Ashtin Berry: What Makes Hospitality Workers Beautiful

Last year, we hosted an All Day Communion with lots of wonderful guest speakers. We had some of these talks transcribed and published in our first ever newspaper, which celebrated one whole year of Communion. 100% of the proceeds from the paper go to Papyrus UK, a charity that works hard to prevent young suicide in the UK. You can buy the paper here, and listen to all of our previous guest talks here.

We know that watching videos and buying publications isn’t always accessible to everyone, so we thought we’d put the transcribed talks up on the blog too. We hope you enjoy them.

While we were talking, Ashtin taught us how to make a simple gin fizz from home. The ingredients are below, and the method is intertwined with Ashtin’s story in italics.

60ml gin

30ml lemon juice

22ml simple syrup or other liquid sweetener

1 egg white or 15ml aquafaba

30ml sparkling or soda water

Handful of ice

You’ll also need a cocktail shaker or a jar, a bar strainer or large spoon and a fine sieve.

Sometimes you meet someone and you just know that you're going to work with them. You just know that this person and the conversations that you have with them are really lovely and charming. But you know that that's just the tip of the iceberg. You know that there's something that runs deep with this person. When I met Ashtin I was absolutely charmed, enthralled. What I love about you, Ashtin, is how you describe things. And you look fantastic too. Tell me about yourself.

Every time I get this question I'm always trying to figure out the best way to answer it. I guess the best way to say it is that I'm kind of a girl of all trades. I’m a bartender but I started off as a sommelier in the wine world. But I felt that there was a lack of creativity and growth in that area and I wanted to branch out. I had a really deep interest in armagnac and cognac and things of that nature, so then really the next kind of thing that made sense was to learn how to bartend. At the beginning of my career, if you would have told me I’d become a bartender over a sommelier I would have been like oh no! But I just love the creativity of it. And one of the reasons I love the hospitality industry is that it allows you to have the flexibility with your schedule, to do a lot of different things. 

I was also still doing research -  I'm a sociologist, and I was also doing a lot of community work. I just started folding those worlds into one another. I felt like there was a lot that people in academia could really learn from the hospitality industry and how it works, but I also realised that the hospitality industry -  specifically in America - is so diverse, but no one was talking about that. So I started talking about it a lot. Some people didn't like it, but some people loved it.

I've been in this industry for a long time,  I started at the age of 15 and now I'm 32 so basically half of my life. And now we're at a point where people are asking questions like what does the workforce look like? Why does it look like that? Who's in power? Why are those people in power? And what I'm really interested in is getting back to the idea that bars and restaurants are community spaces, and that bartenders are care workers and so we should treat them and engage with them in the same way that we engage with someone if they’re a chiropractor or someone. Your bartender is everything from your therapist to your confidant to your wingman. You asked me to describe myself - did I do that?

There's a whole lot of stuff that I want to unpack here, so I'm going to ask you 3 questions that I always ask. You can talk through making the drink at the same time. Right so the three things to ask you - your childhood. What did it smell like, taste like and what did it sound like? 

Okay, I would say that my childhood sounded like music. Tonnes and tonnes of music and tonnes of different music. My Mother loves to dance, my Father loves to dance, my Grandfather was a jazz musician, my other Grandfather is a lifelong bartender. I come from a military family on both sides so I would say music is probably the soundtrack. 

What did it taste like? I lived kind of everywhere so I would definitely say that being in the industry kind of makes sense, because I was exposed to so many different parts of the country at a young age. I actually got the opportunity to travel abroad at the age of 12 which really expanded not only the way I think about the world ,but expanded my palate too. I had a home stay in France and in Austria and in Ireland, and just engaging and seeing the way people live was great. I would say it tastes diverse - definitely. That's the best way I can put it. I don't know if I can say it tastes like this, but if you're talking about what gives me comfort in taste; I would say seasoning. And food from gas stations. I know that may seem weird but in the U.S, just trust me - in the South, food from gas stations is generally really really good. 

Is it? Is there a homemade feel to it? 

There is. Generally the people who are working there are people who are in your neighbourhood - someone's Mom, someone's Grandmother. I have a place down the street for me in New Orleans called Triangle Deli that everybody goes to. After work you're going to wait for your food for 15-20 minutes because the lines are so thick and it's because the food tastes like home. It's red beans and rice. It's gumbo fried catfish. 

