opinionated alchemist

We "global" bartenders (and restaurateurs) find often too many excuses not to excel in our bars, in creativity, in service. But then there are venues, which are at times in the middle of nowhere, which are disproving our points. Sure most of the time, these are restaurants - but also bars are not as uncommon as one would guess. Off course, when it comes to bars, 'Murica is the centre of attention; few cities there are bartenders' paradise - all above New York City. Yes the rents are expensive - but loads of bar-interested people, which fill the cash drawers of operators and the wallets of bartenders. But every single location has its advantages and disadvantages - and yes - every location has it's opportunities. In this post (and maybe this even becomes a series), I would like to take one location as example - and like to show, which chances there are, to make a truly outstanding bar. Let's begin - shall we? First stop Philippines - Manila. I have ...

On the perspective to have a much broader audience, it was a good thing, to change from the Apple environment to the more common google-web environment. Month to date this page had surprisingly 800 page views. As my domain was not reachable and as the new blog is new [means not high in the search engines], it is even a bigger surprise for me. Apparently the most views are coming from the US [thank you folks] and from the UAE [shukran], followed by the Philippines [I had a lot of Pinoy colleagues] and Indonesia. Russians are reading my posts also - I know, that some of my previous colleagues transfered to Russia or are Russians... and English. Of course, due to my origin Germany is also not far back. Readers from Canada [thanks Darcy] and Turkey are quite surprising... Even more surprisingly India is totally white on the map [and I have and had a lot of Indian colleagues] as well as Sri Lanka. Have a look on map besides...