From behind their bars, they’ve seen it all. Blossoming love affairs and breakups. Fights and reconciliations. Joy and despair. They’ve served as amateur psychoanalysts, sounding boards for business ideas, and the voice of reason—some people need to be told when it’s time to go home While many people become bartenders for practical reasons—the flexible hours, the wide availability of jobs—others find the profession a calling.

“It takes a very special human to be in hospitality,” says Amie Ward, president of the Baltimore Bartenders’ Guild. “We enjoy putting other people’s needs before our own. We are creative in our solutions. We can empathize, actively listen to people. There’s nothing easy about that at all.”

Bartending has changed dramatically in the last decade. The dawn of the craft cocktail era has attracted those with creative and even scientific minds to the profession. The ability to make drinks using liquors and ingredients from around the world is finally treated with the respect it deserves by restaurateurs, customers, and critics alike. Although getting the perfect head on a beer is an art unto itself, engineering a cocktail using sous vide shochu with coconut, cantaloupe juice, yogurt fat-washed soju, and egg white, as Gabe Valladares can do at CookHouse, is something different entirely.

In Baltimore, designer cocktail bars like Rye, W.C. Harlan, The Coral Wig, Southpaw, Dutch Courage, and Kenwood Tavern peacefully coexist with beer bars and corner pubs. They are all important parts of our city’s social fabric, as are the people who work at them.

There are more than 610,000 bartenders nationwide, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statitics. We’re lucky to have some of the best of them right here in Baltimore.

Gabriel Valladares

CookHouse

Saturday nights at 10 p.m., Bolton Hill’s CookHouse transforms from one of the best restaurants in the city to one of the best cocktail bars…anywhere. The man responsible for this metamorphosis, Gabriel Valladares, is just 25 years old, but to sample one of his drinks is to taste the work of a wunderkind.

During the weekly three-hour sessions (and of course during  CookHouse’s regular dinner service), the self-taught Valladares’ creativity is evident in every sip. Each cocktail on the menu is a Gabe original.

Take for example The Cilantro. Valladares, CookHouse’s bar director, is a lover of mezcal, and he had begun to experiment with sous viding liquor.

“Mezcal is Mexican, and I wondered what else was in that realm,” he says. “Cilantro popped into my head, so I sous vided cilantro, a little bit of honey, and mezcal for eight hours. My friend Lane [Harlan of Clavel and W.C. Harlan] inspired me to do my own tepache, which is basically fermented pineapple juice.”

But Valladares wasn’t done. To garnish the drink, he added little pellets cleverly dubbed “lime caviar” on the menu. They’re made by combining sugary lime juice and the chemicals sodium alginate and calcium lactate, an idea he read about in a book published by The Aviary, the cutting-edge cocktail bar in Chicago. When the pellets pop in the drinker’s mouth, they add a kick of acidity to the smoky drink.

“It was a one-and-done thing that came together really well,” Valladares says of the concoction. But that’s not the norm. The ability to accept failure, he says, is a key component to being a successful mixologist.

“I’ve done so many cocktails that literally taste disgusting. They never make it onto the menu. Not everyone is going to like everything you do. That can hurt my ego. But putting your creative aspects [forward] brings people in.”

Judging by the crowds that flock to CookHouse, Valladares’ wins far outpace his losses. A former student at Maryland Institute College of Art, he’s also an avid photographer, and his beautiful shots of the restaurant’s food and drink routinely wow people on Instagram.

“I love when new people come into the bar,” he says. “My goal every night is to blow their minds and give them an amazing experience.”

Kim Vo

Dutch Courage

Kim Vo sees potential ingredients for cocktails everywhere. Over the summer, she challenged herself to begin making drinks with zero waste. This she took quite literally. Vo used corn as the backbone for the drink she calls La Cosecha, which means “harvest” in Spanish. Not only did she juice the kernels, but she turned the cob and all of the husk into a stock.

