At 23, Caelan McVeigh is manager of the prestigious Observatory bar in Belfast’s Grand Central Hotel. And by his own admission, it’s his dream job:

‘I’m happy at my work, I wouldn’t move for double my salary,’ he told LCN this month.

Although he’s back at his post now, managing the highest cocktail bar in Belfast, the early months of lockdown saw Caelan fulfil a very different role, doing everything from servicing the rooms which were being used by frontline workers to helping formulate new staff operating procedures and complete risk assessments.

Since July 3 though, he’s been back in the Observatory on the Grand Central’s 23^rd floor with new Covid-19 restrictions in place:

‘We’re lucky in that we never cram people into the place at any time and so we haven’t lost that much to social distancing,’ Caelan reports. ‘Our afternoon tea trade has been through the roof and our Friday, Saturday and Sunday numbers are at the level they were at pre-Covid. People still want the product, they still want to come out and see us and our regulars are all returning. That’s what we want to see.’

Caelan’s first taste of the hospitality trade was at Vanilla, the restaurant owned by his family in Newcastle, where he had waited on tables from his early teens. When he was 18, he began a part-time job at the Slieve Donard Resort & Spa where the chance to work during big events such as the Irish Open, convinced him that a career in the trade was what he wanted. He mentioned this to his manager at the time and was directed towards the Hastings Hotels trainee manager programme, which he duly embarked on.

The programme saw him work in a variety of roles in hotels across the Hastings group including the Everglades, the Culloden and eventually, the Grand Central where he was part of the opening team at the age of 21:

‘I really loved it,’ he recalls. ‘When I first went into the [management training] programme, my dream had been to end up at the Grand Central and when I eventually got here, even with the stress of opening, it was absolutely the best thing I’d ever done.’

In August last year, Caelan was promoted to the manager’s post at the exclusive Observatory bar:

‘This is one of the most exclusive venues in Ireland with some of the highest standards and the clientele are willing to spend a lot more money to have a great experience here,’ he says. ‘We’re very focused on quality cocktails and premium ingredients and we have our own high-end cocktail list which isn’t like anything anyone else has.’

Many of those who appear in this monthly column are keen to open venues of their own, but Caelan has his sights set on promotion within the Hastings group where, he says, he would like to become food and beverage manager with the next few years:

‘I totally love my job,’ he adds. ‘Working here has its challenges, but I love my team, we are very close-knit and it’s very rewarding whenever you deliver. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

Caelan recommends:

Linenopolis 

(A twist On The Negroni)

Ingredients:

25ml Dark Rum

20ml Aperol

15ml Dry Vermouth

5ml jumping Goat Coffee Liqueur

5ml Demerara

2 Dashes of Bitters

Method

Add the entire ingredients list to a mixing glass or jug and stir them until the jug becomes ice cold. Strain the mixture over rocks in a glass with ice. Garnish with orange coin and coffee beans.

The post Caelan is happy at his work appeared first on Licensed & Catering News (LCN) - News Coverage from the Local Trade.

The niece of well-known Belfast publican, Janine Kane, Nicole Kane began work lifting glasses in her aunt’s bar – The Spaniard – when she was 14-years-old. By the time she had reached 17, she says that her interest in hospitality as a career had begun to grow and after she’d completed her A-levels, she approached Janine with a request for full-time employment.

Janine took her young charge on and began to show her more about all aspects of the trade, including back-of-house systems. Nicole readily took to the work:

‘I just went from there, I started to work full-time and it was soon after that I started to develop a real passion for making drinks,’ says Nicole.

At the age of 20, Nicole moved from The Spaniard to a new supervisor’s role at another of Janine’s bars, Muriel’s, in Church Lane.

‘That brought a big change in responsibility,’ she recalls. ‘Being in charge of a team, day in and day out and looking after the shifts, it wasn’t like anything I’d been used to before, it brought a real a change of pace.’

