After around a month’s hiatus, I got back behind the bar at Havana Club in central square, and had two fantastic weekends. I suppose that starting work during the Christmas holidays is not a very good introduction to the world of bartending because the crowd in the past two Saturdays was around two or three times more than when I first started.

After I had my first busy night at Havana two weeks ago, I decided to throw a party at my home to practice bartending a bit more in an environment where I would get feedback from both my friends and my own tastebuds. I guess because I hadn’t had a big party in a long time, a ton of people from the Sport Taekwondo club came even though I announced this party on Thursday night. From the beginning I mixed signature drinks for a crowd who weren’t going to ask for anything specific but would always respond with “I’ll drink whatever you make me!” which unfortunately made the job harder and less realistic. But I did get a lot of practice with speed, and it actually made returning to a professional bar a lot better because there, I had a constant source of ice, a consistent well, and customers who had specific requests.

So this past Saturday was busy, fun, and rewarding. It was a ridiculously busy weekend on both nights the club was open. The door guys Ben and Jason said that Friday was the biggest they’ve seen, yet on Saturday I felt that I was making drinks nonstop for maybe two or three hours straight right after the beginner dance lessons. And my favorite moment was when two girls came back to the bar, who had previously asked for “gin and tonic, extra lime, and splash of cranberry, and grey goose and tonic, extra lime, and splash of cranberry”, and this time said “you made them perfect last time! we were going to only have one drink tonight but just had to come back for another!” Yep. The best tip of the night was just returning for another drink.

new years at havana club was actually quite small. it’s probably a combination of the holidays and people being home, the snow, and other new years parties. i realized that dancing salsa is more like a sport, kind of like taekwondo. people will do it regularly - every week, every weekend, etc, and when christmas and new years come around, it’s more of a break for them. time to kick back with the family, drink some alcohol, and not go to salsa. so the holidays were a bit smaller…so small that big ben the event organizer felt bad for us bartenders and gave us a little bonus.

of course there was a small non-regular crowd. beginners who wanted to go out dancing for new years, and do something different, but didn’t want to hit the grinding clubs. there were some groups of young people, but of course when you finish taking the beginner lesson, there’s not much else you can do. my solution would have been to hit the bar until the club is fun. but it didn’t happen.

the next week and the last time i went was jan 8. this was actually the biggest night i’ve been at havana. for some reason the friday/saturday crowd switched, and friday was small but saturday was decently crowded, and kristina and i had a few waves of people where we were pretty busy. we made a few interesting drinks, made sure the beers were cold, and had a pretty good night. the next time i’ll be able to bartend is the second weekend of february - and hopefully by then, we’ll be getting new back lit menus to make ordering drinks a whole hell less difficult. and a credit card machine. what wonders a credit card machine would do.

I started bartending at Havana Club this weekend, with Micah, Nicholas, and Amanda. It was a blast. It’s fun to be at a salsa club - the scene is a little different than other bars and nightclubs. A bit portion of the drinks we serve is ice cold bottled water, which is essential in a room packed with sweaty salsa dancers who are ACTUALLY dancing. The Saturday crowd was more of a mixed drink crowd so I had plenty to do more than opening beer bottles and giving out waters. But Friday was packed and right outside the bar area was the heavy wall of humidity. We stayed nice and comfortable under the awning all night.