Ok we’re going to get started with the drink - we're going to start with some lemon juice. For anybody who isn't a bartender or professional, you always want to start with your cheapest ingredient so if you make any type of mistake, it's not a big deal if you throw it out. We don't want to be throwing out liquor. We're making a gin fizz today and so you just need one ounce of lemon juice, if you have a nice sizable lemon that's generally just one half juiced. I already have ice in my shaker and I'm going to put my lemon juice in first because that's the cheapest. You’re then going to take any type of sweetener. I am using sorghum which is a cereal grain that is generated into syrup. Now I'm kind of breaking the rules here because generally since we're using gin we should be using a light sweetener. However I'm using a gin that has more floral notes and I want to ground it with a little bit of earthiness. Remember you can always add more sweetener so start off with ¾ teaspoon of simple syrup or sweetener. Stir it around so that it sort of melts into your lemon juice. Now we’ve got our gin. Obviously gin is a huge thing in the UK and everybody likes London dry or Plymouth gin but I decided to use Mahon. Mahon is from an island off the coast of Spain and I chose to use it because it's actually made of grapes instead of grain. And so it has this mouth feel that's just really interesting, it takes a very simple drink and elevates it. We’re going to add two ounces of our gin. And here's the thing - I'm going to actually shake this without the egg white first. because I just want to get all of that sweetener incorporated before I put the egg white in. Now I’m going to crack the egg on the side here.

So just before you do that - if you don't like eggs or if you’re vegan...

You can use your vegan substitute. You’re going to use aquafaba. Basically the liquid you get from a can of chickpeas. The thing with aquafaba though - as you notice I'm entering the egg white directly in here, well with aquafaba you cannot enter it and expect it to act the same way. So if you're using aquafaba; what you're gonna do is you're going to put it in a bowl and you're going to whisk it and it's going to give you this kind of creamy egg whiteness. Then you enter it into your shaker. And we’re going to shake it pretty vigorously. 

If I were at a bar I would have a drop sink, and I would then drop the ice. I'm not at a bar so what I'm going to now do is pour this into another shaker -  now we're getting to the fun part. Which is how we get it all nice and fluffy. The first shaker that I was using was a Boston shaker, so Boston shakers generally already have some type of strainer on it. I am now going to use a carico shaker. I'm going to dry shake it and what the dry shaking does is allows it to get nice and fluffy. We're making a gin fizz, traditionally put in a Collins glass and you would add a little bit of soda water, which we’ll do. I'm now going to go in with a hawthorn strainer  - a fine strainer. Strain it again, using whatever you have at home. This is in case the lemon juice wasn’t strained right, I don’t want any seeds or anything in there. Now we’re going to add it to our glass and add our soda water and then you’ll get this really really pretty white layer on top. Now if you've got any bitters you're just gonna drop a couple of dots on the top. And use a toothpick to drag those little dots and that's going to make it look so pretty. And there you go! 

Amazing. That's like latte art but in a gin. I absolutely love that. Look you know you've got this really kind of amazing depth of experience; the sommelier stuff, the bartending, the sociology degree. Tell me about the work you do that isn’t behind the bar.  

I do a lot of work around worker equity; educating people about how we can make spaces safer. A lot of my work is centred around the fact that hospitality spaces, while generally owned privately, are public spaces and a lot of time harm is being done in those spaces. Either because we lack the language to be able to call in things when we need to, or because we don't know how to disrupt patterns of abuse, or simply just because we're not even aware. We're not paying attention. So what I like to explain to everybody is that every single person is kind of their own planet. And you're orbiting with these things, but it's important for us to be aware that other people are also operating with their own planetary systems. We live in a Galaxy so it's important for us to realise how we're constructing and expanding and how our identities engage in certain spaces. A great example right now is I'm a bartender, but when I walk outside my door, unless someone has a framework for what I do or personally knows me, they don't know that I'm a bartender. That identity is only relevant in context to a bartending space. The same goes for when I'm an educator, that is only relevant to the dynamic of students and teachers and when I'm in the context of educators. So what I'm trying to get us to work on in the industry, is realising that being in service to people does not mean that we need to compartmentalise our identity. It may be uncomfortable for some people to speak about the different ways that we have to navigate in order to be comfortable, to be successful. I do everything from racial training to racial equity. I used to write in things for restaurants and bars, like things that are specifically around language surrounding sexual assault and harassment. How do we disrupt those? What do those things look like? How do we look at anti oppression as preventative care? I'm really interested in preventive care and harm reduction, and actually us being emotionally intelligent, racially intelligent in terms of our understanding of race as a construct and how it plays in our spaces. This allows us to actually make spaces safer by being preventative in our understanding of those things.

That's super powerful work and you must feel the weight of that responsibility. Or do you feel that actually is not your responsibility to educate? Do you feel it’s your responsibility to lead, or just to do what's in front of you in your lane?

