Simon Ogden

Who | Simon Ogden
Where | Victoria, Canada
Current Bar | Veneto Lounge in the Hotel Rialto
Past Bar(s) | Oh so many: pubs; night clubs; lounges, all in and around Vancouver and Victoria.
Favourite Spirit | Team! No, Bourbon. No, team.
Favourite Juice | Well, this would depend entirely on the cocktail it’s headed towards. My favourite juice for personal consumption is coffee.
Favourite Classic Cocktail | The Manhattan; the Negroni; The Martini; the Old Fashioned; the Sazerac, dependent entirely on an amorphous set of criteria which includes but is not limited to: time of day; month; year, mood, weather, company and whim.
Favourite Part of the Job | Making people happy.
Favourite After Work Drink | A randomized Boilermaker.
Favourite at Home Drink | Morning: coffee. After work pre-bed: tea, maybe a beer. Weekend evenings: Maybe wine, maybe beer, maybe one of the aforementioned cocktails. Favourite is a temporal conceit.
Favourite bar in the world | The Driftwood Room in the Hotel DeLuxe (Portland)
Best known for | According to Google, being a bartender. Interestingly, the #5 hit out of 642,000 results was an article from a site on something called joshlindley.com.
Best story from behind the wood | I really did give this one a lot of thought, and it was fun sifting through the archives. But I’ve been doing this for over 27 years, and there’s just too, too many. Please drop by and have a drink with me, we’ll get into some of the good ones.

What do you collect? Shakers and Books.
Favourite thing about your city? Small town courtesy with big city aspirations.
What was the last photo that you took? Some instagram thing to effect diligence at our social marketing.
Where was your last vacation? Prince Edward Island. The other cool Canadian Island and land of the In-Laws.
Any claims to fame? Well, I’ve been bartending for a long time.

Belt or suspenders? Belt for casual/semi-formal occasions, braces for formal.
Fernet or Cynar? Yes. All of the other Amaro are quite good too.
New Orleans or New York City? Never been to either. Are there Canadian analogues to this question?
Glass or Tin? Both/either, depending on the task. Chilled glass if stirring.

Are you available for freelance gigs? I suppose there’s a price for everything. But I’m at my actual job about 50 hours a week.
Find him: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Canadian Professional Bartenders Association
Media: Oh, cripes, I hope not, but I suspect there’s some stuff out there ready to come back and haunt me. My job is more theatre than cinema.