Episode 105: Sam Ross on the Penicillin, Attaboy, and Everything

Australian bartender Sam Ross first made his name in the New York City bar world at Milk & Honey, working under Sasha Petraske and alongside longtime business partner Michael McIlroy. Today, Ross is the co-owner of Attaboy, along with a growing list of bars and cafes. For this episode, we talk about the duo’s newest New York bar, Good Guy’s; the growth of their bar group in New York City and Nashville; and about his role as creator of modern classic cocktails, including the Penicillin and the Paper Plane.

Radio Imbibe is the audio home of Imbibe magazine. In each episode, we dive into liquid culture, exploring the people, places, and flavors of the drinkscape through conversations about cocktails, coffee, beer, spirits, and wine. Keep up with us on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook, and if you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you join us—click here to subscribe. 

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Paul Clarke 

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe magazine. I’m Paul Clarke, Imbibe’s editor in chief. 

And Imbibe has been covering the cocktail world for close to two decades now. When our first issue came out in 2006, the cocktail renaissance was still a fairly new phenomenon. We had our landmark bars in New York and London that had put the wheels in motion. And there were bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts all around the world who were honing the craft of the cocktail, rediscovering some of its history, and paving a way to something new.

At that time, back in 2006, it was a little premature to talk about modern classic cocktails. Yes, there were a few drinks already in circulation that could merit that title. And I’m thinking of things like the Old Cuban from Audrey Saunders or the Jasmine from Paul Harrington. Fantastic, simple, easily made, easily understood cocktails that started to travel far from their places of origin. 

Almost 20 years later, of course, there are a number of other cocktails that have moved into that realm, and entire books and recipe apps designed around modern classic cocktails. And if you look at the modern classics that have come about in the 21st century, you’ll notice that at least a few of them come from the same bartender. 

Sam Ross came to the U.S. from Australia back when this whole cocktail thing was still in its early days. In New York, he, of course, made his reputation at Milk & Honey working under Sasha Petraske and with his now business partner, Michael McIlroy. Later, Sam and Michael turned that original Milk & Honey space on the Lower East Side into their own bar, Attaboy. And over the years they’ve added on other bars and bar projects, both in New York and in Nashville. 

And somewhere in there, Sam created cocktails that quickly went viral, popping up in other bars all around the world. Two of those Sam Ross originals, the Penicillin and the Paper Plane, should show up on any reputable list of modern classic cocktails, and there are others that are definitely viable contenders. So what goes into creating a modern classic cocktail, and how and why do you expand from running one of the world’s most notable and influential cocktail bars and venture in other directions, in other cities? For this episode, we’re chatting with Sam Ross to explore the story behind the Penicillin, the art of making modern classics, and the ways that he and Michael McIlroy are continuing to spread their wings around the cocktail world. 

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Paul Clarke

Sam, welcome to Radio Imbibe. 

Sam Ross

Hi. Thanks for having me on. This is exciting. 

Paul Clarke

Absolutely. And, you know, I wanted to have you on the podcast for several reasons, really. First off, I never get to talk to you, and so this is kind of a convenient excuse, really. Second of all, earlier this summer, you and your long time business partner, Michael McIlroy, opened your latest bar, Good Guy’s, right next door to Attaboy. And third, because one thing we’ve noticed in the four years we’ve been doing this podcast is that our audience really likes kind of deep dives and the back story and best practices for some of their favorite classic cocktails and modern classic cocktails. And you were mind behind several of those. So let’s kind of walk through each of those. And I want to get into each of these points a little bit. Starting off with how have you been these days? How are you? 

Sam Ross 

Good. Good. I’ve been very busy, but in a good way. Yeah. You mentioned that we were offered the space right next door to Attaboy, which again, formerly Milk & Honey, which it had been like an art studio for about 30 years. We were offered that space when it became available, so we took that. So we spent about a year on that project opening a bar called Good Guy’s, amongst the projects in Nashville. And yeah, I’ve been renovating my house in Red Hook in Brooklyn for the last year and living here at the same time, which has had its challenges. But oh, very rewarding on top of that. 