“When you put them together you get the most powerful corn flavor,” she says.

From there she added mezcal and basil to the stock. Next, she put in a little watermelon. She even pickled the rinds for garnish so they too did not go to waste.

In November, Vo tapped into her Vietnamese roots to create the Snug Bug, her take on a Hot Toddy inspired by artichoke tea. She made a tincture using the artichoke heart and charred the leaves. Then she added carciofo, which is an artichoke-based amaro, and mixed in a cane sugar spirit, plum liqueur, and reduced cider syrup.

“It gets wild,” she says. “It’s toasty. It’s earthy. It’s just perfect for the season.”

The drink demonstrates the scientific way that Vo’s brain works. She earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University but gravitated toward the hospitality industry because she treasures the interpersonal relationships.

“Ultimately what I love about cocktail bartending is the connection with people, both the guests and other people in the industry,” she says.

After stints at hotel bars and the late, great whiskey-focused bar Bookmaker’s in Federal Hill, she’s been the bar manager at Dutch Courage in Old Goucher for three years. During her time in the industry, she’s seen the world of upscale cocktails change dramatically.

“Cocktailing was [once] kind of like a very exclusive practice,” she says. “You had to go to a speakeasy or a craft cocktail bar to find a good cocktail. But post-COVID, with Instagram and that whole boom with social media, it’s more accessible.”

She believes that the culture she has helped to create among the staff has contributed to Dutch Courage’s welcoming spirit.

“It’s a completely supportive environment, and it really lends itself to this uninhibited creativity,” says Vo, 33. “The owners are super supportive, and we have a very, very tight staff. And I think, honestly, our guests have the most fun because we’re all very happy.”

Charlie Vascellaro

Clandestino

There’s no mystery as to why people enjoy going to the tequila-centric speakeasy Clandestino in Belvedere or, for that matter, any of the other establishments where Charlie Vascellaro has worked over the course of his 20 years behind the bar.

He knows how to throw a party.

“I’ve always felt like, being the bartender, you are the host of the party, which I’ve had plenty of experience doing at home over the years,” he says. “I was always the kind of guy who hosted the parties, and everybody would come to my house, and I would make the drinks for them. When I first started tending bar and I was worried about my relative lack of experience, I used to coach myself and say, ‘Just make them like you make it at home.’”

That policy has served him well. At Clandestino, which he manages and helped open in 2022, he specializes in preparing cocktails with a Southwestern flair.

Vascellaro, 59, who spent much of his childhood in Arizona, originally started bartending because he liked the hours. They allow him the freedom and flexibility to pursue his other passion: writing about baseball. His work has appeared in The Baltimore Banner, Baltimore Fishbowl, and New York’s Village Voice, for which he writes about “the Mets and all of their travails.”

Each year during spring training he returns to Arizona, where he curates museum exhibits about baseball (one on the history of Japanese-American baseball history eventually made its way to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles) and organizes baseball-themed trips for groups of senior citizens. The groups of 35 to 40 people take in games at the spring training homes of the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants, listen to guest speakers, visit museums, and eat all their meals together. It’s intense, Vascellaro says, but his bartending skills often come in handy.

“You’re kind of a public speaker as a bartender,” he says. “You’re a public persona. So if people have anxiety about public speaking, bartending can get you over that. And I think you’re also a peacemaker. You’re creating an atmosphere. I think the skills that you learn as a bartender definitely cross over in real-life situations quite often.”

There’s another perk of bartending, he says, that works out well for his hybrid career.

“I pick up a lot of writing assignments behind the bar, too. Editors, publishers, come into the bar and I get introduced to them not only as the bartender, but as a guy who does some writing. And before you know it, I’m working for people who were my customers at the bar before. It’s perfect.”

Dan Burks

The Prime Rib

Over the course of his dozen years behind the bar at The Prime Rib, one of Baltimore’s most venerable steakhouses, Dan Burks has developed a somewhat simple philosophy of bartending.

