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Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans.
Bristol Bar & Grille
1321 Bardstown Road
Louisville, KY 40204
(502) 456-170
www.bristolbarandgrille.com
I’d say there are, maybe, thirty or forty regulars that either live around here or work around here, and we see them almost everyday…It's like a family. You know everybody, where they work, what they do, you know their kids, and it’s a lot more personal that way. – Marian Murphy
The Bristol Bar & Grille is one of Louisville’s beloved neighborhood joints. The original location on Bardstown Road has been welcoming area regulars since it opened in 1977. Marian Murphy has been tending bar there since 1989. A Kentucky native, Marian began bartending when she was in college to earn some extra money. After getting a degree in psychology from the University of Kentucky, she committed herself to the industry full time. In the years that she’s been behind the bar at the Bristol, she’s seen drinking trends come and go, but her commitment to personal attention has never waned (and her psychology degree has come in pretty handy). She greets dozens of regulars daily, placing their drinks on the bar before they even have a chance to sit down. Marian has friends, not customers. And such is the nature of the Bristol Bar & Grille. It’s where locals go for a casual meal, their favorite drink, and a familiar face.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Marian Murphy, bartender
Date: January 14, 2008
Location: Bristol Bar & Grille, Bardstown Road location
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Monday, January 14, 2008, and I’m at the Bristol in Louisville, Kentucky, with bartender, Marian Murphy. Marian, if you wouldn’t mind stating your mind stating your name and your birth date, please?
My name is Marian Murphy; birth date is October of 1954.
And how long have you been a bartender?
Let see, [nineteen]’89—I’d say about twenty-four years, about like that.
Where did you start?
I was a bartender in Florida for approximately, I’d say, five or six years, and then I moved to Louisville in 1989, and I’ve been here since then—at this restaurant.
And the Bristol, it was opened in [nineteen] ’77, is that correct?
Yeah, we just had our thirtieth anniversary this September. So now we have four stores, and we’re getting ready to open another one in Jeffersonville, Indiana, in a couple months.
So what got you into bartending as a career in Florida?
In Florida? Well, let’s see. When I graduated from college, I was in Lexington at UK [University of Kentucky] and, at that time, jobs were hard to come by. [Laughs] And so I went to the local Cork ‘N Clever and worked there for a few years, and then they opened a store in West Palm Beach, Florida, so I transferred down there. And when I was in Lexington, Kentucky, I was a server, cocktail waitress, manager; I did everything there. And then when I transferred to Florida, I was a cocktail waitress for a few years, and then they opened up another brand new store and I bartended there. It was called Tequila Willie’s; it was a chain out of somewhere in California, really nice place. And so I bartended there and at another restaurant before I moved here. So I’d say five or six years in Florida.
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And so when you were bartending in Florida, would you say that you developed kind of a style there or a rhythm there or a confidence there that you brought back to Kentucky?
That might be. I never thought about it like that. But one restaurant I worked in Florida, it was a great big horseshoe-shaped bar, and you were in the middle, and you were kind of closed in and there were twenty-four or twenty-five seats around you, and you just kind of had to learn to smoothly go from one to the next, you know, so you did kind of have to develop a method to it. And I think you just incorporate all the different things you learn from each restaurant.
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Do you remember what kind of drinks you were serving or that were popular there?
Now that has changed a lot. In the days when I learned how to bartend, you know, Old-Fashioneds were big and Manhattans and Grasshoppers. People don’t drink Grasshoppers anymore so, you know, there’s all these new-fangled kamikazes and all kinds of new drinks now that—that I’ve had to learn. But I had a good basic training, though, from the Cork ‘N Clever; we had a real good training program there, so I learned all my drinks there.
Do you remember something that stands out from your training that you’ve really kept with you all these years behind the bar?
I would say personal attention is the most important thing. I mean, you can go down the street and have a drink that we don’t even make here, and people don’t mind telling you what’s in it; you don’t have to know every drink and every ingredient of everything. Just personal attention is the—is the biggest key; everything else you can figure out as you go along.
What would you say about your personality kind of suits you to that—to that job to be behind the bar and to talk to people on a daily basis and really get to know them?
Yeah, that’s key. And we have spent—at this restaurant we have a lot of people who have masters degrees and we have one, he’s got a doctorate in literature, so we—but it’s the personality that you either have to have a knack for this type of job or you don’t, and I know a lot of people who are just can't hack it. You really have to have a knack for it…You have to have to be a good listener.
And so then explain the segue from working in Florida to coming back to Kentucky and working here in Louisville.
Well my family was living here, so I moved back to take care of some ill family members and this was the first place I applied, and I’ve been here since 1989.
Was there something other than just a job opening that brought you here to the Bristol? Was it a reputation or kind of the style of the bar?
My sister-in-law is from Louisville. I’m not originally from Louisville, so she suggested coming here. I walked in the door and been here ever since. So it’s a real nice—real nice atmosphere here.
Can you explain that a little bit?
Well, we have a lot of locals from this area. We have the other stores. One is way out in Prospect. We have one downtown, and we have one at the east end, but this one has more of a neighborhood feel to it, so we get a lot of the same regulars everyday. So you get to know them and what they like, what they don’t.
Okay. So you were talking about regulars that come in. Can you talk about some of what they like to drink?