Nicole soon moved up to the role of senior supervisor where she stayed for around 18 months before leaving the venue for a job in the cocktail bar at the nearby Merchant hotel.

‘I’d really got into cocktails and I kind of wanted a bit of a change,’ she says. ‘The cocktail bar at The Merchant seemed like the only place that was better than we were at the time. I was in there for about three years doing various things and I learned a lot, such as how to manage a team that’s not full of your friends. Managing people I didn’t know was a big change in management style for me.’

When she was 24-years-old, Nicole was welcomed back to Muriel’s as venue manager and she’s been there ever since.

‘I know that Muriel’s is family-run, but no matter who you work with in the trade, it feels like a family anyway,’ Nicole remarks. ‘You see these people more than you see your own family.’

She believes that Muriel’s is in a process of continuous improvement. It’s ‘a bar with its own vibe’, she says and its popularity has only grown since it became involved with the Belfast Food Tours.

‘I think the standard of bartending generally in Belfast is great now, especially when you compare it to other cities such as Dublin or Edinburgh. We are definitely up there,’ says Nicole. ‘It’s great, and people have this passion about it. We do have problems, I know it can be hard to find people at the moment that want to make this a career, but all the staff that we have now are fantastic.’

As for the future, Nicole says that ultimately, she wants to own her own bar. It would be ‘something quirky’ she says, and something that’s not been seen in Belfast before with its own features and back story:

‘A lot of the bars now are all very similar and I think it’s nice to have places that really stand out. That’s something that I really think we have now at Muriel’s.’

Nicole recommends:

Mezcal Margarita

Ingredients:

35ml Bozal Mezcal

15ml Triple Sec

25ml Fresh Lime Juice

20ml Sugar Syrup

A smoked salt and chilli rim.

Method:

Add all the ingredients into a tin, add ice and shake thoroughly until sufficiently chilled. Fine strain into a coupe glass rimmed with smoked salt and chilli and serve. Enjoy!

The post Nicole stands out from the crowd appeared first on Licensed & Catering News (LCN) - News Coverage from the Local Trade.

The 40-year-old mixologist and proprietor, who hails from Massachusetts in the United States, has transformed the venue since taking it over last year, modernising the premises and introducing a US-style small plates menu that features the best of local ingredients.

But it’s Brahm’s unique take on Prohibition era crafted cocktails – gleaned from his upbringing in the evolving café culture of Los Angeles during the early noughties – that’s really garnering fresh attention for the popular bar and bistro.

Brahm has been working in the hospitality trade since he began waiting on tables during his teens. The industry helped him pay his way as he worked from the east to the west coast of America, eventually settling in Los Angeles when he was 22.

But he’s done other things too. He served in the US Army and met his wife, Caroline, who comes from Northern Ireland, during a posting to Germany where she was attending university.

And he’s a trained actor who has appeared in many television productions, including Game of Thrones and Into the Badlands.

Hospitality, however, has been a constant presence in his life:

‘It’s an ideal job if you’re trying to be an actor because of the schedules you have to keep,’ he told LCN this month. ‘It’s an easy thing to always come back to and I always saw it as something that was familiar to me and a bit more stable than acting, perhaps.’

Brahm and Caroline returned to Northern Ireland in 2015 by which time they had a six-year-old son:

‘We knew it would be nice to have a little support around in terms of family,’ says Brahm. ‘I’ve also been to a lot of places in the world and NI is actually not that bad at all.’

Brahm says he had no shortage of job offers and began work straight away at The Cloth Ear in The Merchant hotel. As time went on, various other job offers came and went, but he had already decided that he wanted to look after a venue of his own:

‘I was aiming to do it within five years [of arriving in NI], but I ended up doing it in three,’ he adds.

A six-month search for premises led eventually to Shelby’s in Holywood, a well-known venue of long-standing which Brahm was confident he could reinvigorate.

‘To be honest, I think I just got a bit fed up with watching everyone else do things in a way that, I felt, was wrong,’ he admits.