“The customers that come in are generally nice folks,” he says. “A lot of them have been coming in for years and years and we know them, and we like them. It’s easy to give good service to people that you like.”

Burks, 47, has been doing just that since he started bartending in the late ’90s on the Eastern Shore. A music performance major in college, he had a feeling that he would gravitate to the hospitality industry. (“With that degree, you’ve got to eat, sleep, and breathe music,” he says.)

When he found his way to The Prime Rib, he knew he was home.

“I’ve had other jobs here and there, but at The Prime Rib it’s not like we’re slinging beers and shots to a rowdy crowd that is out partying,” he says. “It’s a lot of martinis, Manhattans, and Old-Fashioneds. Anything served in an up glass. I’ve made a million Cosmopolitans. We go through a lot of martini glasses.”

The art of being a bartender lies not just in mixing drinks. It’s also knowing how to interact with customers. At an upscale restaurant like The Prime Rib, that’s even more pivotal. The affable Burks has a natural rhythm and intuition that keeps the mood upbeat yet still gives customers space.

“The people that we know we talk to all the time. But with some folks, you have to gauge whether they’re doing something. Are they buried in their phone? But you get plenty of regulars that want to talk sports. Some folks want to talk politics. And some people you can see that they’re with friends and they’re just catching up and bullshitting.”

On a recent night, a customer paid Burks a compliment that stuck with him.

“We’ve been coming here for a long time,” the man said, “and while we love the food and the atmosphere, we come here for you.”

Amie Ward

The Healthtender, Southpaw

Amie Ward loves bartending, and she’s devoted much of her professional life to making sure others in the industry have the tools to love it as much as she does. Ward is the executive director of Safe Bars, a nonprofit dedicated to making bars, restaurants, and other alcohol-serving spaces safe and welcoming for guests and staff alike.

She also owns and runs The Healthtender, a company that provides business owners and those on the frontlines of hospitality with the tools necessary to care for their bodies and minds.

“I started working in bars because those were the kind of people that I liked being around,” says Ward, 42, who has a master’s degree in kinesiology. “I liked talking to strangers for a living. I was taking care of myself, but I saw my peers were not. I created The Healthtender to teach people in the hospitality industry to eat better, take care of their bodies, and talk about the risks, because we have access to excess, we have weird hours, all that jazz.”

Ward started tending bar in 2009, and she says it took her a while to learn to counteract the physical and emotional challenges in the profession. Remembering to hydrate and eat while working a 10- to 12-hour shift (she always keeps nuts in her pockets for a quick snack), avoiding afterwork drinking sessions, stretching, resting—all of it is important.

“Bartenders and people in the industry are like endurance athletes, but we treat our bodies worse than any athlete ever would,” she says.

For Safe Bars, Ward’s work focuses on teaching the staff of any alcohol-serving establishment how to do bystander intervention, deescalation, and intervene in safe and non-confrontational ways to prevent sexual assault, sexual aggression, and other forms of violence.

“My world has mostly transitioned to advocacy work for the hospitality industry, doing a lot of health and wellness for people to make sure that they can stay in this business that we love for so long.”

But because she so treasures the work, Ward still steps behind the bar for the occasional shift at Southpaw in Fells Point.

“I love creating ridiculously over-the-top drinks and really special experiences for people,” she says. “I’m just one of those weirdos who loves the community and loves the job. I still have those moments when I want to be bartending. I fucking love it so much.”

Andre Levon

Clavel

Andre Levon, 37, has been tending bar for nearly half his life. A native of upstate New York, he started working at Turp’s in Mount Vernon before arriving at Clavel nine years ago. After all those years behind the bar, he still savors the relationships he builds with his customers.

“I find myself interacting with lots of different types of people,” he says. “You meet engineers and all these literate people. If anybody in the industry tells you that at this point that isn’t still a part of their job that they dig, they’re [over it] because it still is such a great thing.”

