By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| Pat Winning chats with customers while tending bar at Eastside Grill near the University of Hawai‘i. After this shift was over, Winning set an unofficial world record by bartending in every state.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser |
It’s time to hoist a glass to Bartender Pat, America’s most traveled drinkmeister.
Oops. Technically, we ought to wait for the Guinness Book of Records people, official arbiters of things like this, before it becomes official: Pat Winning, a.k.a. "Bartender Pat," now has worked a full shift, pulling and pouring libations, in all 50 states.
But after Winning’s shift Monday night at the East Side Grill, an eatery and watering hole near the University of Hawai‘i, friends are already rushing in with congrats.
"I sat last night with tears in my eyes," Winning said Monday. "I called all my bars in 49 states and told them I completed it.
I said, ‘Hey, I’m here, I’m in the 5-0.’ And everybody said, ‘We knew you would do it.’ "
Winning, a resident of Big River, Calif., yesterday boarded a plane for home, eager to begin Phase 2 - Bartender Pat’s Great Adventure: The Book.
It’s been 14,000 miles since she hit the road in her Georgie Boy motor home last May 19, beginning a trek across the United States. Winning had started tending bar 30 years before, when she was 21, and had a plan to mark that anniversary in a big way.
In the bar where she worked just west of Palm Springs, she had listened to a lot of "snowbirds" talk of their travels and longed to see the country. Of course, lacking the snowbirds’ resources, she knew she’d have to work along the way, and the idea was born. Why not turn her travels into a quest for the world record for U.S. bartending?
In order to complete the quest here, Winning had to satisfy local regulations, which meant taking a 2 -hour liquor-awareness class, followed by a test. Then she had to find a spot willing to allow her to sit in behind the bar.
Usually, she just tools around in her RV to find an appealing workplace, but Georgie Boy was mothballed on the Mainland when she came here. Weary from a long flight, lost luggage and facing prohibitive taxi fares, Winning took to the airwaves, using radio interviews to invite innkeepers to hire her for a shift. Robbie Acoba, East Side owner, was among those who responded, and he and Winning hit it off.
As bar patrons dropped by with lei and aloha, it all seemed worth the trouble. But Winning noted that welcome mat had been rolled out across the country (her chronicles are online at http://bartenderpat.com).
Winning said she’s favored neighborhood bars, where truth can be better than fiction, or at least as good.
"If you’re in a neighborhood bar, it’s like the TV series ‘Cheers,’ " Winning said. "There’s always a Norm and a Diane. Only the names are different."
And she’s learned a thing or two on the road.
"I know hundreds of (drink) recipes," she said. "But I’ve learned several more."
One of them is The Derailer, a concoction for three imbibers to share while seated around an enormous glass loaded with ice, pineapple juice, grenadine and five kinds of rum - the equivalent of 10 shots. To serve it, Winning first had to master the art of pouring from five fifths of rum at once.
The drink might have knocked the customers for a loop, but Bartender Pat is clearly not to be derailed.
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