Paul Clarke 

Well, I want to get at each of those points a little bit more detail. And as you mentioned, you know, of course, everyone knows you from Attaboy in the Lower East Side, in the same space formerly occupied by your former place of employment, Milk & Honey. Not to be confused with Attaboy in Nashville, which you are also behind. And then you and Michael are also involved with other projects, including, let me make sure I get all this right: Temple Bar in New York where I’ve sampled your lovely Martinis. Lakeside Lounge and Hearts, both in Nashville and, as you mentioned, Good Guy’s, which brings you back to the familiar neighborhood.

On Good Guy’s, you know, like you said, you moved into the space that became available and had been an art place. What was your intention with that bar? I mean, you have this landmark place right next to it, Attaboy, which everybody in the bar community knows and recognizes and understands. What did you think with Good Guy’s that you could add on that would kind of complement that conversation you have going on next door? 

Sam Ross 

Yeah. Great question. And you nailed it. It’s the having something that would be complimentary to Attaboy next door. I think a lot of people have asked us with the footprint of Attaboy, it’s 500 square foot and that’s small and the space next door as well. It pretty much mirrors the same, the same size.

And a lot of people ask us, well, if you’ve got, you know, we’re running a waitlist because we’re a 28-seat bar, we’re running a waitlist all night. Why wouldn’t you just expand it? And for us, that never occurred to us just because, you know, that room is so special, we wouldn’t want to change that experience from the Milk & Honey days into the Attaboy days. Yes, it’s small and it can be annoying to get into it at times. But once you’re in that, that’s when the special experience starts. And we didn’t want to change that. 

So what we thought was, you know, obviously where we’re sending people away every night, you know, often, you know, the easiest thing to do would be to put your name on a list before you go out to dinner. And, you know, hopefully can coordinate that way. But we thought if we had a little space next door that we could offer different you know, we wanted to do different offerings even though we got a full liquor license next door. We didn’t want to offer things that, you know, you’re waiting to get next door. You know, the Penicillin, a Martini, a Negroni, anything like that, because you’re waiting for that next door and we don’t want to ruin that experience. 

So we thought spritzes and, you know, we had this idea for honestly, it was it was sort of like this, this like, what do we like? You know, what things do we really like? Like, you know, we love the aperitivo culture. Me and Michael have spent a lot of time in Barcelona and Paris. And we took a lot of inspiration from like the tinned fish tapas bars of Barcelona because we did want to offer some food, which, you know, we don’t have at Attaboy.

And again, with the space being as small as it was, we couldn’t put a full kitchen in there and go super extravagant with the food offerings. So, you know, we had to get smart about it and same thing, you know, we wanted to be very wine-heavy. Wine, amaro, and then you know, having some seasonal spritzes that that we change up quite frequently. It just, just things that that made us happy. You know same thing with the espresso.

We love our coffee and there’s no reason to put a La Marzocco espresso machine in there. But, but we put a single group machine in there. We really wanted to go heavy on on the sound quality. We’re playing records in there. not a listening bar or anything like that. But. But we really spent a lot of time and money on the audio aspect of it. And we worked with this company in Brooklyn on these custom speakers and this whole setup. So we play a lot of vinyl in there.

But we, you know, we wanted some really amazing crisp sounds in a space. You can feel it, you can be energized by it, but it’s not ever going to impact a conversation you’re having with your table. And so that’s it because we got the front window is nice and open at Good Guy’s as opposed to Attaboy, which is kind of dark and shut off. We still wanted that golden glow.

But we’ve got this beautiful honey onyx bar, and it’s just it’s a little bit warmer and golden in there. Still being dark ish and moody, but but just, you know, like you walk into Attaboy and it’s so dark. We love it. That’s, that’s how we intended to. But, you know, it’s it’s shots on Instagram don’t really come out when taking it Attaboy. And I don’t know, for us, we kind of we kind of like that. 

