Bily is a bartender at Basement Sate, London. He shows us 2 cocktails, one rum based and the other one is cognac based
Byly introduce yourself
Hi I’m Byly, and I’m a bartender at Basement Sate, London. I never wanted to be a bartender, I always wanted to be an astronaut but I wasn’t really good at sport, so it didn’t happen. I became a bartender by chance. I was seeking a job in London, walking in the street, suddenly someone came up to me and asked if I was looking for a job. I said yes, then became a barback in a nightclub. They were doing classic cocktails such as sex on the beach and the woo woo. I got interested by this cocktail scene, so I decided to work in a proper cocktail bar.
The classic you want to show us
Old fashioned twisted with cognac
Barspoon of sugar syrup
3 dashes of grapefruit bitters
45ml of Cognac
Twist of Orange
The bar or party you dream of
Where I work is the bar I dream of. It’s very chilled and a perfect mix between the quality of the cocktails and the music. I like the type of customers we have and there is one more thing… we are niche, we serve cocktails with desserts.
The spirit you like the most
I like to work with dark rum because of the complexity of this spirit, there are so many flavours. And because sugar is only available in sunny places, I always seek the sun.
What makes a good cocktail and which product do you want to highlight at this moment
A good cocktail is made with passion. An interesting product to work with is celery, because not everyone loves that and most of the time you only can find it in a Bloody Mary. It’s such an amazing ingredient, because of the bitterness of it.
The cocktail signature you want to show us
The Leaf
20ml of lemon
20 ml of sage with aguava honey syrup
15ml of fresh celery juice
45ml of white rum
Dash of orange bitters
Dash of celery bitters
Where do you think we need to go to interview another bartender?
You should go to l’Entrée des artistes to meet Fabien.
See you next Monday the 3rd of November to discover another bartender