Levon has helped the popularity of the renowned Mexican restaurant’s cocktail list keep pace with its food. He leads mezcal tastings each Tuesday and, along with the team, plays a big role in curating the cocktail list. (He’s also part of the reason that the taqueria has been twice nominated for a James Beard Award in the Outstanding Bar category.)

He starts working on drinks three months prior to a menu change, a process that often includes traveling to Mexico, which is where he came up with the inspiration for the drink Tuba Por Favor. It’s based on the Filipino alcoholic beverage tubâ, which is made from the sap of palm trees and was introduced to Mexico centuries ago.

Levon’s cocktail combines tepache, coconut liqueur, lime juice, housemade kümel, and honey. It’s served shaken in a Hurricane glass.

“It’s a good amount of volume,” he says. “It’ll put a little buzz on but for the most part I designed it to be something that someone could enjoy for a while without getting too drunk.”

Although there’s no mezcal in that drink, it’s clear that the agave based liquor holds a treasured place in his heart.

“Mezcal is, of course, an agricultural product, but mezcal is a cultural product as well,” he says. “We have Mexico so close. We’re on the same continent, you know? And it is so vastly different from us. In a way, being able to drink mezcal connects me to this other culture in a really serious way in language, in art, and in cuisine.

“It doesn’t hurt that it’s delicious.”

This piece appeared in our March 2024 issue. For more great Baltimore stories, consider becoming a subscriber.

Amie Ward came up with the concept of becoming “The Healthtender” when she realized that people in the hospitality industry, especially bartenders, were under an enormous amount of physical and mental stress. Both alcoholism and even suicide were alarmingly prevalent in her industry. She decided to combine her background as a bartender with her 20 years of training in the physical fitness and wellness arena to create a program specifically tailored to those folks behind the bar.

Why did you see a need for mental health and wellness resources in the hospitality industry?
I started my programming back in 2015 because I had been seeing this disconnect between the amount of labor that we put in each day as bartenders, but how little we were taking care of ourselves. We’ve lost people in the industry as a result of suicide or because of complications from alcoholism, and that kind of took it to the next step of teaching people about trying to be a little bit more mindful about the way that they’re drinking and what’s actually happening to your body on a physical level when you’re drinking.

Was there a pivotal experience that made you realize you wanted to start improving the industry?
The Baltimore Bartenders Guild would do a monthly education event, and in December of 2015, I got up to talk about how to give yourself proper nutrition when you’re on a marathon shift. This woman named Lindsey Johnson, who runs a company called Lush Life Productions, was there. And she’s like, “You have to do this,” and that kind of inspired me to start putting together my business plan for The Healthtender.

How did it feel to be recognized as someone who could supply a need for not just your community, but the global bartender community?
There was definitely validation. I want people to feel good in their skin, I want people to feel good with their bodies and just be able to listen to their bodies and really understand that better. It’s been wild and it’s been awesome and I’m so happy that I do this.

What are some of the services that you offer to bartenders?
Lots of movement classes, stretching classes, mobility classes, boxing, because I love boxing. But my biggest thing and the thing I’m most proud of is being able to make classes that are adapted to every type of body. So making people who would never find themselves in any kind of gym setting or whatever feel really comfortable about it. I’m not a nutritionist, but I can teach people how to meal-plan. I am a Mental Health First Aid instructor as well.

What do you recommend as a good first step for bartenders if they are interested in improving their overall wellness?
Would you like to eat a little bit better? Would you like to move your body better? Would you like to feel less pain? I think taking a mental inventory of what’s going on in your world is a good start. I love when people just come to talk to me first because I always will talk to people for free without any reservation to find out what their needs are and kind of send them in the right direction.