Paul Clarke 

I mean, in some ways it sounds like it’s kind of like an evolution and maturation, if I can use that word, not just for the cocktails, but of your overall experience. You know, Attaboy still delivers that kind of classic thing that we think of like the New York cocktail experience. We can go get your Martinis, your Manhattans, and your Penicillins and so on in that kind of dark, moody environment. But you can’t just live on those. As we get older, we want those lighter, brighter things like the spritz, as we come to enjoy wine, we come to enjoy a little bit more delicate things, brighter things. 

Sam Ross

Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. And we do have a number of nonalcoholic options and lower-alcoholic options at Good Guy’s, which we celebrate as well. But, yeah, you’re right. But, you know, it’s part of that thing, like, you know, a spritz and a little snack and sort of 4 p.m. in any Italian town, it’s not considered a cocktail. It’s just a way of life. It’s 4:00. You know, you’re making that transition from daytime into the early evening. And, you know, a lot of spritz is a very light and try and fit that bill. But also you know we opened in the summer, which, you know, obviously is spritz season, but we do want to you know we’re excited to work on some more wintery style spritzes because we also do believe that that is a year round.

People don’t stop drinking Aperol Spritzes in Italy, you know, once fall hits. So we’re excited to sort of expand on that menu and work on some more wintery spritz ideas using Lambrusco as well as opposed to just the Prosecco. So that can bring a bit more of a heavier wintery feel. Love Lambrusco. We’re having a lot of fun with that and with some of our drinks. 

Paul Clarke

Now, you and Michael are kind of synonymous with New York cocktail culture. I mean, the two of you have been a part of the modern cocktail renaissance pretty much the entire time that’s been going on. And yet a lot of your work in recent years has been focused on Nashville. What is it about that city and your bars there that make it such a good fit for you? 

Sam Ross 

Yeah. So Nashville is a, I can’t say second home because I’d be doing my hometown of Melbourne, Australia, a dirty with that. But it’s definitely my second American town. You know, the whole idea came about when we opened Attaboy in 2013 and we had this core group of five bartenders, including myself and Michael. You know, we were working most days and, and we really sort of created what is Attaboy with that team. I

It’s such a special team. Dan Greenbaum, Andrew Rice and Brandon Bramhall, the other members and Brandon is from New Jersey, originally grew up in the city. Fantastic bartender and leader and he he was just a bit burnt out with New York and wanted to change. And him and a couple of friends were driving back from Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans one year and with plans on stopping in a few cities along the way, you know, coming home. It wasn’t just a straight shot that would be a long, long drive. And they ended up stopping over in Nashville. So this probably would’ve been 2015.

They ended up stopping in Nashville and spent more time there than expected. And when by the time he got back to New York, me and Michael caught up with him and proposed the idea. He was like, Listen, Nashville is awesome. I love it. And the only reason we were down to do it was because Brandon is part of the Attaboy DNA. You know, he helped shape what it is for and what it is, and he was moving that. He was like, I will move there and be the operating partner. 

Because for us, you know, it’s it’s not just about replicating how a place looks, training few people and thinking that that’s buzz created their legacies is that the culture of and the experience of the staff that are working there. It’s sort of like how Milk & Honey was. You know, when me and Michael started, we sort of took over from these lovely Italians that had been running it. But we worked side by side with them for quite a while leading into that.

So there was a continuation of the culture and brands and moving down to Nashville was going to be a continuation of the Attaboy culture down there. It wasn’t just a replication. So we, you know, but that’s not to say, you know, but me and Michael were like, All right, well, let’s take a trip down there and check it out. So we jumped on a plane, you know, and maybe the next weekends. And we went and spent some time in Nashville, and we were sold instantly. It was just it was such a fun scene with such a great food and drink scene.

