Vive la revolution

Vive la revolution

Anthony Farrell is well-known locally as a champion of the current cocktail revolution, but his career path could very easily have followed an entirely different route…

As a younger man, Anthony Farrell (35), had no burning ambition to work in the bar trade. He spent his student years learning the art of graphic design and was just hours away from his first day working at a Belfast call centre when he noticed a newspaper ad for a bar job at Paul Rankin’s former Cayenne Restaurant on Great Victoria Street.

That job, which he held onto for 16 months – climbing to the position of bar supervisor – set him firmly on a hospitality career path and after a couple of further stints at well-known bars in the city, Anthony opened his first business at the age of 25.

San Greal Events, a specialist licensed events organiser, was the official bar provider for the MTV EMAs when they came to Belfast in 2011.

Perhaps what Anthony is best known for, however, is a chain of stylish city centre venues, the first of which – Love & Death Inc. – opened in Ann Street in Belfast five years ago. Capitalising on Belfast’s new-found status as a tourist destination and on the back of a burgeoning cocktail renaissance, Aether & Echo opened its doors in the old Deer’s Head premises on Lower Garfield Street three years later.

And just last year, Anthony opened his latest attraction, a speakeasy cocktail bar called Apoc in Goose Entry. The venue was named the Best Cocktail Bar in Ireland at last year’s Craft Cocktail Awards and Anthony is to be found mixing cocktails there most Friday and Saturday nights.

“I firmly believe that the whole scene is moving back towards quality, classic drinks with good service in unpretentious, speakeasy environments such as this,” he told LCN recently. “Just because somebody tells you that a drink tastes good doesn’t mean that it actually does and I think that the whole focus now needs to be on where the venue is based and what the local demographics are. A drink that is right for customers in Belfast may not work for people in Coleraine or Portadown.”

Experience is essential, he says, if you’re to be able to cater to the demands of modern customers who know exactly what they want:

“Our local clientele now are 100 times more savvy than they were five years ago,” says Anthony. They know more about beers and wines than most bartenders in Belfast would care to believe. And they also have more choice, there are more venues open than ever before and they all have to compete at a very high level. Some of the guys in the trade are really pushing hard now and that means more choice, which is good for the consumer.”

When it comes to Anthony’s own favourite tipple, he has diverse taste. It really depends on the time of night and the surroundings, he says, but he does enjoy drinking a daiquiri with a beer and he loves to end the evening with good Scotch or an Irish whiskey.

He says he’s confident that Belfast can hold its own against competition in other places:

“The thing about this city is that for the number of people here, we’re still ahead of places like Dublin and nipping on the heels of the London,” he says. “Once more people start to come here, it will even itself out more and the culture itself will start to become more refined. And once the people on the hill get themselves sorted out and pass the [liquor licensing] legislation that we need, this will be a really nice town.”

And as for Anthony’s personal ambition, he has his sights set on something exotic – he says he’d love to be running a beach bar, perhaps in Barcelona, where he sees himself zipping down the promenade on a long board with a big dog at his heels or simply sipping a cool beer in the sunshine…

 

Anthony recommends….

 

Japanese Whisper

 

Ingredients:

50ml Bulleit Bourbon

10ml lychee and rose citric

35ml lychee agar agar

20ml fresh citrus juice

Sugar

Rose petal crystal and rose dust

 

Method:

Violently shake all the ingredients over ice. Then serve the drink in a frozen goblet and add garnish.

 

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