How would you describe the community you’ve built?
This is just a group of humans that genuinely care, support, and want to see each other survive, thrive, and grow in their own journeys. It’s just so supportive, and it’s really the way that I want to see the industry going when it comes to mental health and being able to create that community literacy on the topic of de-stigmatizing sobriety, addiction, and the pursuit of mental health.

What are your hopes for the restaurant and hospitality industry in the future?
I really want a shape-shifting of the entire culture and the landscape of hospitality. I want health insurance to be a normal thing. I want five-day workweeks or 40-hour workweeks to be a normal thing. I want owners to pay their bartenders appropriate equitable wages. I want people who are generally more vulnerable as a population or in a marginalized identity put to the forefront so they can actually be the leaders that they were designed to be. I want the hospitality industry to prioritize people rather than profits.

Five years ago, local hospitality veteran Ginny Lawhorn saw an opportunity to bring the city’s bar community together for a week of events and workshops that celebrated innovation in the industry. At the time, she noticed that Baltimore’s cocktail scene was measuring up to—if not spilling over—some of our urban neighbors.

“Baltimore didn’t get the opportunities that D.C. or Philly got, even though our talent pool and restaurant saturation is just as high,” says Lawhorn, the lead bartender at Landmark Theatre in Harbor East and co-owner of Sticky Rice in Fells Point. “The first year was very organic and insular, with a couple of community engagement events and cocktail competitions.”

Since then, Baltimore Cocktail Week (BCW) has evolved from a small, trade-focused conference to an annual week of festivities that supports bartenders while also providing cocktail-fueled fun for patrons.

“Over the years, it’s very much pivoted toward the consumer or toward the industry a bit more than the other,” Lawhorn says. “But this year we worked really hard for there to be an even split in opportunity between consumer engagement and industry trade development.”

From April 23-28, both bar professionals and cocktail enthusiasts will be able to take advantage the jam-packed lineup that Lawhorn has planned for the fifth anniversary of BCW. On the consumer end, highlights will include a Reyka vodka pairing dinner at Rocket to Venus on April 23; a BARCS fundraiser with punches by Sailor Jerry rum, Hendrick’s gin, and Monkey Shoulder whiskey at the Baltimore Tattoo Museum on April 26; and a “Boss Babes” panel with female industry leaders and DIY cocktails benefitting House of Ruth at Make Studio on April 27.

This time around, Lawhorn made it a priority for the industry programming to surround wellness—a topic that has been emphasized during BCW in the past, but is being focused on more heavily this year. Once again, she is teaming up with R. Bar’s own “healthtender” Amie Ward to host seminars that address everything from nutrition and physical wellbeing to pain management and musculoskeletal protection behind the bar.

“This year we really considered things that we all know are needed in terms of talking spaces and evolution,” Lawhorn says. “We decided that it was our community responsibility to provide these platforms. It can be challenging to our comfort zone, but it doesn’t need to be challenging to our actual execution of incremental changes.”

Ward will kick off the week with a full day of programming at R. House on April 23—which will include meditation, a discussion about gender in hospitality with the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, and a self-care panel the delves into coping with the mental and emotional challenges facing the industry. The seminars will continue the next day with a meal-prepping tutorial and exercise class for pain management.

Bringing everything full-circle, the fifth-anniversary closing party on April 27 will be held at Pen & Quill in Station North—which hosted the very first BCW cocktail competition (amongst many of these female bartenders) five years ago.

“That first year is something I’ll forever hold near and dear . . . because it worked,” Lawhorn says with a laugh. “Watching people continue to come back together is so special.”

Looking ahead, Lawhorn hopes that BCW can become a destination for visitors from surrounding areas and, in turn, have a positive effect on spring tourism.

“I feel so grateful to have this work, and to partner with people who continue to have faith in Baltimore,” she says. “We really want folks to come and spend a few days here. The city is worthy of that time and investment.”

Typically, the annual Baltimore Cocktail Week kicks off with a cocktail competition. But rather than pitting local bartenders against one another, organizer Ginny Lawhorn is taking a more collaborative approach this time around.