The casual ‘speakeasy’ style that Brahm introduced to Shelby’s when he opened in December, 2018, has been going down well with local customers ever since. His classic craft cocktails and homemade juices and syrups, are the perfect accompaniment to his unique fusion menu.

‘Business can be a difficult thing to get right, but we’ve been bang on with the expectations that we set and we’re getting better,’ he reports. ‘The key thing for us now is a continuation of what we’ve achieved with a focus of getting more bums on seats.

‘The ultimate ambition is to open another location and grow the business. It would still be under the Shelby’s banner but in a different town. That’s what we really want to do, but it’s on the long finger for now. Securing continued growth will be our key objective in 2020.’

Brahm recommends:

The Irish Martini

Ingredients:

60ml Glendalough Irish Gin

15ml Noilly Prat Vermouth

2 drops saline

Method:

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing glass and add ice. Stir for 20-30 seconds until chilled and properly diluted. Serve in a chilled Nic & Nora glass with expressed lemon peel.

Brahm’s tasting notes:

I find the floral, earthy notes of the gin really elevate this classic cocktail along with the dryness of the Vermouth, and just that touch of saline to wake the ingredients up. It’s a perfect ‘after work’ drink.

The post Brahm puts a new shine on an old classic appeared first on Licensed & Catering News (LCN) - News Coverage from the Local Trade.

Now living in Bangor, Hannah Ferris helps look after the cocktail bar at The Merchant hotel in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, but she was living in Edinburgh and reading French, Spanish and EU studies at university when her interest in the trade was first sparked.

Her first post was behind the bar at The Waverley on St. Mary’s Street, a staple of the city’s pub trade. That was one of the reasons that she really wanted the job, recalls Hannah, who admits that she had to overplay the extent of her previous experience in order to convince the owner to give her the job.

‘I just really wanted to work in hospitality, there was something about it that really attracted me,’ she says. ‘I have enjoyed being around people since I was a kid and working behind the bar attracted me because of the interaction, the ability to talk to everybody. It wasn’t that much about drink at that time, it was the atmosphere that I liked.’

During four or five years spent studying in Edinburgh, Hannah worked in a series of bars around the city. She also took a year out and lived abroad in France and Spain:

‘I didn’t work in bars when I was there, but I went out a lot and I learned a lot about the people there and their drinking culture which I tried to being back home with me, it’s very different to what we have here,’ she says.

By 2014, Hannah was back in Edinburgh and she worked for a time as a supervisor at a pub on the Royal Mile. In 2016, she returned to Northern Ireland and a job at The Dirty Onion in Belfast for which she had been interviewed while still living in Edinburgh. She stayed at the venue for about a year:

‘It was a lot quicker and there was more volume that what I was used to in Edinburgh. In general, I think our culture here revolves around drink a lot more and you have to learn to cope with that, you have to get quicker very fast.’

Hannah moved to The Ivory in Victoria Square in September 2017 – it was her ‘first real cocktail job’, she says. She had learned the basics of mixing cocktails from The Barking Dog’s Michael Conlon during her days at The Dirty Onion, so she wasn’t entirely unprepared for the experience.

From The Ivory she went to The Sagart on Chapel Lane for around a year before the opportunity at The Merchant came up. Now, she and another supervisor, are overseeing the dedicated cocktail bar at the luxury hotel:

‘I’m really loving it,’ she declares. ‘It’s fabulous. ‘At present, we’re looking to update the menu a bit, go down a more modern route with it and it’s really exciting.’

Reflecting on the changing nature of the trade in Belfast, Hannah says that she thinks the standard of bartending here is steadily improving:

‘It’s got a lot better in recent years and is developing a much more global outlook in terms of the drinks being served,’ she remarks. ‘Bartenders are also more knowledgeable, they’re reading up on cocktails and really trying to emulate the best bars around the world. There’s a real drive here to be as good as Dublin, local bartenders are pushing themselves to achieve that and they’re really passionate about it.’

