Better Know A Bartender: William Hunter & Jason Klass of Abernethy's
Abernethy’s is one of the more unique venues we’ll visit in this column. Located in the Music Center’s plaza, Abernethy’s is only open for three to four hours at a time to serve the theater crowd. This tight schedule is equal parts challenge and relief for the restaurant’s staff. An added challenge for Abernethy’s bartenders is that the restaurant’s rotating menu from up and coming local chefs means that the cocktail menu also needs to be refreshed to match the cuisine, whether it’s Mediterranean or Filipino. We sat down with lead bartender William Hunter and bartender Jason Klass to discuss the ever-evolving menu, and of course their favorite cocktails.
Where are you from originally?
Jason: I grew up in Los Angeles.
Will: I’m from Colorado, I grew up in Greeley, Colorado.
What brought you to L.A., Will?
I initially came with my partner. We met in undergrad and were both in the theater program. I came out here for a speech pedagogy program that ended up dissolving; I was supposed to be a dialect coach.
How long have each of you been bartending?
Jason: We were going over this yesterday, I’m not entirely sure. I started off doing private gigs and then from there was working at a music venue and a lot of warehouse parties. A real wide array of gigs. I lost a bunch of money trying to start a farm during the lockdown, so I went back into service and that’s where I met Will. That job was not the greatest place, but we managed to bounce over here to Abernethy’s. So, I’m guessing between five and eight years.
Will: I started right at 21 and I’m 25 now, so about four and half years.
What got each of you into bartending?
Jason: For me it just fell into my lap, I was working at coffee shops and it’s a slightly different skillset, but if you can work at a fast paced coffee shop, you can work at a bar.
Will: I’ve been in restaurants since I was 16, so I’ve done every job at a restaurant. I started as a dishwasher, then prep cook, line cook, server, but bartending was my favorite position out of all of them. I also happened to make more money as a bartender than all of them, and it’s super fun.
What did you do during the lockdown phase of the pandemic?
Jason: Prior to lockdown, I was working at warehouse parties and private gigs, and obviously that dried up immediately. We were looking for something to do, me and some partners I’ve worked with, and we decided to start a farm in Tehachapi making smokable hemp, it’s basically the same as cannabis but with very low THC and it’s covered under the farm bill, so it’s considered a legal crop. That was the last niche you could make money on in the hemp industry. We figured it was a good time because people were at home and hemp and cannabis sales were through the roof. People were basically looking for something to calm them down or some kind of escape. Then 2021 came around and we were looking to move our crop, and the entire market kind of crashed, so I’ve got a thousand pounds of hemp sitting in a shipping container still. But those are the dice you roll, it happens.
Will: I was working at Alamo Drafthouse. It just happens to be the third movie theater I’ve bartended at. Anyway, I got laid off immediately on March 27th, 2020, so I spent the entire time indoors waiting on bars and restaurants to open again. I took that time to start studying for law school, so I’m still in the middle of that and am looking to start applying in the fall.
Abernethy’s has a changing menu curated by local chefs. Do you adapt the cocktail menu to the food menu?
Will: Yeah, we take pretty much all of our inspiration from the menu. For a long time we didn’t know what was going to be on the next menu, but we knew it was going to be Filipino food, so we took our shared experience and did some research and applied that to our cocktail menu.
Jason: Before that it was Mediterranean island inspired.
How do you transition a cocktail menu from Mediterranean island inspired to Filipino inspired?
Will: I think a big thing is thinking about how cocktails are often dependent on some kind of citrus and some kind of sweetener. That’s perfect for when you transition a menu because everyone has a different kind of citrus. So we’re going from lemon, lime, and pineapple; well, we still have pineapple, but we’re also using Filipino fruits like calamansi. It’s really exciting to use new ingredients, but in the same structures we’re used to.
That’s so cool that you get to experiment in that way.
Will: Yeah, it’s really cool learning about new ingredients and new alcohols and getting to taste them. I don’t think I otherwise would have gotten to taste or experiment with the kinds of ingredients we’ve got right now.
You’re bartending for a theater crowd, which must be different. Will, you obviously have movie theater experience, but how does it compare doing a 3 hour theater rush versus the usual 8PM to 2AM shift?
Jason: Compared to the last place we worked at, it’s pretty damn nice. It can get hectic sometimes, but it’s manageable. The expectations are different and you sometimes have to, I don’t want to say play to the crowd, but there’s an older clientele that’s going to the opera or going to see a play and they have very specific things that they like. Regardless of what you put on the cocktail menu, there’s always going to be a percentage that only wants a vodka Martini. There’s no getting around that. Overall, it’s pretty nice. On slower days you get to talk to people and you can be a little more playful when people sit at the bar. I think the hours are really great, we both have other things going on, so to be able to get out at 9PM makes this job a bit of a gem.
Will: Not getting out at 2AM is a huge benefit.
That must be surreal to be done at 9 on a Saturday night and still have plenty of evening to go.
Will: Yeah, to actually get some sleep? That’s very nice.
What’s one of the funniest, weirdest, or most interesting things you’ve seen on the job?
Jason: I’ve worked a lot of weird gigs. I probably can’t talk about the warehouse ones, given the types of things that happened at those, but I was talking yesterday about a gig where I was kind of both the chef and the bartender on a boat. It was with a pretty famous singer from a boy band. He brought his family, his girlfriend, and friends. They seemed a bit on the fray, and by the end I had basically watched their relationship fall apart on this boat. That was pretty bizarre.
Will: What’s interesting after bartending for a long time is you can see things happening before they happen. Recently, I saw a server taking a person’s order and I could overhear it. She asked for something that I knew we didn’t have, but maybe the server didn’t know, and I was looking at them, the server was like “Uhh” and looked at me at the bar. We made eye contact from across the restaurant and I just shook my head. I was able to suggest something else and they really liked it. I didn’t find out until after that that customer was a celebrity, but that’s L.A., celebrities are everywhere.
Yeah, you can’t really say “Do you know who I am?” in this town because there are so many celebrities you “have to know.”
Jason: The answer to that question is always “No.”
Or “Yes, you’re the customer who’s bothering me right now.”
Will: Yes, that’s right, or “You’re the person that I said I’ll be with in a moment.”
What is one of your favorite drinks, what do you like about it, and how do we make it?
Jason: There’s a drink we have on the Filipino menu that I had done at my last job, but we’ve put a few twists on it. The best way to describe it is it tastes like an adult version of Hawaiian Punch. Not in a cloying way, it’s got the nostalgic taste, but it’s more complex. I think it’s an interesting cocktail because it tastes really good and it hits in that region of the brain that brings back childhood memories, but it’s also a weird sum of parts. The individual ingredients combine into something you couldn’t imagine. It’s called Bongabong Punch and it’s gin, luxardo amaretto. Campari, aperol, yuzu, calamansi, simple syrup and Peychaud’s. This whole cocktail came about because sometimes ingredients will come into the bar and you wonder what can I make with that; I personally don’t like amaretto, so that was a challenge.
Bongabon Punch
1 ¼ oz Future Gin
¾ oz Luxardo Amaretto
¼ oz Campari
¼ oz Aperol
⅓ oz yuzu
⅔ oz calamansi
¼ oz simple syrup
2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
Shake and double strained into a coupe, garnish with an expressed grapefruit peel.