We met with Evgeny Shashin, the head bartender at Korobka, and talked about stereotypes, reasonable consumption, fermentation fashion, favorite restaurants and plans for the near future.

About the Korobok bar

Firstly, we are already recognized by our spray - this is a success! I’m kidding, of course, but the other day I was in a bar where something like this dialogue happened:

Oh, and you're from The Box.
- How did you find out?
- According to your fancy!

Korobok is an experimental cocktail bar disguised as an old laboratory. Most of the utensils for it were collected in Paris at a huge flea market, so almost everything here is old and even a little mystical. They probably bought the strangest things to create an interior in the spirit of an old pharmacy.

The chandeliers above the bar always delight guests, although if you look closely, you can find something interesting throughout the hall. The cabinet, for example, is like in a pharmacy: jars and bottles.

In general, the bar-pharmacy analogy seems very logical to me. People come to us, we prescribe them “medicines”. And next time they ask for something else: it didn’t help, let’s try a new recipe! We wanted to make simple, even ascetic presentations, without unnecessary decorations and side dishes.

About stereotypes

We work with different alcohol: the most important thing is its taste and aroma. Although in Russia guests still have many stereotypes in their heads. For some reason, cocktails made with vodka or tequila are respected less than those made with gin. And gin is essentially vodka with juniper. But what a difference in perception: everyone thinks that vodka is cheap, but gin is no longer cheap. Tequila was once called upon to be drunk in shots, so its reputation in the eyes of the public was also tarnished.

Another stereotype: drinking during the day is indecent. In the evening, yes, but a glass of wine with dinner is still considered something strange. And if you drink it alone, then it’s almost a crime. That's why people hold on steadfastly all day, but then have a blast. There is a fear of alcohol, and the aperitif culture is also not yet very clear. Although in fact, an aperitif is not about drinking, but about the atmosphere: meeting friends, talking about abstract topics and forgetting about work for a while. Very good for the psyche.

About new cocktails

We have already made a new cocktail menu and are slowly introducing drinks from it. The main idea is floral aromas. At the same time, we removed all the aged drinks and lowered the temperature a little: we added lighter, berry ones.

For example, we make our own bellini using osmanthus liqueur: it no longer contains peaches, but the osmanthus flower is very similar in aroma to peach. There is a new cocktail a la syringe - with grapefruit and Peychaud: light and unobtrusive. “Ryazhenka and elderberry” is another new product: a fantastic cocktail in terms of combination, it seems to me one of the most successful.

We also plan to work with baristas, exchange experiences and create some drinks together. We have a lot to learn from them: coffee has more than a thousand flavors and aromas, which are greatly influenced by roasting, but they still go well with each other. Plus, the accuracy of those who work with coffee is captivating: they do everything by scale, everything by seconds.

The World Class finals will take place in June, and many interesting bartenders will come. Another import is from the guys from the London bar Scout. We no longer participate in competitions, but we go on tours. We’ve been to Riga, Prague, Finland, and we plan to continue next year. Of course, we are more interested in the northern countries - their originality, their special look.

About trends

1. Environmental friendliness

We are now seeing a huge stir around environmental protection. Bars have removed all plastic straws and are trying to use less plastic overall. Instead of paper napkins, they buy fabric ones. Sometimes, however, bartenders, in their pursuit of zero-waste production, go too zealous and process products that are still good.

What I liked most about this trend was looping menu idea. The kitchen and bar exchange products so that nothing goes to waste. This is quite difficult, since you need to adjust sales and the entire menu to such a scheme. And perhaps this is only in some small cafe or restaurant. Moscow is probably not at all ready for this yet.

2. Reasonable consumption

In the West, they began to drink more cocktails without sugar, with less added alcohol. For example, they also drink vodka (and, by the way, very actively - in America), but with soda.

3. Locality

All over the world, both chefs and bartenders focus on local products and seasonality. For example, recently there was a time for young spruce shoots, they were used in White Rabbit. The bird cherry was in bloom: we picked it and made a cocktail with this aroma. The lilac is about to bloom: we also use it.

It is possible to make such preparations only in small quantities, otherwise you would have to plant entire gardens on an industrial scale, but this is no longer the same! The main thing is that local products evoke special associations among guests. A person lives in a city where lilac or bird cherry blossoms; he knows these smells from childhood and recognizes them on a subconscious level. He drinks a cocktail and involuntarily remembers summer with his grandmother or spring in Moscow. Cool!

4. Fermentation

This global trend comes from gastronomy: chefs are always ahead of us. For example, a very popular conditionally domestic product is kombucha and kombucha. True, in my opinion, it will hardly be able to take root here: Russian guests do not understand such vinegar tastes well. In our culture, there is still more salting, and in Western culture there is more pickling, so they accept acid more easily. In London, for example, everyone is squealing on kombucha!

