Inside The Bartender’s Pantry – COOL HUNTING®

Behind the scenes with celebrated cocktail specialist Jim Meehan on the debut of his new book

Jim Meehan’s passion for cocktails has taken him on an almost Odyssean journey. His first book in 2011 shared stories and recipes from the celebrated NYC speakeasy PDT (Please Don’t Tell). “Meehan’s Bartender Manual” (2017) came next, a foundational cocktail reference and recipe book with an iconic green cover. His years behind the bar and his extensive writing led to his newest book (coming out in June 2024), exploring categories beyond the spirits that help bring innovative ingredient forward cocktails to life. “The Bartender’s Pantry: A Beverage Handbook for the Universal Bar” written with Bart Sasso and Emma Janzen, offers meticulously researched information, recipes, and step-by-step instructional graphics showing sugars, spices, dairy, grains and nuts, fruits and vegetables, flowers and herbs, coffee and tea as well as soda, mineral water, and ferments.

“The idea of this book is to be a handbook, not a manual, not a manifesto, not an encyclopedia,”explains Meehan, of his upcoming release. “A handbook is something that you reference frequently.” He approached the writing of “The Bartender’s Pantry” with the intention of working more like a journalist by gathering data from multiple sources. “I like to flip to the acknowledgments and the bibliography before I start reading. I learn a lot about writers by virtue of how deep their bibliographies are, how well they cite their sources, and even how and how many people they thank.” In his own new extensive bibliography, Meehan cites numerous sources and inspirations; among the pages he freely quotes experts including Samin Nosrat talking about salt and Anne Mendelson’s thoughts on dairy. Ingredients are defined, given context and applications for cocktails. Meehan also shares sourcing and storing information. 

For this multidimensional project with copious amounts of source material and recipes, Meehan and his collaborators combed through exhaustive research and reference material. Together they distill the information down to his plan for a handbook that serves both general knowledge and educational purposes. The goal is to share the most useful information for professional bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts. “I had to specialize further and further and further as I got more into my mixology career, and I think that this book is really an attempt to reprioritize the value of generalist knowledge and education,” he says.

Meehan likes to spend a lot of time thinking about and planning the overall look of a new book as an object. For “The Bartender’s Pantry” the unbleached kraft paper, reminiscent of grocery bags, felt right to him for a book about procuring ingredients. The list of references for the cover alone are an indication of the obsessively researched contents inside the book. The design team looked at the cursive writing on Quintarelli wine labels. “We also had the Virgil Abloh Ten series of shoes on the mood board because we loved the way that he was taking these iconic shoes and showing their construction through transparencies. The see-through orange on this cover, that’s Virgil Abloh’s inspiration,” says Meehan. He adds that Godspeed you! Black Emperor has an album called “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven” with a cover on a kraft paper base; the In Bocca Italian books, and Leonard Koren’s Wabi-Sabi book. Other elements were inspired by “Design Quarterly” by the University of Minnesota. One issue offers images of Julia and Paul Child’s kitchen with a constructivist style pegboard wall.

Meehan shares meticulously researched information for every aspect of the ultimate pantry of ingredients. The original book concept was for a book called ‘Beverage’ and it was going to be a conceptual version of a dispenser’s formulary, which was a book that soda jerks used. “It was like the Mr. Boston’s of soda fountains in the late 19th century, early 20th century,” explains Meehan. “And as I started talking about the subjects that I wanted to write about, my publisher Aaron Wehner said that this actually sounds a lot like a bartender’s pantry, like a pantry of items that bartenders would use. That was really the lightning bolt moment for me. One of the inspirations for the books that I really enjoyed reading and was thinking about a lot throughout this book was The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr. I think that the idea of what is the book that you shopped for drink ingredients that aren’t booze? That is this book.”

