opinionated alchemist

Are you a like to learn? I am actually a big learner. Even though my knowledge about beverages and bars and everything, which has remotely anything to do with it surpasses quite anybody except of google, wikipedia or wolframalpha, I still find myself researching daily something new. Rest assured, that there is not so much which can surprise me with a big chunk of steaming new information, I also like to spread my search farer from my original turf. And often I can find new ideas and inspiration in a completely unrelated subject area. One big inspirational pond are the video of TED . One big step in my professional emancipation [of common perceptions] was the video of Malcolm Gladwell, who made clear, that customers don't necessary know, what they want (...). Today I found another one. It is by the famous movie director, writer and producer J.J. Abrams. And it is about mystery. One might ask, what it does have to do with "the" bar?! Well - if ...

My recent post, which proclaims the early death of exhibition flair just stirred up some dust (as expected). However the discussion on LinkedIn was much  ore thoughtful than I thought it would be, and I gained quite a lot of ideas, which will benefit the concept of "my style of bar". Unfortunately most commenters didn't really made the distinction between work flair and exhibition flair. While both styles are rather ideals - and can be seen as extremes, one great cocncept sparked my mind: Form follows function & function follows the form. It is a bit yin & yang. But it makes a lot of sense: exhibition flair is all about form. It abstracts the idea of barkeeping to a rather gaudy performance. See exhibition like a Vertu phone - an extravagant device, which does every single task worse than pretty much any other smart phone. This happens when the sole vision is superficial. You could take now an Android phone, which is open source and has a ton of functions and opti...

I just read the article " Dessert in the Sky " in TimeOut Abu Dhabi. It is interesting, that a quite simple culinary experience can capture guests [and journalist], and not only impress people - but also lure them serious money out of their pockets. A three-course menu for AED 1,220.00 ain't cheep. Please read the details in the link above - just to give you a short synopsis: Dinners are strapped into chairs around one big table. The structure with the chairs and tables are lifted by a crane to 50m height. You will have a 3 course menu [obviously it is rather simple, as the chefs don't really have a lot of equipment - they can more or less just arrange the food - but not cook it]. You have a breathtaking and slightly freighting view around you and subsequently you are a big pile of money lighter after the experience… Nice. I usually like to have it less flashy. But we can definitely learn out of this concept: The experience is all about the perception of gues...