“In the face of the heartbreaking number of restaurant closures in the last year and a half, I didn’t feel like we needed another competition,” says Lawhorn, the co-owner of Sticky Rice, who started the event in 2015. “There’s more of a desire to create a community conversation and focus on cultivating small businesses, whether it’s engaging in them as consumers or supporting the jobs that they create.”

This year, the weeklong initiative happening July 30-August 4 will launch with an across-town happy hour at five bars scattered from Hampden to Canton, including Holy Frijoles, The Red Star in Charles Village, Sticky Rice, Bartenders Pub, and The Regal Beagle. On Monday, July 30 from 4-10 p.m., each spot will create a specialty drink using a certain spirit, and a portion of the final sales will be donated to local nonprofits.

“Baltimore has so many unique communities,” Lawhorn says. “People become so comfortable exploring their own, but sometimes it’s nice to engage customers and try to get them just a neighborhood away.”

The inclusive feel of the kick-off happy hour is fitting for this year’s theme, “Better Together”—which Lawhorn says will be an undertone in all of the Baltimore Cocktail Week meetups. From a special brunch to a conversation about collective bargaining, the daily events (many of which are open to the public) will address subjects like sustainability, innovation, and wellness in the hospitality industry.

Feminism will also be a topic of discussion, as five female industry leaders gather for a “Badass Business Babes” panel at Waverly Brewing on July 31 at 7 p.m. Admission to the talk is $25 with all proceeds being donated to House of Ruth. Panelists will include Lane Harlan of Clavel and W.C. Harlan, Judy Neff of Checkerspot Brewing, Carrie Podles of Alexander’s Tavern and Papi’s Tacos, Emily Lerman of Mera Kitchen Collective, and Paige Baskauskas of Opici Wines.

“It’s going to be great to hear everyone else’s opinions about working in the hospitality industry from all sides,” says Baskauskas, a wine sales representative for Opici. “This is a great event to show everyone that we’re educated when it comes to our craft. We know what we’re doing and we want to expand on that even more.”

The week continues with a free, all-day series of wellness workshops at R. House in Remington on August 1. Led by our own local “healthtender” Amie Ward, the gathering will begin with yoga followed by a series of conversations about nutrition, sobriety, and sexual assault prevention.

Another industry trend being represented is sustainability, which will be addressed at a get-together at Foraged in Hampden on August 2. Six national brands, including Bombay Sapphire and Sierra Nevada, will present local bartenders with information about how to minimize their ecological footprints.

“It’s not a secret that we’re a wasteful industry,” Lawhorn says. “It’s a lot of packaging and food waste. But where do you start? Paper straws and compostable to-go containers are amazing. It’s all about focusing on that next step to lower your environmental impact.”

Later that day, Ceremony Coffee in Mt. Vernon will host “Punch with a Purpose,” a collaborative cocktail class that will teach consumers about the versatility of different spirits by creating a seasonal punch. “It’s super fun to dump bottles in things,” quips Lawhorn. “It’s also exciting to be able to engage a beautiful space like Ceremony in a different way for an evening conversation.”

Closing out the week will be a Baltimore Cocktail Week collaboration with the Fells Point Farmers’ Market on August 4. Attendees will be able to sample sips from eight neighborhood bartenders and vote for their favorites. The winner will be the signature cocktail at the End of Summer Soiree at the Sagamore Pendry on August 23.

In keeping with the “Better Together” theme, Lawhorn says she hopes that the weeklong initiative sparks a sense of community engagement in patrons and bartenders alike.

“There’s something so important about conversations next to your friends at a bar stool, or across the bar with a bartender,” she says, “and what that can mean to cultivation of ideas and a sense of community in a city.”

On a balmy evening last summer, a dozen of the area’s most talented bartenders gathered beneath the waterfront pavilion at the Baltimore Museum of Industry to put their skills to the test in Baltimore magazine’s inaugural Southside Stakes competition. The contest paired each bartender with a local distillery, and tasked the teams with creating a unique spin on the classic Southside cocktail.