Hannah says that in five years’ time, she’d either like to be managing an exclusive cocktail bar, preferably somewhere outside Belfast, perhaps in France, Spain, London or even Dublin. Or, she’d like to own her own place:

‘It would be quite small and would have a European influence because of the time I spent abroad. It would have a bar and maybe 10 or 11 tables with great cocktails and a selection of wines. That’s what I really want.’

Hannah recommends…

The Lumiere

Ingredients:

30ml Citadelle gin
17.5ml Green Chartreuse
17.5ml St Germain
12.5ml lime juice
3 drops champagne acid

Method:

Add all the ingredients to a shaker with two medium blocks of ice and shake short and sharp to decrease dilution, then add three drops of champagne acid, which is tartaric and lactic acid mixed with water. Enjoy!

The post Bar work proves ideal for Hannah appeared first on Licensed & Catering News (LCN) - News Coverage from the Local Trade.

Sean McGuigan was born in Belfast and studying for A-levels when he began to work part-time at the Four Winds near his home in the city. He was around 16 at the time and he stayed at the venue for the next two years.

‘I did fall into it I suppose,’ he told LCN this month. ‘I had friends that worked in the industry, but after a while, I began to enjoy it and it’s been a passion of mine ever since.’

When Sean eventually went off to Liverpool to attend university, he continued with his bar work, finding a position at McCooley’s, a prominent Irish bar in the city, and subsequently, at a number of other venues.

He returned to NI at the age of 22 and began working behind the bar at The Chelsea on the Lisburn Road. The manager, Terry Loughran had been manager during his days at the Four Winds and he stayed there for the next six months before returning to the Four Winds where he spent a brief spell in a management role.

After that, there came a short hiatus during which Sean left the hospitality trade altogether and went to work for the Child Maintenance Service for the next eight months:

‘At the time, I just wanted to try something different and this opportunity came up,’ recalls Sean. ‘But I found that I missed the bar and I eventually went back to the trade and a job at AMPM.

‘That was very much a cocktail-orientated venue and it was during this time that I got a lot of my experience. During the Christmas period, I worked the rooftop bar [The Treehouse] on my own.’

By this time, he was 23-years-old and an eight-month posting at city centre venue, Ten Square followed before he found himself just up the street a little, working behind the bar at Flame restaurant.

‘It’s very busy here and it’s very different from the other places I’ve worked,’ says Sean, who points out that Flame’s central location means that it gets a much higher ratio of tourist customers than many of his former venues:

‘That means we get asked for a lot of different cocktails which you might not normally get asked for,’ he adds. ‘That can be testing and it’s a challenge, but it’s a great place to work and I enjoy it.’

Sean believes that generally, the standard of bartending in the trade across Belfast has improved many-fold in recent years:

‘I think people are beginning to realise that this isn’t the easy job they might have once thought that it was,’ he adds. ‘Your experience says everything about you…Nowadays, we have these very unique cocktail bars for people to experience and that’s great. New bars are opening up every week and people don’t mind paying that bit extra when they know that staff are putting the effort in.’

As for the future, Sean says that he can certainly see himself at the helm in his own business venture, probably a restaurant:

‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ he remarks. ‘I have the experience, I know how to run the floor in terms of food and beverage, I’ve been there and done that, so I think I could manage it…I think my place would be old-fashioned, a unique cocktail bar with a relaxing vibe, somewhere that you could go for a cocktail and maybe some food with no pressure put on you, you’d be left to your own devices…’

Sean recommends…

The Lola

Ingredients:

50ml Belfast Artisan Gin

50ml pumpkin juice

15ml honey

15ml lemon juice

10 ml ginger extract

Egg white and one muddled cinnamon stick.

Method:

Shake the ingredients and then fine strain them into a coupe class. Enjoy!

The post Experience is key for Sean McGuigan appeared first on Licensed & Catering News (LCN) - News Coverage from the Local Trade.