I believe that we all have a purpose and we all do have a lane for sure. I think that as Adrian Murray Brown says, boundaries are the extension at which we can care and love for people. And I truly believe that. I believe that it is my duty, when I have put myself in the role of educator, to educate people. But it is not my responsibility, nor should I be available 24/7 for people to lean on or to be educated. I appreciate people with curiosity, I appreciate people with questions, and I try to educate as gracefully as possible. But I'm also really firm about boundaries in remembering that when people choose to educate you, that it is an offering and that's the way that you should engage with it.

Totally. And the work that you do in the community is increasingly being recognised. You recently just won a community bartender award...

Yeah well gee, the road to gin industry icons... Like if you are naming me an icon at 32, where am I going when I get older? I’m gonna be a national treasure! It's interesting to see. I think that there's something about this pandemic - it’s really difficult especially in America but all over the globe it's been really difficult for people. I think what it has done though, is something that's really vital for our survival as humans; which is that it's gotten us it's grounded us back in collective thought processes and got us thinking - how do we care for each other? What is our relationship with the people that we live close to? What is our relationship to the people that we don't live close to but who we love? And I think that pause and grounding, to make everybody slow down, has got people to pay attention to what's going on around them. I think when you have so many things going on in your day like before the pandemic, when you didn't have time to like sit down, it was really easy to ignore a lot of things or say I don't think it's that big of a problem. And now I think that's changing. I think people are like “hey you know, I didn't think that this was an issue but it is an issue and it's a much greater issue than I thought it was and we need to have more dialogue about it”. And I think people right now, especially in hospitality, are realising that the fact of the matter is - the hospitality community cannot survive off of the backs of old white men .

No it would be dreadful if it was serviced by old white men. Looking at where we sit in this really interesting point in history - we sit at the point where you're either all in or you're all out. You're either with or you're against. Are you filled with fear or are you filled with hope? How do you see the future unrolling? 

You know what, I think I'm filled with both right now. I think it’s more than hope, I’m filled with curiosity about the future and filled with curiosity about how people will lean into humanity. And what they see, who they think is deserving of humanity. I'm really interested and curious about how that will unfold all over the globe. l’m hopeful because of the generation coming after us. They will have so much more information than the generations before us because they have access to so much more knowledge at their fingertips. And that makes me incredibly hopeful because it means that people get to make decisions based on their desires. I don't live in fear but I'm cautious, because that system that took thousands of years to build and it’s not going to disintegrate just because we have now reached a conscious president. As a black woman, the world was not built for me. Even with the recognition that lots of people now have, there are harmful things taking place that I will still have to armour myself against.

I think a lot of white people in general are feeling really guilty or they are feeling like they need to actionise. I think we all as a community need to get past that guilt. No one's blaming anybody for things that happened in the past, we were all born who we were born. Part of the journey of people who are white and part of the journey of people who have privilege is owning the fact that you are complicit whether you would like to be or not. Every single day you are met with tonnes of little decision making things where you could choose something different. And that doesn't mean that you will overwhelmingly choose to opt out of systems that are harmful, what it means is that rather than telling yourself that what you're doing is a problem, or that it doesn't have an effect - you own it and you remain accountable for it. Even if all that accountability looks like is “I'm recognising that I am in a system that harms other people''. And that's as simple as like, I ordered from Amazon and I realise that this is a commodity, I realise I am someone who is privileged who has the ability to order from Amazon and not think of the ramifications of how it influences other people and I don't know how to opt out of it right now, because I live in a space where there isn’t access to everything that I need. There's no need to go down a rabbit hole of shaming yourself for that - it's more of just a conscious awareness and knowing that when I am presented with another option I am going to choose differently.

I love that. When I met you I knew you were going to change me. I had no idea about a pandemic, I had no idea about the murder of George Floyd, but I knew you were going to change me and I thank you for that. I think that to serve doesn't mean to be in servitude. I think for a long time we confused both of those things, and it's time to stop now.

Yeah, everybody is in hospitality. This is what I tell people, whether you are actually a worker in hospitality or whether you extend hospitality to your neighbours or people in your home -  every single person has acted as a host. Serving food, being in a community with food and beverage, that is an emotional labour. We don't think of it that way, right? I'm just cooking food, I'm just setting it up, but it is an emotional labour. It’s such an intimate process; to dine and drink and eat with people. I think we think about going out to eat or drinking with people or going to a bar, and we just have to remember that there is a person who standing there who is extending that labour to people that they do not have relationships with, doing it with very little information and that is is what makes hospitality workers beautiful.

The more I work with bartenders (and I work with a lot of bartenders at the moment), the more I realise they are social workers, the more I realise they are counsellors, they are often first aiders, they offer this whole gamut of support that is invisible. They are also great de-escalators.

Oh my God, I tell people all the time. I'm like you want amazing people who can deescalate a situation? Go find strippers and bartenders - best de-escalators you'll ever find.

Find out more about Ashtin and her work at @thecollectress