D'ya come here often?
Jane Yoo
Posted: March 17, 2007
New York City— With the advent of Dushan Zaric's and jason Kosmas' new book, it would seem that bartenders, not diamonds, are a girl's new best friend. Titled You Didn't Hear It from Us: Two Bartenders Serve Women the Truth about Men, Making an Impression, and Getting What You Want, their book it a witty and honest guide for single women mining the modern bar scene.
Both Zaric and Kosmas are principal bartenders at Employees Only, a speakeasy inspired bar and restaurant discreetly tucked away in the West Village, and, with three other employees, own the joint as well. With 30 years of bartending experience between them, the friends are already experts behind the bar: both Moët Hennessy and a former employer, restauranteur Keith McNally, have solicited their services via Cocktail Conceptions, a consulting company that they founded together. Cocktail Conceptions began out of a desire to write a cocktail book while the two were working at Pravda, a McNally-owned bar in SoHo. That book has yet to happen, but with the self-help book industry reaching the $668 million mark in 2005 and women comprising 85 percent of the market, You Didn't Hear It from Us has both men poised to be the go-tos for women poised on a bar stool.
You Didn't Hear It from Us does include their recipes for classic drinks and tips for getting on your bartenders' good side. And along with revealing the most strategic places to sit or stand at a bar—as well as the most attractive way to sit on a barstool (answer: straight up)—they also spill the secrets of their lucky-in-lust female customers, as well as the pet peeves, agendas, and thoughts of the bar dwelling male's mostly simple mind.
The book's approach should come as no surprise to any female who has imbibed at Employees Only (present company included). Their advice is like the bar they own: alternately modern (to quote a male customer: "My favorite women to flirt with are the ones who don't confuse the flirting with the sex") and old-fashioned ("If your're talking to a guy, whether he's come up to you or you've come up to him, he should be wateching fro when you need a drink and ponying up the cash to pay for it"). If it seems heavy on the male point of view, one need only to invoke the image of the restaurant's feminine curving bar to know that the pair's appreciation for women is rivaled only by their appreciation for booze. The tone is warm and supportive; their intent, to boost a woman's confidence in a bar ("Women have the power," say Kosmas) underscores a theme that runs throughout the book.
Additionally, the pair has a Web site in the works, youdidnthearitfromus.com. The mostly reader-driven content will include an advice column for entertaining (cocktails and food), a column for people to post their wild stories of best hookups and screwups, and a column for bartenders to post salt-rimmed anecdotes about their customers. The Web site will also feature a weekly horoscope and be completely illustrated (an image of both Kosmas and Zaric is up now).
Of course, Kosmas and Zaric do caution that "most of the men we talk to feel that if they're at a bar, and you're at a bar, you're both looking to hook up. End of story." But ladies, take heart. "If we didn't believe anything was possible in a bar, we wouldn't be able to do what we do." And when it comes to meeting someone at a bar, they should know. After all, that's where they first connected, if only for strictly business.