Sure, we have one gentleman comes everyday at 11:00 and has a Maker’s Mark Manhattan, up. Of course Maker’s is really big here. Woodford is a big popular bourbon here. Of course all bourbons and in the winter we sell a lot more bourbon. But right now we are doing at least a year-long promotion on wines, and we have like a real upscale wine list that we’re selling at retail prices, like you would get at the liquor store, and it’s going over real well. So we sell lots and lots of bottles of wine, and they recently passed a law here where you can buy a bottle of wine, and if you can't finish it, we can seal it and staple the receipt to it, and you can take it home. As long as it—the cork is in it and the receipt is stapled, it’s legal for you to take the rest home, so that’s been a—people really like that and we’re selling lots of wine. Years ago, it was lots and lots of bourbon and water, Manhattans, Old-Fashioneds, Rob Roys, and we’re selling a lot more wine than we are liquor now, so it’s completely reversed—even since I’ve been in Louisville. So that’s the trend now.
And so what have you had to learn about wine and—and selling and serving?
Well our manager at the downtown Bristol is almost through with his Masters Sommelier; he is phenomenal. So he does the wine list for all the stores, and we’ve all taken classes from him, and he really, really knows his stuff. So I have to do all the ordering, and so I have learned a lot just from that, you know. But he can take two glasses of wine blindfolded and tell you what kind of soil they were grown in. He’s that good. Yeah, he’s that good. You ought to interview him.
Well and so if we could go back to the cocktails, do you miss a time when you were making more cocktails and serving less wine? Do you like that part of bartending?
It really doesn’t matter to me, either way. It’s kind of interesting, I think, to learn about these new wines and there’s so many, you know—all the Australian and New Zealand wines are really big now, so it’s just kind of interesting. And another thing I’m really enjoying is, for a while, every wine had corks in it; now they’re going to a lot of the screw top and, you know, there was some resistance to it, but I think, in the end, everybody is going to like it because we’re not getting a lot of spoiled wine and no more mold on the corks, and I think we’re going to end up going with a lot of screw tops, so I’m happy about that.
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[D]o you think that there is a regional difference in what you were making and serving in Florida and Kentucky?
No, I don’t really think so. I think it’s more a timeline. That is the time when people were drinking real bourbon and water, scotch and soda, Manhattans, Martinis. Now, Martinis are still really big. But I mean very rarely do you hear anybody ask for a Rob Roy. I doubt if any of the younger people who work here ever heard of one. So no, I think it’s just the way the fad is moving; everybody is going to wines. It’s interesting. I like to learn new things so—.
Well is there a cocktail that you particularly like making that if somebody comes in and orders it, you get pretty excited about making it?
Well the fellow that orders the Maker’s Mark Manhattan, up, says I make the best one of everyone here. That’s what he says. [Laughs]
What do you think makes a good Manhattan?
You have to put just the right amount of vermouth in it because, if it’s too little vermouth, it doesn’t have that flavor to it, so that’s the trick.
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Would you say he obviously comes to you because he thinks you make the best but outside of him? Would you say that you have like a following that your service brings a lot of people in? And, if so—you’re nodding yes. So would you describe what that is?
Oh, I serve lunch to the same people everyday. I’d say there are maybe thirty or forty regulars that either live around here or work around here, and we see them almost everyday, which is really nice because it’s—I don’t know. It's like a family. You know everybody, where they work, what they do, you know their kids, and it’s really—it’s a lot more personal that way.
So what does that mean to you to to generate a relationship with a customer like that, where you know about their families and you know so much about who they are?
Well, personally, it’s interesting, you know, knowing people’s backgrounds. And I have one fellow who has a construction company and he comes in almost everyday, and I know two of his sons and his—his daughter-in-law, his grandkids, [Laughs] and, you know, they bring me this wonderful Christmas present with their pictures all over it every year. It’s really kind of touching. So that, to me, is the most fun part of it—developing relationships with people that you see all the time. That’s the most fun.
Is that something that keeps you in the industry?
Yes, definitely. Definitely.
How long do you think you’ll stay bartending?
[Laughs] As long as my knees will hold up, I guess. It’s hard on your legs, standing all day. So I don’t know.
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And did you say you went to college?
Yeah, I went to University of Kentucky—Psychology. [Laughs] My mother said I’m finally using that degree…Though I can't really say I’ve used it that much, I guess. I don’t know. It came in handy.
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Well tell me about these scotches that you have on the shelf up here behind you. It’s quite a display.
Great selection of single-malt scotches. And I’d say twelve, thirteen years ago, it was really big. And then it went through a period where no one was drinking them and we’re getting a resurgence. For instance, the Lagavulin and the Talisker, both single-malt scotches, and are really starting to take off again. They’re selling well.
Do you actively sell those, or do people come in knowing what they want?
Most people do know what they want, but we have a little advertisement here for—and it just—everything seems to go through phases, and single-malts are back in style right now. And in the wintertime, we sell a lot more scotch and bourbon than we do in the summer.
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Now if I can bring in Miss Regina as a subject here, your regular, who says—. And that’s all I really wanted to mention was that before Regina sat down, really, you had the champagne opened and the glass on the bar.
Yeah, Regina and I have known each other for, um, thirteen, fourteen years, so she’s one of our most precious commodities here. [Laughs]
Regina: When they do inventory, they count me as a part of it.
MM: Yeah, we’ve got you on the list, that’s for sure.
So Marian, what does that mean to have kind of customers like that into the fold that are friends coming by, as much as they are, you know, customers at your bar?
Well it makes the job so much more fun…so much more personable than just standing at a service bar making drink after drink after drink. You know, this way you get to know people and—. Yeah, it’s our social life.
Is there something you’d like to see come back in fashion when the trend in drinks changes?
No, I like to be adaptable and, you know, whatever the next phase is, we hope we’ll be prepared for it. I don’t mind change at all. It’s kind of interesting. I was telling her how people are drinking a lot more wine than the liquor. Fifteen years ago, when I did inventory, we had a much greater inventory and sales of liquor, and it’s completely reversed. So it’s okay with me. Wine is food, you know.
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
