[title subtitle=”WORDS Dwain Hebda
IMAGE Jade Graves Photography”][/title]
Veteran cocktail maestro Kyle Downing has a simple philosophy for anyone who pulls up a stool in front of him, especially craft cocktail newbies.
“My advice is drink what you like,” he says. “No one should be ashamed of what they order.”
About half of the patrons Kyle serves have their go-to beverage; the other half sit wide-eyed at the bar, confused about where to start. Both groups are in good hands.
“You walk in here and there’s a wall of whiskeys and it’s kind of an eclectic place,” he says. “With a lot of people, it’s just deductive reasoning. It’s psychology. I’m going to figure this person out.
“Then, you have people come in who order a gin martini up, two olives. You’re not going to try to talk that person out of that. You can’t talk that person out of drinking that. That’s just their standard and they like it the way it is.”
Kyle got his start at Alfred’s on the legendary Beale Street in Memphis, a baptism by fire if there ever was one.
“I was just thrown to the wolves there. It was either you sink or swim and I kept with it,” he says. “It was high volume; it was crazy the stuff you saw down there. I’m glad I’m not there, but I’m glad I did it.”
Landing in Arkansas nearly twenty years ago, Kyle worked in bartending in Fayetteville and Fort Smith. During that time, he gained an appreciation for the heritage of the cocktail and how history influences current drink trends.
“Everything is cyclical; fashion, food, everything. Everything comes around,” he says. “The thing about our business is you have to evolve. Craft cocktails are just people’s ingenuity; they start in big markets and just fuse elsewhere.
“I was always making Manhattans or martinis just the same. But I also experimented a lot. That’s just what you have to do until you find something that’s going to work with the flavor profiles.”
That said, Kyle also points out there’s real work in experimentation, with hours of tinkering to get a drink just right.
“Like, how many times has the martini been done? How many flavors can you add to it? Same thing as the Manhattans and Old Fashioneds and anything like that,” he says. “With a lot of those cocktails, there’s a pretty fine line between a great cocktail and trash. Just a little bit one way or the other and it really messes it up.”
Kyle’s latest go-to canvas for spirits, bourbon, is a uniquely American liquor that has enjoyed a boom of late; cool again after years where it nearly died out altogether. He says the quality and variety has never been better.
“That’s definitely my specialty, bourbon,” he says. “The last few years, you’re seeing distilleries pop up all the time and a lot of them are really good. The quality of American spirits, we’re lucky that we’re in that right now. It’s a very good time to be in the business.”
21 West End
21 North 2nd Street
Fort Smith, Arkansas
21westend.com