You need to be more relaxed about trends

It seems to me that you shouldn’t get so carried away with kombucha and fermentation in general: not everyone knows how to do the latter, after all. First you need to ensure that it tastes good to you, and then convey your ideas to your guests. It is a mistake to think that if something seems tasteless, but is considered fashionable, then it must be so. Otherwise we drink and choke: “Ugh, what an abomination, but this is the trend.” Before you can blink an eye, everyone will turn to fermented nasty things, and in response to a request to make a Negroni, they will give you one fermented too.

About speakeasy bars

In Russia it so happened that the place where they make cocktails is called a speakeasy. In reality, in the rest of the world, this format as a whole came to naught at the time it first reached us. If you see that a speakeasy has appeared in a certain country, it means that it is going through a certain stage of development. In London, such bars are no longer opened: now they focus on mono-concepts and short menus in order to present a minimum number of drinks, but in the best possible way.

About the restaurants

My team and I often go to restaurants. We like Selfie, 15 Kitchen + Bar - there is a new chef there now, and we have tried almost all of his menu. Very good!

For most people, the profession of a bartender comes down to serving people who want to get drunk on a Friday night. There is nothing entertaining about mixing whiskey and cola or listening to yet another bunch of thoughts from not very sober representatives of the fair sex. It’s boring, uninteresting, and most importantly, unhealthy: loud music, scary crowds and alcohol. This is how a large share of the population of our country thinks about the craft of a bartender. Until a certain day, I thought so too.

Our communication with Evgeny Shashin, the winner of the most prestigious and significant competition among bartenders - the All-Russian National Final of the World Cocktail Championship, began when the Moscow guest was late. I had to spend a whole hour at the bar, watching the work of the bartenders of our city, albeit not so famous. “For us, Evgeniy’s arrival is a big event, we have been waiting for him for a very long time,” bartender Roman reports to me, smiling, adding that I will never understand the importance of bartending. I don’t argue with this idea: all my knowledge about this profession is reduced to a minimum: a bartender is a person who prepares drinks. That's all.

My limited idea of ​​what a bartender does was shattered miserably when I saw Evgeny Shashin at work. In a couple of minutes he prepared a cocktail, the tastier than which I have never tasted before.

“One cocktail recipe can take from a couple of minutes to a lifetime,” says Evgeniy, and I look at him in surprise and ask: “Wait, so you just improvised while preparing this?” “Well, yes,” the bartender answers modestly.

After such a statement, you become very ashamed of your primitive thoughts about bartending. Although, is it possible to call it work? This is creativity comparable to the activities of artists, writers, photographers - all those who are somehow connected with inspiration and the creation of a small author's masterpiece.

“I don’t think this profession is about money. This is a craft: something you can create with your own hands; something that can no longer be taken away from you. The pleasure you get when you create a new drink, prepare a cocktail for a guest, and he admires your work is indescribable,” says Evgeniy.

He has been working in bartending for 7 years now. A programmer by training, he also studied to become a lawyer, but routine work did not attract his attention much, unlike the work of a bartender, in which Evgeniy had been since he was 18 years old.

“I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to develop in this business. I did not treat this activity as a part-time job. From the very beginning this was a real job for me. I took it seriously and in no way thought it was unworthy work."

This type of work is not suitable for everyone: constant noise, loud music, people talking. Everyone wants you to be cheerful, sociable, and at the same time manage to prepare the most delicious cocktails in the world. A bartender is an actor who must constantly play the role of a smiling guy. Not everyone can cope with this.

“As a child, my mother told me that you can’t lock me at home. I am a very sociable person, so for a long time I could not decide where to direct this. I don’t get tired of daily communication, because there is an exchange of energy, you are always recharged by people, and you gain strength. Our work is associated with constant tension, the same loud music, lack of sleep - it all unsettles us. But in any case, after sleeping for a couple of hours, you find strength and go to work.”

Sociability is one of the important traits in bartending. Although, at the beginning of our interview, Evgeniy did not seem like that to me: a shyly smiling guy - he answered my questions quite modestly, afraid to say something unnecessary. Evgeniy found himself completely different behind the bar. My favorite workplace revealed and showed him from a new and interesting side.

“In general, as a child I dreamed of becoming president. I still hope that I can fulfill my dream."

While Evgeniy is preparing another delicious masterpiece, sometimes mixing incompatible ingredients (for example, he added chocolate, coffee and beer foam to one of the cocktails), I am interested to know if people want to try such exotic drinks. It turns out they want it, and how. Of course, big doubts arise when you look at how Evgeniy mixes everything into your drink. True, then you try it all and die of pleasure. It turns out that the risk of a lover of everything traditional turned out to be justified.