Baltimore Bartenders’ Guild (BBG) treasurer Amie Ward—who took home the People’s Choice award for her Southside that combined Sagamore Spirit Rye, rhubarb amaro, lavender sorbet, and lemongrass syrup—was so inspired by the experience, that she decided to keep the event going this year.

“I didn’t want it to go away,” says Ward, co-beverage director at R. Bar inside Remington’s communal food hall R. House. “It feels good to be able to maintain something that’s super Baltimore-focused.”

Local industry professionals will once again gather to craft their versions of the country club concoction in the second annual Southside Stakes competition at R. House on Sunday, October 1 from 7-10 p.m. Though veteran bartenders and guild members have been involved in organizing the event, Ward says that the BBG is hoping to attract industry newbies to participate this time around.

“This one’s for the new guys and gals,” she says. “Baltimore’s bar and restaurant scene is growing exponentially, so we wanted to make sure that we’re letting all of that fresh blood come through.”

Each contender will be assigned a regional spirit— including Baltimore Whiskey Company, Lyon Distilling Co., Catoctin Creek Distillery, and Belle Isle Spirits—and will be required to incorporate sugar, herbal, and citrus sources. Aside from those key ingredients, Ward is encouraging the participants to get as creative as possible.

“It has such a refreshing impact,” she says of the classic cocktail. “Regardless of what you use, the citrus and herbal sources combined together make something that’s just mind-blowing.”

With roots that trace back to the Prohibition era, the traditional Southside—made with gin, sugar, mint, and lemon—is thought to have originated in Chicago, but gained popularity locally amongst Maryland’s Hunt Cup crowd.

“We obviously weren’t going to do a Manhattan competition,” Ward says. “The locality and history of it all plays a huge role in this.”

In keeping with the local feel, the BBG will be donating a portion of all ticket sales to House of Ruth Maryland. The organization, which benefits victims of partner violence, aligns well with the guild’s mission to reduce harassment in local bars. Ward says that the guild members voted on which local charity they wanted to partner with, and House of Ruth was the overwhelming winner.

“The big drive within the bartending community worldwide right now is providing safe spaces for our patrons and peers,” she says. “And, specifically, being able to recognize things like sexual harassment and assault. People have become so much more cognizant of what’s happening in the atmosphere.”

Throughout the past six years, the guild has donated more than $50,000 to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation with its annual Rye’s Up fundraiser. Ward hopes that the Southside Stakes competition mirrors that event’s spirit, not only in the charitable sense, but also in the way that it brings the community together. 

“Rye’s Up is always referred to as bartender prom for us, so this is like our homecoming” she says, with a laugh.  “But it’s not just about the comradery of our community. It’s also great for the regulars who we provide solace to from a long day of hard work. Whatever is happening in their life, they know they can come to us to escape it.”

Ward says that aspects like self-serve water, bottle cocktails, and choose-your-own-adventure food stalls will give the bar staff more time to interact with customers and focus on hospitality. While there will be some notes of her signature amaro on the menu, she and Joseph are thinking about the drinks on a broader scale—everything from a can of Natty Boh to a $15 grappa cocktail.

“We are trying to hit and please so many different people that might walk through these doors,” she said. “So we are thinking more globally when putting the menu together.”

Located on the first floor of a 50,000-sqaure-foot auto garage in Remington, R. House is a launch pad for 11 Baltimore chefs and their culinary concepts, and is slated to open later in early December. Both Joseph and Ward are hoping to bring that same spirit of innovation and community into its bar program.

“I am excited to make great drinks and not be pretentious about it,” Joseph said. “I have always lived by, ‘It doesn’t matter how great the cocktail is if there is nobody there to taste it.’ We want to be inviting and welcome everyone with open arms.”