book of Cocktails, has decades of experience behind the bar.

Shatbhi, a Mumbaikar, started her career as a chef in a Chinese restaurant, but was thoroughly disillusioned when she was not allowed to enter the bar area. "Women were not permitted to serve alcohol then," she recalls. But she had her moment of glory, when she became the manager of the restaurant and changed the policy. She ordered her bartenders to teach her the nitty-gritty of mixing a drink and all the tricks they knew.

She did a bit of self-educating and went through all the books on liquor that were available. "But most books on wines and liqueurs are written by foreigners who have absolutely no idea about the Indian conditions. Most often, we don't find the stuff they talk about in the shops. And if you do find one it is criminally expensive. So I began to experiment with ingredients which were locally available," she says. Some of the results turned out to be instant hits in her restaurant. Finally, having mastered the art, she is now the consulting bartender in various five-star hotels.

When she initially checked out the leading bars, she discovered that a majority of the bartenders had very poor knowledge about the art of blending liquor. And then there were others who tried to cheat customers by mixing less and selling short.

The answer to this problem: Shatbhi now runs her own bartending school in Mumbai called Stir Academy where she trains eager students. "I get a tremendous response from the Hotel Management students. Unfortunately, in the course curriculum, the subject of bartending is not taught in-depth. I teach them the practical aspects of bartending," she says.

Not just that, but she also teaches performance bartending which "includes juggling of bottles, setting a portion of the counter on fire and other such gimmicks that make a bar a lively place".

She has as many as 80 students enrolled in three to six months courses, and she plans to set up branches of her academy all across the country. But there seems to be a lack of qualified teachers. "I guess I will have to wait for a while till my students grow up to be masters of the art and then spread out to various cities and become teachers," she says. Shatbhi, who was in Delhi to conduct the Smirnoff bartending master class on cocktail mixing and serving, was pleasantly surprised to find as many as 75 people turn up at the two-day workshop paying a fees of Rs 750. "We had to refuse many for want of room," she says. What did she teach the class? "I taught them how to set up a home bar, about serving methods, mixing cocktails at a party and educating them on the various liquors," she says.

And most of the people who had gone to learn got much more than they bargained for. "It was really an eye-opener. I had absolutely no clue about liquors. I do drink — mostly vodka on the rocks, but I have never tried these fancy cocktails," says Divya Rajan, an executive with an oil company. Lessons learnt, she is now looking forward to throwing parties for her friends.

Thanks to Shatbhi, a lot more people in Delhi know the art of making cocktails in their own bar. "One doesn't need to stock all the liquors or wines in the bar. When a party is for business friends, make sure you stock the best of everything. If it is for close friends, stock only those that you know your friends like," goes another one of Shatbhi's bar wisdom.

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