“It’s winter now and the “winter cocktail” is especially popular among guests. A winter cocktail is a certain direction of ingredients: some spices, warm shades. It can be either hot or colder, because cold drinks can also be warming, but the effect of alcohol makes itself felt. It can be stronger, more concentrated, unlike the summer one.”

Over the past few years, bartending culture in our country has reached a certain level. People's preferences change, and the activities of bartenders change to suit them, most of whom come to this profession not with the goal of earning extra money, but in order to develop. People as greedy for their work as Evgeny Shashin, with their cocktails made from unusual ingredients, a kind smile and a subtle sense of the guest’s desire, are simply worth their weight in gold.

Is the name “Box” about the spark that will ignite the flame of bar trends? Here on the logo there are lighted matches.

It started with the fact that I wanted to give the bar a simple name, without any intellectual quests, dots after each letter and unreadable English abbreviations. After all, a bar is a place where people come when they want to drink, and the name on the sign should be simple enough that a slightly tipsy person can tell a taxi driver without difficulty. Well, the word is so ambiguous - there is a desire to “light up”, and some kind of isolation from the outside world with all its problems. Someone will remember how, as a child, he caught butterflies and ladybugs and put them in boxes. That’s how we do it – we catch a visitor in our “Box” and conduct experiments on him, just kidding...

Well, there is some truth in this joke - there is some kind of somnambulistic music, and bartenders in black robes, on the counter there is a sink with test tubes-bottles, just like in a chemical laboratory.

So we use chemicals to the best of our ability. Briefly and very schematically, we take a good old classic - like a Negroni, take out the “soul” from the cocktail, in other words, a bouquet of flavors using a rotary evaporator, and turn what’s left into a solid fraction, marmalade, adding Campari and gin. And as a result, we get “two in one”: the “soul” of the cocktail in the form of a clear liquid in a glass, and the “body” - the same “Negroni” but in the form of a jelly candy. As a result, those who drink Negroni for the hundredth time can experience new sensations from seemingly familiar ingredients.

So the rotary evaporator has now become a bartender's tool?

For me, yes, this is a full-fledged bar gadget. I’m not entirely happy with the direction that has happened to cocktail culture lately: more and more colors, more and more ingredients, cocktails are becoming like a flower bed. I wanted the clarity and rigor that was inherent in cocktails from the 1920s. Then the cocktail was a symbol of success, as dry as possible, transparent, crystal in taste, nothing superfluous, like a bunch of currants clinging to the edge of the glass. We don’t use berries, tartlets or other lush decorations at all - all the taste should be inside the glass, not outside.

Do you rarely use a shaker?

There is no need - we combine everything that needs to be mixed in advance, in the required proportions. In each cocktail we have a rather complex preparatory stage, which takes place in the laboratory and is not taken out into the hall. And at the counter, in most cases, I just pour a cocktail from a bottle, apply the final note from a spray - and that’s it. We are generally talking about silence - quiet conversations, minimal noise behind the counter. We have calm drinks that should not be drunk in one fell swoop. We don’t really juggle with anything, except maybe meanings. We don’t smoke, we don’t knock, we don’t hit people on the head with a bat... Those who want to make some noise, we calmly send them to nearby friendly bars, they will definitely like it better there. We're talking about sitting, meditating, feeling the drink, and forgetting about the thoughts that were chasing you upstairs. Maybe I'll remember something good.

Are they now also passing out good memories behind the bar?

But of course! It’s not just that we put on our robes like Jedi on a mission. But in fact, there are tastes and aromas that act as triggers and set the clock back. For example, the taste of a cockerel on a stick - remember, caramel made from burnt sugar? I use it in the form of syrup when preparing a cocktail with bourbon - everything seems to be like an adult, but the childish “candy” taste is still involved in the impression of the mix that is recorded in the subcortex. Or distillate from lilac flowers. I was walking down the street one day, and suddenly I realized that the mood had suddenly become somehow elevated, festive. And this is just a lilac blooming! I will definitely include this “note of happiness” in my next cocktail collection, which will presumably be called Botanical.

The cocktail menu with which “Korobok” opened consists of only 7 items, isn’t that a little? Or, if you ask for, for example, “Cosmo”, will they also mix it for a regular guest?

If you want Cosmo, then please don’t come to us. If this thought arises, then for you a cocktail is “fuel” to warm up before the party. And we are not there to speed up, we are there to sit down and calm down. Although in the future the palette will increase, as if it diverges into branches about the tastes of classic cocktails. But not much. A dozen positions, hardly more.

