At P. J. Clarke’s, the Bartender of Your Dreams (Published 2010) (2024)

My mother had eyes in the back of her head; Doug Quinn must have them in the palms of his hands. How else to explain the way he muddled mint for a mojito — and went on to make the rest of the co*cktail — while glancing alternately at the door to see if anyone new was coming in, at the far end of the bar to see if anyone was telegraphing thirst, and at the guy in front of him, who was babbling anew about something or other? Not once did Mr. Quinn look down at the drink. It was like bartending in Braille.

He filled beer mugs without watching what he was doing. He could apparently tell, by the weight of them, when to stop. He plucked bottles from their perches without pausing to check labels. He apparently had, in his head, the whole liquor layout at P.J. Clarke’s, on the East Side.

And he remembered what my companion and I were drinking, even though we had ordered just one round so far, and there were at least 35 people clumped around the bar on this early May night, and he was dealing — alone — with all the tickets from all the servers in the adjacent dining rooms, and he wasn’t writing anything down, not that I could see.

“Another?” was all he asked, and a half minute later I had a Hendrick’s gin martini, up, with olives and jagged little floes of ice, just like the martini before it. My companion was sipping a second Manhattan with rye, not bourbon, per his initial request. Mr. Quinn works quickly, and he works without error.

It is legend, this efficiency of his. I learned of it one night at PDT, a faux speakeasy in the East Village — secret entrance, abundant taxidermy — that’s about as far in spirit (and spirits) from the blunt, timeless rough-and-tumble of P. J. Clarke’s as you can get. I asked Jim Meehan, the co*cktail shaman there, whom he and other celebrated young mixologists of the moment looked up to.

Without hesitation he named Mr. Quinn, 42, and not because Mr. Quinn had pioneered some clever infusion or paired two ingredients no one had thought to pair before. Mr. Quinn, he said, did right by the classics and could handle (and coddle) a teeming crowd. He had speed, stamina, dexterity, personality and an awe-inspiring memory: the essentials of bartending, without which the cheeky chemistry is meaningless. Mr. Quinn was the bartenders’ bartender.

Dale DeGroff, arguably the city’s dean of mixology, told me that if he’s not away on business, he drops in on Mr. Quinn at least once a week, often past 2 a.m., when bartenders getting off work elsewhere congregate at P. J. Clarke’s — the original one on Third Avenue at 55th Street, not the spinoffs near Lincoln Center or at the World Financial Center. It serves food until 3 a.m. and drinks until 4 a.m., the legal limit, and isn’t as jammed in the wee hours as it is between 6 and 11 p.m.

“You’re not going to get a yuzu gimlet from the guy,” Mr. DeGroff said. “Ain’t going to happen. But you’re going to get a damned good martini.”

Mr. DeGroff actually prefers Glenlivet on the rocks, and said that a freshly made one will be waiting for him by the time he walks from the entrance to a barstool. More than that, he knows that if there’s someone at the bar whom he might enjoy talking to, Mr. Quinn will figure that out and make it happen, a master of human mixology above all.

You need to see him in action, not least because his 126-year-old stage is one of the city’s classic bars, what he calls “the Vatican of saloons,” a living diorama of a certain era and sensibility, with its penny-tile floors, carved mahogany bar, tin ceiling and stained-glass transoms.

Other servers there wear white shirts with dark neckties; Mr. Quinn wears pastels, sometimes with French cuffs and cufflinks, and always, always with a vividly colored bow tie — it’s his thing, plus a bow tie never flies up, flaps around or otherwise slows him down. A forelock of his hair, glistening with product, usually dangles low across his brow. He should be in a carrel at Oxford.

Or on a cricket field there. Along with the coordination of an athlete, he has the build of one: 6 feet 2 inches, broad-shouldered, trim. He has been known to leave P. J. Clarke’s after his 6 p.m.-to-4 a.m. shift, which he works Monday through Friday, and hit the 24 Hour Fitness club nearby before heading to the Upper East Side, where he lives with his wife and their sons, ages 5 and 3.

He grew up in Rockland County, majored in economics at Vassar, began bartending before graduation and never stopped. He popped up behind the bar at P. J. Clarke’s in 2003, when it reopened after a meticulous restoration.

It’s a lucrative gig. On many nights about 500 customers will cycle through, and while there are stretches when he has help, there are also stretches when he doesn’t. Most customers have more than one drink. Virtually all leave tips.

But to talk to him — as I did after two stealth visits when I merely drank and watched — is to know that money isn’t his main thing. He’s testing himself. Performing. Making people marvel at him. Making people love him.

“When they come here, they’re in my home,” he said. “They’re in my church.”

He packs a double-wide opener so he can flick the lids off two beer bottles at once. When smoking was allowed, he carried 10 lighters, because some would get wet and some lost, and he didn’t want to lose a second or a step by having to fetch another.

But being armed and agile isn’t the half of it. “A great bartender will get you a date for the evening, get you a job and get you a new apartment,” he said.

He is proudly anachronistic, calling female customers “doll,” “darling” and “baby,” a term of endearment he also uses for male customers, along with “brother” and “man.”

Of course he met his wife, an advertising executive, when he was behind the bar. “She was probably one of the most beautiful women who ever set foot in here,” he said. “She couldn’t take her eyes off me. She’ll tell you I hit on her.”

He certainly proceeded to, dispatching a barback to a nearby bodega to fetch a dozen roses for her the third time she came in. For a while she resisted his requests for a date, but then she brought her mother around. Showtime.

“Usually, I put the hook in someone’s mouth,” he said. “I had the hook in her mom’s belly.”

He said there aren’t any cheats or tricks to his memory, which one P. J. Clarke’s regular, a trial lawyer named Paul Hanly, described to me as “canny, totally uncanny — truly as photographic as it gets.”

He will brighten or dim the lighting if he senses the need, and he will nix Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” if the jukebox starts to play it when the bulk of the crowd are in their 20s and 30s.

But he has boundaries. “I try to teach people how to behave in a saloon,” he said. “Don’t ask for a Red Bull and vodka. You want an energy drink? I have coffee.”