Restaurateurs Francis Schott and Mark Pascal Set the Stage for Craft Cocktails

In early 2023, Francis Schott and Mark Pascal, the owners of Stage Left Steak and Catherine Lombardi, two cocktail-forward restaurants in New Brunswick, learned that a local New Jersey reporter was compiling a list of Jersey-specific “biggests, bests, and firsts” in the realm of food, chefs, restaurants, farms, crops, and markets. They thought they belonged in such an article. After all, Stage Left had been serving craft cocktails since 1993, long before anyone else in the state. But the reporter was unconvinced. So Schott and Pascal called in backup, asking high-profile friends in the cocktail world like Dale DeGroff and Audrey Saunders to contact the reporter. (Full disclosure: I was among those they called upon.) Nothing worked. When the article came out, Stage Left wasn’t included. For Schott and Pascal, it was just another day of doing world-class cocktail work in a perpetually overlooked small market. “These guys have been at this since 1993,” says DeGroff, along-standing supporter. “The reporter just didn’t get it. They should be nominated for a Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award every year. But nobody does it, aside from me. They should be nominated yearly for the James Beard beverage program award.”

“They should be nominated for a Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award every year. But nobody does it, aside from me. They should be nominated yearly for the James Beard beverage program award.” —Dale DeGroff

“I’ll tell you why this journalist got under my skin,” says Schott. “We took a lot of arrows over the years. People said, ‘You can’t charge $7 for a drink! What do you think, you’re in New York?’ And now we’re at the point where people don’t believe us. Among the general population, with people who are interested in cocktails, they go, ‘Oh, now you’re doing cocktails, too?’ I’d like them to know that we’re the real deal. Right here in Jersey, we were one of the first bars in the world to do this.”

You can’t blame folks for being surprised by Schott and Pascal’s achievement. One would assume that the longest-running, uninterrupted modern craft cocktail program in the United States, still under the same management, was in New York or San Francisco. You wouldn’t look for it in a small steak house in New Brunswick, a city of 60,000.

To put matters in perspective, that drinks program—which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year—was launched when DeGroff was still serving drinks at the Rainbow Room, and long before the game-changing speakeasy Milk & Honey was a glimmer in the eye of founder Sasha Petraske. The opening menu was adorned by cocktail-oriented quotes from H.L. Mencken and William Grimes (author of the influential cocktail history Straight Up or On the Rocks) and included the Algonquin and Stork Club cocktails, DeGroff’s own Ritz cocktail, and a fresh-juice Margarita.

Appropriately, given Stage Left’s specialty, the restaurateurs learned about craft cocktails over a steak dinner. Schott was a member of a loose group of hospitality pros called the Red Meat Club. On the first Monday of every month, the members met for lunch at a different steak house in Manhattan. At one 1992 feast, DeGroff challenged Schott, who was then mainly a wine guy. “At some point in the lunch,” Schott recalls, “he said to me, ‘Francis, cocktails can be every bit as complex and interesting as good wine.’ I said, ‘Oh, come on, Dale, that’s ridiculous.’ He said, ‘Come up to the Rainbow Room sometime.’”

Schott went, had a Whiskey Smash and a few other cocktails, and his eyes were forever opened. “I remember that elevator ride down that first time, thinking, ‘Alright, there’s a whole lot here I don’t know.’” Pascal joined Schott at the Rainbow Room not long after and had a similar revelation. “We drank the cocktail Kool-Aid in the summer of 1992,” Schott says.

At that point, the two men were making Cosmos and using sour mix from a soda gun. Caipirinhas were as close as they got to fresh citrus. They called DeGroff and said they wanted in on the craft cocktail thing. Soon, the Stage Left staff was attending a mixology class conducted by DeGroff at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan.

