Raising the Bar

Two dirt pits dominate the cavernous room. The walls are
unfinished. A particleboard wall blocks a cold wet view of inner
Southeast Portland. It’s a dismal day at the beginning of February; the
economy is in shambles. But here I am, standing in what will eventually
become Beaker and Flask, the highly anticipated new restaurant from
celebrated 39-year-old Portland bartender Kevin Ludwig. It’s a mess,
but Ludwig is happy: The bar has just been installed. Well, not the
actual bar, but its frame—fashioned from dull silvery I-beams
bisecting the dirt pits with a graceful curve.

He leads me around the space. “We’re going to have booths here,” he
says, gesturing to the south. “We’ll have a walk-in back there,” he
continues, pointing to an area enclosed in theoretical walls. Then he
falls silent for a moment. “There were times I didn’t think it was
going to happen,” he says finally.

But the aluminum skeleton curving through the upheaval of
construction was a sign. After two long years, his dream was becoming
reality. And somehow, despite the economic turmoil and pressure from an
adoring and ravenous food community, he was debt free and under budget.
For the moment.

•••

Six weeks pass, and I’m standing outside of Ludwig’s Northeast
Portland home. I’ve been invited to sit in on an “experimental cocktail
hour,” where he and his crew will work on the Beaker and Flask cocktail
list. As I wait for someone to answer the door, bartender Lance Mayhew
arrives with a backpack full of booze clinking softly as he walks.
Close behind is chef Ben Bettinger.

Inside, we’re greeted by Ludwig and bartender Tim Davey, and later,
Beaker and Flask’s beer guy Doug Paquin arrives. Aside from bartender
Elizabeth Markham, the gang is assembled.

Ludwig’s dining room and kitchen look like the workspace of some mad
alchemist. A wide range of esoteric liquors clutters nearly every
surface, as well as an enormous array of bar implements,
including—yes—beakers and flasks.

Ludwig unpacks a box of bottles that could’ve come from an old-timey
apothecary. They’re labeled with silver Sharpie listing their
contents—macerations of ginger, grapefruit, banana, etc. Ludwig
places a shot glass in front of me.

“Here,” he offers, “Try something if you want.”

I hit the banana gin, stunned by a flavor of dried banana chips that
better resembles rum than gin. I’m lost in a tropical reverie.

When he was a kid, Ludwig’s mother asked what he wanted to be when
he grew up. “I said I wanted to own my own restaurant,” he
remembers.

This dream eventually landed him behind the bars of some of
Portland’s best eateries, which in turn made him one of the foremost
“culinary mixologists” in the United States. These experiences allowed
him to assemble what is essentially a foodie version of the Super
Friends. Their mission: to combine the flavor aesthetics of the
kitchen—vegetables, herbs, and fruits—with the intoxicating
power of the bar, creating cocktails that cross the line into
cuisine.

Ludwig’s style of bartending is directly linked to his experience in
the city’s food scene. In 1994, after arriving in Portland, Ludwig was
hired as a busboy at Wildwood, one of the first restaurants in Portland
to promote farm-to-table dining. They trained him to tend bar. His
second week on the job, the lead bartender was fired and Ludwig was
promoted.

On his first afternoon shift, someone ordered an old fashioned. “I
just had no idea what it was or how to make it,” he remembers. “There
was this panic moment. I hate that feeling of being ignorant.”

Deciding to learn all he could about classic cocktails, Ludwig
turned to a bartending book written in the 1930s by Charles Barker
called The Gentleman’s Companion. (“Like reading Hemingway,” he
says.) The book’s subtitle: …Or Around the World with Jigger,
Beaker, and Flask.

After developing his skills at Wildwood, Ludwig worked as bartender
and waiter at Paley’s Place. It was there he would later meet
Bettinger.

Back at the experimental cocktail hour, Bettinger, Paquin, and Davey
have returned from the store with copious amounts of meat for dinner.
Bettinger loves meat, especially cured meat. He plans on offering
house-cured charcuterie on Beaker and Flask’s “Euro-Portland” menu,
which will include small plates and entrées with ingredients
like rabbit, quail, and pig hearts. Tonight, he’s grilling.

Ludwig brought on Bettinger in hopes of combining the best in
Portland food with the best of Portland’s bar scene. It’s likely he was
inspired by working with Scott Dolich at the highly regarded Park
Kitchen. Dolich hired Ludwig to manage his front of house when he
opened the Northwest Portland restaurant in 2003 in the midst of the
post-9/11 recession.

“Park Kitchen was where I first developed the idea of working with
the chef to create drinks by bringing the kitchen into the bar,” says
Ludwig. He experimented heavily at Park Kitchen creating drinks like
the rum cosmopolitan. He also had the opportunity to watch Dolich
develop his business model—an invaluable lesson for building
Beaker and Flask.

In addition, Ludwig worked with the handsome, irascible New
Englander Paquin. I catch Paquin alone in Ludwig’s living room and ask
him about his vision for the Beaker and Flask beer list.

“I’m not real big on the hoppy Portland beers,” he says. “I’m a fan
of English session beer,” he continues, noting he prefers beer people
can drink all night long. Still, he will have an IPA on tap. He also
wants to keep the beer list fluid and constantly moving—bringing
in lesser-known regional craft beers from around the US to share space
with local microbrews and Belgian beers from abroad.