You know, it seemed like a lot of hospitality professionals from the big cities where we’re starting to move down there, getting priced out of, you know, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and taking their skills down to this great city where they could, you know, have a house with a yard and multiple bedrooms and a dog and a family, if that’s your thing. So it seemed like, you know, there was just such a great hospitality community down there. 

And again, yeah, one trip down there, we were hooked. And we we linked with a broker that’s become our very good friend. He’s actually found us all of the four spaces we have down in Nashville. Elliott Kyle, if anyone needs anyone down there, look him up. And we wanted to keep expanding. We felt like there was a huge opportunity down there. And my twin sister is the operating partner for the Hearts Cafes.

We have two of them down there. And that’s an Australian all-day brunch situation, which is very Melbourne Sydney cafe culture, which is something that me and my sister grew up in. Michael’s sister actually lives in Melbourne, married an Australian and he spent a lot of time in Australia and was a massive fan of the cafe culture that’s that we grew up in and we have in those cities. So he was very on board to do this cafe that my sister proposed to us after she came down to Nashville for the first time for the Attaboy Nashville opening. And she also was like, Wow, this city is amazing. And she saw an opportunity down there for something and it just kept on growing from there. 

Paul Clarke 

Fantastic. And do you see some kind of like, almost like more creative opportunities in Nashville? I mean, New York, of course, there’s limitless opportunities. But there’s so many people in so many places operating in New York. And it’s so expensive to open a new place to engage in a new place in New York, in a place like Nashville. Do you kind of see, you know, this kind of wide open space for yourself to put in an Australian style cafe or to put in the kind of cocktail bar that you want to have? 

Sam Ross

Yeah. You know, you definitely have significantly lower overheads in Nashville, which is obviously beneficial. There is a thing called liquor by the glass tax in Tennessee, which is an extra 15% on liquor sales, not beer sales. So that’s a bit of a dampener for sure. But, you know, the spaces that you can find down there can be very, very interesting. But that’s not to say that they can’t be in New York.

You know, none of this stuff we have went into new builds or anything like that, even though, you know, we do get developers reach out to us all the time saying, you know, they’ve got a residential build or office build with commercial space in the bottom. And those spaces have never really appealed to us. That just doesn’t have a whole lot of character. But with how much the city has grown just in the nine years that we’ve been spending time down there, you know, a lot of those deals are done already. You know, it’s sort of I wouldn’t say the bubbles burst or anything like that. There’s still a lot of great value to find down there. But price per square foot has gone up significantly.

And I guess, you know, like at the same time, you go out to eat in Nashville, you go out to drink in Nashville, you’re almost paying New York prices. It’s sort of evened out there. 

Paul Clarke 

Let’s talk cocktails. As I mentioned at the outset, our single cocktail episodes are some of our most popular. And in my notebook where I have ideas jotted down for the podcast, I think I just had “Sam Ross—Penicillin,” and that was kind of like the impetus for reaching out to you. But of course, you know, we have so much more to talk about than that. But let’s get to the cocktails for a little bit because you have a number of cocktails that have caught on and resonated and popped up on menus globally over the years. I mean, we mentioned the Penicillin. There’s the Paper Plane is another one that you see everywhere. What’s that like to see one of your drinks start to move into its own kind of orbit? 

Sam Ross 

It’s wild. I mean, you know, we’re going back. You know, the Penicillin was 2005 and the Paper Plane was 2007. And by far the two cocktails that I’m most prominent that you see, you know, when it first started happening and social media was in its early days as well. And people would start to send me, you know, photos of menus all over the world with with my drinks on them. You know, that was I get such a thrill out of that.