That relationship continues today. DeGroff has given presentations at Stage Left or Catherine Lombardi—its sister restaurant on the second floor—more than 25 times. The occasions range from Martini seminars, spirit tastings, and even cabaret acts (Dale sings). Stage Left has also for years functioned as a gallery for the artwork of Dale’s wife, Jill. And where DeGroff goes, others follow. “Every time we do our thing, bartenders come from New York to get there,” says DeGroff. “They come because they know it’s going to be a good thing, because it’s a bitch of a trip.”

Among those who have checked out Stage Left’s work is Julie Reiner, owner of the New York bars Clover Club, Leyenda, and Milady’s. “I feel like Dale has definitely brought a lot of attention to it,” says Reiner.

All these years later, the two men still exhibit the ebullient energy of career barkeeps. They are ever ready with a smile, a joke, and an inexhaustible gift of gab.

It’s natural that Schott and Pascal would be so invested in the drinking aspect of their restaurants. Both began their careers as bartenders. They worked together behind the bar at The Frog and The Peach, another New Brunswick dining institution just a few blocks from Stage Left. They continued to bartend after they opened Stage Left in 1992. All these years later, the two men still exhibit the ebullient energy of career barkeeps. They are ever ready with a smile, a joke, and an inexhaustible gift of gab. They also have an unvarnished enthusiasm for the food and drink they serve. (Any dinner with them will boast multiple entrees and many bottles of wine.) Each man spends roughly 60 hours a week at the restaurants, and there isn’t a night when you won’t find one of them on the floor.

Over the years, Schott and Pascal have racked up their share of cocktail firsts. Catherine Lombardi was the first restaurant or bar in New Jersey to get a Kold-Draft ice machine since the ’70s. They were the first fine-dining restaurant to host a pop-up Miracle bar at Christmas. (Pro tip: Though many Miracle bars are now very hard to get into, you can easily gain access to the New Brunswick one by simply making a dinner reservation.) And they may have come up with the first recipe for the Brooklyn cocktail that actually tastes good.

That troubled sibling of the Manhattan cocktail is saddled with multiple conflicting recipes, and hobbled by the fact that Amer Picon, a key ingredient, is no longer available in the U.S. Moreover, even the Amer Picon sold overseas is no longer the same formula. Schott and Pascal discovered a secret workaround to the Picon problem, resulting in a delicious drink that is improbably the restaurant’s top seller. (I promised not to reveal the secret ingredient in print, but Schott and Pascal may share it in private.) Pascal says the Brooklyn’s popularity has resonated with his friends. “If I go to a party, that’s one of the things I’m required to bring.”

“They are really exceptional in that they say the thing and they mean the thing,” says Chris Stanley, who was for 11 years their head bartender and now works for the Dead Rabbit group of bars. “They get behind the bar program. It’s a great place to come up creatively. They were willing to let me do about anything I wanted to.”

Do the two men feel they’re finally getting their due after 30 years of shaking and stirring? “In the industry, we do,” says Schott. … The rest of the world, however, may still need some convincing.

So, clueless local reporters aside, do the two men feel they’re finally getting their due after 30 years of shaking and stirring? “In the industry, we do,” says Schott. Their recent 30th anniversary bash was testament to that. Among the attendees were celebrated bartenders Tony Abou-Ganim, Joaquín Símo, and Sother Teague, along with cocktail historian David Wondrich and the inevitable DeGroff. The rest of the world, however, may still need some convincing.

“I think they deserve far more credit than they get,” says Wondrich. “It’s the problem that anything great that’s outside of New York City, but still within its gravitational pull, has. From the outside, it seems like part of NYC, and hence not worthy of special coverage, while from inside NYC it seems too far away to be a part of the scene.” 

That may be, but, according to Pascal, New Jerseyans have their own perspective problem. “I think there’s a thing in Jersey that Jersey people have,” he says. “It’s little brother syndrome. What Francis and I said from the day we started was, ‘I don’t want to be an excellent New Jersey restaurant, I don’t want to be an excellent New Jersey bar. I want to be an excellent restaurant. I want to be an excellent bar.’”