Is your Seattle bartender judging your drink order?

What is your classic drink order? Are you a beer drinker? Shot of tequila? Fireball whiskey? Whatever it is, there’s a fair chance your Seattle bartender is judging you for it.

But one such Seattle bartender Mary McIntyre — the Streamline Tavern and the Blue Moon — says that’s just part of the job.

“I am absolutely the judgiest person when I’m bartending,” McIntyre said. “People come in and I have to make a quick judgement. I have to decide whether they’re going to make it home from drinking, I have to decide if they’re going to be a slimeball to the girl next to them.”

“I have to decide all kinds of things about them,” she said. “So what they order is just one of those processes of deduction. How am I going to figure out who this person is, what their drinking capacity is, how much trouble they’re going to give me?”

McIntyre shares her laundry list of alcohol generalizations.

“Girls are vodka soda drinkers, OK,” she said. “Black people tend to order Heineken. Young kids, if they’re going to order a beer, tend to order Manny’s. Your Seattle liberal white guy tends to order an IPA. Women are definitely into the white wines. Then there are Wisconsin girls — always order beer and don’t try to out drink them. They will put you under the table.”

The Seattle bartender and your drink

I interviewed three Seattle bartenders and they all gave the same answer to my question about the quintessential Seattle drink order.

“Oh, the IPA and the Bulleit rye, together,” McIntyre said.

Fellow Seattle bartender Lili Navorino works at Hudson in south Seattle.

“There’s a lot of people in this town who just really like a whiskey shot and a cheap beer, like a Rainier or PBR,” she said.

“It’s very Seattle to ask a lot of questions about what you’re serving,” said Linzey Meyer, who bartends at Hudson and Smartypants in Georgetown. “People definitely want to know a lot about why you chose this, why this kind of wine? It’s very Seattle to do IPAs, it’s very Seattle to do whiskey and to do ciders, for sure.”

Meyer says she gets a little judgey of tequila drinkers.

“Honestly, if you’re going to be drinking Jose Cuervo or Patron, those are the generally all of the bartenders least favorite tequilas, I would say,” she said. “If they’re ordering Patron, they are generally bros who don’t know their tequilas.”

What tequilas do the bartenders drink?

“Definitely Cazadores, Espolon,” Meyer said. “Hornitos is a really really great mixing tequila, for sure.”

I wondered if there was a bartender’s drink.

“Absolutely,” McIntyre immediately answers. “When somebody comes in and orders a Fernet, which is a nasty aperitif, which I love. It’s like Jäger with no sugar in it. It sort of tastes like dirt, like earth and mint, many things. It’s a super complicated liqueur. They call it the Bartender’s Handshake. Also, when people order things with bitters in them, that’s definitely a sign of the service industry.”

All three bartenders cringe when a full-grown adult orders a Long Island Iced Tea, a drink full of various liquors, that’s basically made to get you drunk. Apparently, many bartenders think mojitos are a pain to make because the mint gets everywhere.

But how can you impress your bartender?

“I’d say the chic drink would be something like a Negroni,” McIntyre said. “There’s a guy named Murray who’s a famous bartender in Seattle and he, in one of his interviews, quoted that that’s his favorite drink. And it took off. Because I’m a little bit of a cheapskate, when I get somebody who is a professional, maybe has some money, and they order well [alcohol], I adore them for it. We have a particular lawyer who always comes in and drinks well whiskey. I’ve tried to up sell him on it and he’s like, ‘Nope. That’s good enough.'”

All three bartenders say the judgement is all in good fun, and they’re happy to make whatever drink you want to order.

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