And then what I think is pretty wild is when they started to move into their own category, not necessarily modern classics. I mean, that to be considered a modern classic is a huge honor. You know, along with drinks from Dick Bradsell or Audrey Saunders or Joaquin Simo or anything like that. But when people started using those drinks as a formula to start riffing on, you know, like when people would be like, you know, that that’s something we’d done at Milk & Honey and Attaboy, you know. You riff on Negronis, you riff on Old Fashioneds, your riff on Gin Rickies. But when I start to see or hear people say, This is a riff on a Paper Plane or a riff on a Penicillin like that, that, to me, it was like that made me feel pretty good. I feel like there’s a legacy.

I don’t want to say that I peaked, you know, 15. Hope I’ve still got some more bangers in me. But that that definitely kind of made me feel like that might live on a little bit longer than maybe my lifetime, which made me feel good. 

Paul Clarke

I remember, you know, realizing that the Penicillin had caught on when, and this was many years ago, but the date I was I was at Zig Zag Cafe when Murray Stenson was still working there, and he was serving me Penicillin riffs. And I thought, that’s that’s really cool that, that he’s playing with that. 

Sam Ross 

Well, yeah, I never knew that. I never got the chance to meet Murray in person. I was obviously a fan from afar, and. And heard stories along the way of, you know, what is it, Murr the Blur. And I never knew that. That that’s just really nice to hear that he was making making versions of my drinks.

Paul Clarke

He was doing tequila riffs on the Penicillin when I went in one time, and it was a lot of fun. And, you know, we mentioned the to the Penicillin, the Paper Plane that they, like you say, are probably the first ones to spring to mind. Are there others that you see in your catalog, like, you know, you guys, you like the Penicillin, but this one’s really good. This ah, this one should really catch on. 

Sam Ross 

Yeah, I think some of the more like the deeper cuts, if you will, to look at some deep cuts, I think. I’m I’m very fond of the Too Soon which is a gin, Cynar, lemon, orange, little aperitif number. We we kind of came up with a few series of cocktails, you know, the Milk & Honey guys. And one was the hand series was the Left Hand cocktail, which then Michael came up with the Right Hand and then essentially Boulevardier riffs with chocolate bitters, a tweaked formula.

So the Hands series is something that we still get some good requests for, and maids as well. Maids is a category that that I came up with East Side Company leading into Milk & Honey Little Branch era. And they were basically gimlet on the rocks with cucumber and mint shaken in there. Later, you know, actually, maybe maybe the listeners could could help us out, because I’ve never really been able to get to the bottom of it.

Later, Christy Pope, who was an early bartender at Milk and Honey, was making Eastside cocktails, which have become you know, they’ve become their own thing, which is essentially it was a maid, but it was shaken and served up. You know, we know the South Side was a mint version of that that came from Chicago. But I’ve never really been able to get to the bottom because Christy didn’t claim it as her own. So we’ve never really gotten to where the East Side came from. And if it was an old drink or if it was more of a modern situation because so maybe if anyone is listening, please help. 

Paul Clarke

That would be great. Yeah. Please chime in. You know, you can reach out to us on social media and let us know. It has the feeling of a more contemporary thing. I like the cucumber is kind of like the tell. I just feels like a more contemporary kind of thing. But I would be curious to get to the bottom of that. For the Penicillin. Bring us up to speed on the back story. How did that first come together? 

Sam Ross 

Yes. So it was. Sasha had just opened Little Branch with with Joseph Schwartz, another longtime bartender for Milk and Honey that that and Michael trained on that when we when we started. And me and Michael were working between Milk & Honey and Little Branch at the time and John Glaser, the head of a whiskey company called Compass Box, an American, a Mets fan actually. We we got along famously straight away. And he had just he’d been working with Johnnie Walker for a long time and had gone out on his own and started this whiskey company called Compass Box.

Now, they weren’t distillers. He wasn’t making the whiskey himself. But what he was doing was buying really interesting whiskeys from distilleries and then blending his own whiskeys together. And the man’s got an extraordinary palate. And from delicate whiskeys to obnoxious whiskies, that was fairly new to the American market. He came in and dropped off a batch of all the stuff that he’d been working on that was being released in global market and was encouraging us to get creative. So he left and I was I started playing around with the blended scotch, which is the Asyla.