Meehan writes for bartenders, knowing that there are enthusiasts who will also want to try these recipes. This book goes beyond the spirits to take a deep dive into things about all of the other ingredients needed to make delicious high-quality drinks with integrity. “I find in my experiences as a bartender it’s surprising that I can go to a bar and the bartender may know everything about all the indigenous agave in Oaxaca, but they don’t know that the coffee that they’re serving me has a roast date on it that actually matters.” This experience led Meehan to write an entire section of the book on coffee with information about coffee as a crop, roasting, and brewing the ideal coffee for specific cocktails. Some ingredients could potentially be highlighted in multiple sections of the book. “It was a mixture of knowing I wanted a coffee and tea chapter, knowing I wanted a spice chapter and I needed a fruit chapter, “ says Meehan. “Spices pop up in multiple sections of the book. The classification of ingredients was also intersectional.”

This example shows how when you listen closely to someone who makes it a part of their tradition, you’ll find science in there that totally changes your understanding of all the techniques and chemistry.

Jim Meehan

When approaching how to include a recipe that had chai, Meehan remembers seeing a video by Sana Javeri Kadri from Diaspora Co. “What was fascinating is in learning this double and triple boiling technique for making chai, I realized that the reason why authentic chai is not overly tannic is because of some chemical process that’s going on with the milk. And there’s a denaturing process with the proteins in the milk that are offsetting the tannin from boiling tea. By bringing someone in to give me a chai recipe, who interestingly wasn’t in the tea trade, they are in the spice trade. And then I ended up publishing this in the dairy chapter,” says Meehan. “This example shows how when you listen closely to someone who makes it a part of their tradition, you’ll find science in there that totally changes your understanding of all the techniques and chemistry.” 

To bring it all to life Bart Sasso developed a visual style that includes detailed how-to illustrations. Meehan and Sasso thought deeply about how to best present the recipes for everything from Pineapple Cordial and Baja Grenadine, to two types of sangrita. “Knowing that today’s bartenders and enthusiasts have gotten into the craft, from visuals and videos, Bart and I agreed that illustrating the process would be of great value to the reader, who’s already used to learning how to make drinks or cook from videos,” says Meehan. “And the advantage of illustrating versus video is that you can see a recipe all the way through.” 

For yogurt, the second illustration panel shows how Mony Bunni brings it to a simmer over medium low heat, whisking constantly until the milk reaches 180 degrees. Everything that Sasso illustrates was taken from process photos of Meehan making the recipes himself. “I love the way that he shows the Dutch oven with a timer and a temperature gauge with a whisk and a view of the heat the pot is supposed to be at,” says Meehan. “In a weird, artsy way I feel he’s getting to how this book makes a pretty persuasive argument for making that drink.”

For the photography, Meehan worked with AJ Meeker. Sasso and Meehan believed the spirit of what they had been working on might best be achieved with a photographer who shoot on film. Meehan had worked with Portland based Meeker on local shoots and admired his work in Josh McFadden’s cookbooks. Meeker had a shop in California that he felt comfortable sending film to be developed, and a Portland shop that could regularly loan him a 1950s Hasselblad medium format camera. They shot the book over the course of a year, so that they would always have seasonal produce to work with. They worked in various spaces of Meehan’s kitchen and home to achieve the overall architectural and cinematic style of the cocktail images. Sam Anderson’s vibrant green “Lava Lamp” cocktail is perched on the edge of corner molding, while Meehan’s recipe for “Gut Punch” with Hojicha kombucha is shown being served in a rustic, speckled ceramic pitcher and cups. 

The cocktail recipes by Meehan and several bartenders from around the world, highlight how careful and intentional ingredient sourcing and learning the techniques to make each element of the drink by hand add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. Whether that’s Meehan’s own Bloody Marion with B Marion Spice Blend or Yana Volfson’s Arroz Con Rum with cashew horchata, the book reads like an informative instructional guide, though still feels as if it will lead to making drinks for the most ideal and wondrous cocktail party. Meehan’s hope is that for the bartender, enthusiast, or cook, this book will be a go-to reference. “I feel like that would be the dream and that was that was the goal,” he says. 

“The Bartender’s Pantry” debuts 11 June 2024.

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