Korobok is not a speak-easy bar, is it? Can you just come here from the street?

We do not require recommendations from five members of the club and do not hide in the back room behind a door with the sign “Don’t enter, he’ll kill you!” Although we don’t particularly advertise ourselves. Anyone can come, but not everyone stays. Some people don’t have enough food, others are simply not ready to think and talk all evening about what’s in their glass. But such selectivity does not bother us much: there are few seats in the “Box”, so “our” guest will still remain, and “not ours” will find himself somewhere else. What I wouldn’t want to do is break attendance records.

"Cosmo" and "Long Island" - never and under any circumstances?

You know, I somehow got a crazy idea to collect all the trash and make a separate series of signature cocktails based on it. For a person to try something “pink” and “green” and shudder in surprise. But this is still hypothetical, nothing more than an idea.

I have come up with a “three drinks” rule for myself; the fourth is always extra. The rule was tested from personal experience after bar-hopping on heavy hangover mornings.

What if the guest still demands a fourth?

Let's do it. But it's better to limit yourself to three.

1.What is a cocktail for you, how is it born, and where do you get ideas for composing it?

A cocktail is first and foremost a concept, and a concept can contain various accents. When creating a drink, I try to think about what idea I want to convey to the guest.

2. Where did “fihuli” begin, how did this word appear, and how did you start doing it?

"Fihuli" is a hashtag. And I didn’t come up with it. Just go to Instagram and look at the first post using the hashtag.

I started with flaring and did it for about 5 years. Thanks to Sergei Bulahtin for explaining the importance of awareness of actions and understanding of who is in front of you. Subsequently, working in a busy bar, the time was exclusively for preparing a drink. In such conditions, I began to invent small tricks that do not affect the preparation time of the drink. In essence - working flaring, but a shortened version of it. Therefore, “fihuli” is a hashtag that can be used to find similar tricks, and not a new invention.

3. If you could time travel back to the heyday of the bar industry, what years, countries and bars would you like to travel to?

It seems that I witnessed the blossoming of the bar industry in Moscow. I wouldn't travel back in time. As you know, this leads to unexpected consequences. I like the way things are now.

4. If you find yourself on a desert island with water, fire and a knife, you could take with you any three things related to the bar. Which ones would you choose and why?

Ice maker - escape from the heat. Cool drinks on a desert island are powerful. And other accessories can be turned from wood using a knife. There is not much to do on the island. And so, with a handmade glass filled with coconut juice, I would write a book about what to do if you are alone and have nothing to do.

5. Top three cocktail meccas and best bars in the world for you personally.

I haven't had a chance to go to the Drink Factory yet, but it's definitely a cocktail mecca.

The best bar for me is the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel, and it's not all about the drinks. For me, this is a perfect example of the work of a bar and bartender.

The new training center of Roman Toroschin will soon become a mecca of the bar craft in Russia.

6. Were there times in your professional career when you thought: “That’s it, I’ve had enough, shouldn’t I do something else”? Which one?

To say that it didn’t happen is to lie. Have you thought about changing your career? Yes. Do I want to change my profession? No. To achieve something in a certain area, you need to devote your life to it. But it is also very important to develop diversified. Hobbies can help with this.

7. Three dreams of your childhood.

Become president, a big house for the whole family, a big red car.

8. Which bar industry leader would you like to work with? Not with whom, but with whom to be at the bar.

It's hard to imagine sharing a shift with a guru. The shift with Marat Sadarov would be one of the most memorable and fun for me.

9. Do you agree that people who have been involved in any kind of sport are more disciplined and responsible, and this is reflected in their work? Did you play sports as a child? If so, which one?

Sport really disciplines. I have never been involved in sports professionally, maybe that’s why I lack discipline. In our profession, it is very important to take care of your health, so I recommend doing at least exercise.

10. Weather forecast for the bar industry. Your opinion. What do you think the hospitality industry, bar industry and cocktail trends will be like in 10 years in Russia, what trends will be relevant in the world? What will bartenders come up with during this time to surprise guests?

The environment will only get stronger. Already, many bars and even large companies (Diageo, Pernod Ricard) are refusing to use plastic straws. The trend for fermented foods is gaining momentum.

I think in the next 10 years bartenders will be making their own drinks. Not mixed, but new categories, sub-categories of alcoholic beverages. Bartenders will not surprise their guests, but create a full-fledged ritual, like a tea ceremony. Well, where would we be without searching for new tastes?! Technologies now make it possible to extract the finest aromas. In 5 years, everyone will master these techniques, and bottles with previously unknown aromas and tastes will appear on bar shelves.