And I, we had the honey and the ginger, the Gold Rush was a very popular drink at Milk & Honey created by TJ Siegel. And we were making that at Little Branch as well, which is very simple. It’s just bourbon, lemon, and honey, shake, and so are big rock. 

So I played around with that formula with the Asyla. And the scotch is a little bit lighter than the bourbon. I thought the sweetened ginger juice could give it little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a spice, a little bit of a kick and shook it and strained it. And, you know, it was it was good. It was fine. And then, you know, I was like, I could use something else.

And I reached over and grabbed still to this day, one of my favorite bottles of whiskey is the Compass Box Peat Monster. So definitely smoky qualities, but really, really rich caramel like nuts. It’s not one-dimensional smoke like some of some of the Islays are. And I just floated a little bit of that on top of that giant ice rock that we used, still use to these days and felt like it again. Felt like it was good.

I didn’t really think too much of it at the time. I really didn’t. But it was it would have been months later. And I was working at Little Branch one night and the server who then went on to become a very great bartender on her own right, Lucinda Sterling. She was talking out loud about a round of bartenders’ choices for a table and I was I was in the well, making drinks, making tickets. And she said, well, what do they want? They look four bartender’s choice as well, I need to put a Penicillin on that table because every table needs to experience this drink. And it wasn’t until she sort of said that I was like, Oh, wow. Okay, Maybe. Maybe there’s something there. Maybe that. 

Paul Clarke 

Maybe it’s got legs. 

Sam Ross 

Maybe there’s legs to this. And also, at the time, not long after that, I went over to Los Angeles to consult on sort of arguably like the first sort of craft program in Los Angeles in this, you know, this cocktail renaissance, this third wave cocktail in a movement that we’re currently in. I took it to Los Angeles and the bar team that I trained up over there, they all went off to do their own thing. They took the Penicillin with them wherever they went. And it just it just sort of started growing from there. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. Right. So bring us up to today. I mean, obviously, this was 2005 when you when you were first talking about this, working with the Compass Box. When you make this drink today or when you put it on the menu today, what is the official Sam Ross Penicillin 2024 approach? Just walk us through how you prepare that now. 

Sam Ross

So fresh, fresh juice, of course. Fresh lemon, as close to the time of shaking as possible. It’s three-quarter ounce of that. We use our honey syrup is 3 to 1 so it’s a bit thicker than most honey syrups. And then we do a sweetened ginger juice. So chop down the ginger with the skin, send it through a Breville, get the raw juice out of that. And then we do a 4 to 3 by weight ratio of ginger juice to granulated sugar. So immersion blend that until it’s all together.

So that’s our sweetened ginger juice that’ll last in the fridge for a good three days and still be very sharp. I know it can sound a little finicky, but it’s a three-quarter lemon, three quarter sweetener drink. In this case, we’re splitting the sweetener between two sweet and ginger in the honey. So it’s technically at 3/8, 3/8. But really, if you just want to think about matching that three-quarter lemon juice with the sweetening agent, two ounces of blended scotch, anything of quality will get you there.

We put a lot of Monkey Shoulder, but we’ve used bunch of different blended whiskies over the years, scotches. And then you want to shake that and strain it over a big piece of ice and then float a little bit, you know, a quarter ounce, a little bit of an Islay, whatever your favorites are. We, again, we pour a lot of Laphroaig or Peat Monster, but Lagavulin, if you want to spend a little bit more even. I mean people might use Talisker. But sometimes I feel like it doesn’t quite have those smoke qualities as the Islays do. But anything you’ve got there with a little smoke, that’s the accent, that’s your sort of garnish, that’s the lemon twist on a on a Manhattan variation. It’s meant to sort of offset a little bit of what’s going on underneath.