Everyone has a special talent; Davey’s is an extensive knowledge of
spirits. Ludwig met him toward the end of his tenure at Park Kitchen,
when Davey was working at Uptown Liquors.

“[Davey] is so knowledgeable and such a people person,” Ludwig says.
“I knew he would be a natural behind the bar.” But Ludwig didn’t have a
bar yet.

In early 2007, the national economy was shaky, but signs of
recession were still far off. Local website Portland Food and Drink
reported that Ludwig would be leaving Park Kitchen to open his own
place—but Ludwig hadn’t found a location. He’d started looking
over a map, marking ideal spots in his favorite neighborhoods. Soon, he
was offered a space for lease in SE Portland in the heart of the city’s
burgeoning distillery district. After doing an internet search, he
found the property sat almost directly on top of one of the pins he’d
placed on his map.

But there were problems. The building had sunk, creating a large
crack in the cement floor, which would have to be repaired before
Ludwig could begin work. After new concrete was laid, a drawn out
permit process ensued, causing construction on Beaker and Flask to
cease. Meanwhile, the economy slowly tanked and restaurants around
Portland began closing almost as quickly as they’d opened. Still, the
media attention surrounding Beaker and Flask increased, especially
after Lance Mayhew, who was steadily gaining a reputation in the city
as an edgy, experimental bartender, joined the team. The amount of
talent Ludwig had assembled was impressive. But with his dream lying in
stasis and having already left Park Kitchen, Ludwig was the one in need
of a job. He found a gig managing the bar at Clyde Common.

“It was embarrassing in a way, because there was already so much
press about it,” he says. “If I could go back to when I left Park
Kitchen and just leave, without saying anything until the day I opened
my doors, I’d be happy with that.”

Every day at Clyde Common, customers would ask about his restaurant.
People began to speculate that Beaker and Flask might not open. Ludwig
waited. Coincidentally, Davey had also been hired at Clyde Common. The
two spent a year behind the bar working side by side. Eventually,
Bettinger was also hired and the downtown Portland restaurant became a
kind of Beaker and Flask staging area.

Davey tells me that after working in close quarters for so long,
there will be little staff adjustment needed once Beaker and Flask
opens. It’s one of the upsides of waiting for permits, construction,
and now an Oregon Liquor Control Commission license.

Strangely, another benefit of all the delays has been the economy.
Ludwig explains that he’s made good deals on kitchen equipment, and
restaurant supply companies are so uptight about keeping his business
they’ll bend over backward to make sure everything is just right.

As they joke and laugh with each other in the backyard of Ludwig’s
home, it’s clear that these people like each other. More than that,
they enjoy collaborating. As the evening progresses, each bartender
disappears into the kitchen/lab, emerging with a cocktail. Davey’s
first drink is the Chimney Sweep, a recipe consisting partly of blended
Scotch and ouzo. Lacking ouzo, he adds absinthe. It’s smoky, bright,
and slightly herbal, like standing beside a fire in a country garden.
The Chimney Sweep is passed around. Various judgments are made, mostly
on the theme of “It’s good,” while Davey explains about the ouzo
substitution.

This is how the evening will continue: cocktail, judgment,
explanation, and apology. After each round, Ludwig writes the recipe
into a large black dossier. Mayhew has brought his own muddler and a
bottle of vanilla Jack Daniels that he made at home. It’s mixed with
blackberry jam and lemon to make a drink that, everyone concedes, “the
girls will like.”

At one point Ludwig can be heard juicing something in the kitchen.
He emerges with a carrot margarita. It’s a beautiful orange hue, and
the taste of carrot blends exceptionally well with a hit of triple sec,
salt, and cilantro-infused simple syrup. It tastes like summer. The
drink is passed around, the consensus being, “It’s a winner.”

Toward the end of the evening, Ludwig and I are smoking out back
when I catch him at a rare vulnerable moment. I ask if there are any
jitters as he gets close to opening. He nods his head.

“I’m worried about the economy,” he says. “It’s getting hard to stay
below budget.” He tells me his restaurant will open as a work in
progress.

At the end of March, I return to Beaker and Flask. It is
unrecognizable from the dirt-strewn room I’d first encountered. The
concrete floor is finished and polished, making it look like dark
marble. The walls framing the kitchen are painted with deep black
chalkboard surfacing, and the northern wall has a contrasting coat of
dark pistachio green. The bar has been fleshed out, waiting to be tiled
and fitted with a black concrete top. The hood for the stove has been
installed, as has the walk-in. But the crowning glory is the
bullet-shaped alcove, glassed in by floor-to-ceiling windows. It looks
out onto SE 7th and the cityscape beyond, filling the space with
light.

Ludwig’s near-constant bemusement has turned to happiness. Barring
any unforeseen disaster, Beaker and Flask will be open by April’s end.
Somehow, Ludwig has stumbled onto the perfect plan for opening a
restaurant in a troubled economy. Step One: Work at the best
restaurants in town. Step Two: Gather the best people you can. Step
Three: Wait for a recession. Step Four: Benefit from low prices and
sycophantic customer service. Step Five: Find a place that will hire
you and your team for a year. Step Five: Benefit from anticipation.
Step Six: Open.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to have a killer carrot margarita.