So candied ginger on the side, you know. I don’t like serving this drink with a straw because I really want you to get your nose into that smoke. Think you’re getting more smoke than you’re actual. And then, you know, you drink it. And it’s this like for a whiskey drink, it’s a light crisp, sort of well-rounded number underneath that little dense layer of smoke. So. So no, no straw, guys. 

Paul Clarke 

Okay. Excellent. Now, you know, for drinks like the Penicillin and the Paper Plane and the others that you come up with, is there a particular kind of process you follow or a template you keep in mind when coming up with a new cocktail that has the potential to be really popular? Like, is there a particular kind of philosophy or stylistic approach in mind when you get started? 

Sam Ross

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s that’s another good question. When we teach drinks to new bartenders, new staff members, we teach cocktail families. You know, we find it’s very difficult to give a new bartender 600 odd recipes and tell them to go out and learn these when all of our drinks should fall under these cocktail families that all have a principal formula. And what I mean by that is sours or fizzes or rickies or Martinis or Old Fashioneds. These are all cocktail families that we have a base formula for. And then we can sort of have these riffs included in on them.

So it has to follow, you know, it has to fit into a category for us. We’re also, you know, we do pride ourselves on classic cocktails and riffs and versions of classic cocktails. So we don’t use a whole lot of crazier syrups and infusions and, fat washing techniques, you know. And we’ve got nothing against those. You know, we love love the bars that that that do this and and they make very interesting drinks. But we have things that you can find in your home or at the liquor store. I do often get that question like I you know, I think I come up with drinks and I hope that they taste good.

You know, never do I think, oh, this is going to be like a modern classic, the next modern classic or anything like that. You know, that’s something that, you know, that takes time. But they have to be drinks that can be replicated easily. That’s the key, you know, for the home bartender or for the bartender working, you know, in a little restaurant somewhere. It’s not a whole lot of prep involved in these drinks. Technique is very important to us and quality of ingredients is very important to us. But just using things that are approachable and things you can make relatively easily, without expensive equipment.

Paul Clarke 

Right. There can be beauty in the simplicity. And I think that kind of underscores to me that’s what I think of when I when I taste your cocktails. There is beauty in the simplicity of how this comes together. 

Sam Ross 

Well, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. 

Paul Clarke

Yeah, absolutely. You know, moving toward the exit here. Are there any final thoughts you’d like to share with us about your cocktails, your bars, or on the beauty of being you? 

Sam Ross 

You know, I there’s a lot of things, you know, me and Michael are still still trying to do some you know. We’re still working we’re working on some new projects. And we’re very excited about things that are happening in the future. I have been working with Tip Top cocktails. I played very hard to get with them. I’m not sure why. I don’t know. We finally connected and we’ve been developing both a Penicillin and a Paper Plane canned version that I am very happy with. They’re going to be launching start of September. They’re going to be launching. So look out for them.

If any of you guys have the Bartender’s Choice volume two app on your phones, we’re also working on an update for that with a bunch of new recipes. So keep an eye on that, too. And come and visit us at Good Guy’s and Attaboy and the Temple if you’re in New York. Or at Lakeside Lounge or Attaboy, if you find yourself in Nashville, too. 

Paul Clarke 

Fantastic. Sam, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really enjoy talking to you. I really look forward to seeing you again in person and visiting one of your bars again soon. 

Sam Ross 

Thanks for having me. This was fun. 

[music]

Paul Clarke 

You can find Sam Ross on Instagram @samueljoelross. Just follow the link at this episode’s notes to get there. And if this episode has left you craving a Penicillin cocktail, then head online to imbibemagazine.com to get the recipe. That link is in our episode notes as well. 

And that’s it for this episode. Subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all our future episodes. We’ve got plenty more stories and recipes for you online at imbibemagazine.com. Keep up with us day to day for all of your social media needs on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Threads. And if you’re not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of Imbibe, then let’s get you on board right now. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes to get there. 

I’m Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.