The Philip Duff Show

TJ Lynch is one of the most genuinely hilarious people I know, but the success he and business partner Richard Knapp have had with cocktail dive bar Mother's Ruin - four branches, a fifth and sixth on the way, plus separate concepts in Folly Beach and Johns Island South Carolina - is no joke.  And it all started with a little bar on Spring Street in Manhattan that they opened in 2011 for the...

David’s a great guy I met through Jillian Vose, ex-supremo of mixology at Dead Rabbit and all-round bar goddess. Badger Bevs is a gorgeous range of premium mixers, and David IS ALL IN on the on-premise, so I badly wanted to sit down and hear his story, and it did not disappoint - enjoy!  Badger Bevs on IG: https://www.instagram.com/badgerbevs?igsh=cTMzYjlrZndteDg2 ( Get in touch with Duff! Podcast...

The Bitter Truth cocktail bitters launched in 2006, after German bartenders Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck visited London Bar Show, had a drink in Sketch bar, and decided to go for it.  This year TBT celebrates 20 years, so it was time to sit down with Stephan and Alexander to talk about how a couple of bartenders making extinct bitters in their garage entered a centuries-old category and carved...

Jeff's best-known for being a mainstay of New York's world-famous speakeasy-behind-a-phone-booth Please Don't Tell (PDT), where he was hired by Jim Meehan and has worked since 2010, and which post-pandemic he bought from its founder Brian Shebairo along with the hotdog stand it's housed inside, Crif Dogs.  In a city where bartenders hop around jobs willy-nilly, Jeff credits his...

Marcio is very much Our Man In Brazil, an old friend and (during Bar Convent Brazil) I’ve visited his previous, much-vaunted bar Guilhotina.  Marcio was in NY to do a MasterCard-backed pop-up of his Sao Paolo bar, Eximia, at New York’s Dante, so we carved out a few hours to hang out and catch up.  Enjoy!  ( Get in touch with Duff! Podcast business enquiries:  consulting@liquidsolutions.org  (PR fr...

Tom and Marco are legendary flair competitors, multiple-times world champions, teachers, contest judges - and now, authors of the 501-page (!) “The Flair Bartending Book”. Its unquestionably the most definitive tome ever written on this chapter in bartending, from flair’s origins in the 1600s to Jerry Thomas & co.’s flamboyant 1800s mixology to TGI Friday’s Bartender Olympics in 1984, THAT mov...

Paul's been a a friend for ages; he's former London bartender and bar owner, taught seminars for the WSET and Diageo, has lived all over the world* as a conservation biologist - and founded Everleaf.  *And is currently wrapping up several years living in Iceland! We chatted about his many careers, the bar biz, learning Chinese, being part of Diageo's Distill Ventures brand incubator...

Ruben’s an old friend from Amsterdam, a native Aruban who bartended in Amsterdam and London, and whose life was changed by a Diplomatico rum training he attended while working as a flair bartender at London’s famed Roadhouse.  (That training was given by none other than Declan McGurk, himself a former flair bartender, who went on to become Director of Bars at The Savoy, leading them to a #1 spot o...

Brendan's a hell of a cool guy: Australian, learned distilling in parallel with his university medical and science studies back home, got a Phd from NYU, GM of New York's hugely fun Bathtub Gin, and in late 2025 he opened Hello Hello Bar and Silent Alibi distillery, both of which are in the West 26th Street space in Manhattan  formerly occupied by the New York branch of Pernod-Ricard&apo...

It's never dull when I drop round Tony's, even during Dry January, and this session was no exception.  After chowing down on sushi and sashimi, fancy fellows that we are, we got down to serious discussions encompassing Fraggle Rock, 1980s "wrestling" in the UK, the new American health directives on alcohol, how I happened into a random Miracle Christmas pop-up bar in the wilds...

,Kurt's back!  His last appearance on the 'pod was November 2023, so we sat down to catch up on everything that's been going on since then in Africa, South Africa, and further afield, over martinis, delicious SA brandy and a spot of Brooklyn whiskey - enjoy! Kurt on IG: https://www.instagram.com/kurtschlechter/?hl=en Cause + Effect on IG: https://www.instagram.com/causeeffectcpt/?hl...

Well, what a year it's been! I added Kazakhstan to my "list of countries I got drunk in", hit all the usual suspects on the global bar show circuit and added the inaugural Gulf Bar Show in Dubai as well, and spent my usual eight weeks living in Europe to boot, sucking down €9 (instead of $36) martinis and plate after plate of delicious boquerones .  2025 was also the Year of Tariffs...

Gareth's been a mate and fellow expat-in-New-York for a longish time, but I ran into him again recently when he hosted a mega-fancy private dinner in the already-mega-fancy members' area of private club Casa Tua, a dinner which I gatecrashed in a genteel manner, as my apartment was unexpectedly full of women playing mahjong.  Gareth was the consummate host, introducing the 2025 special e...

Daniyel is, in my opinion, the most naturally gifted brand ambassador I've ever met, but the reason he's been nominated for so many awards and other accolades is that since I met him many years ago, he has always been on a never-ending journey of self-improvement. I don't think I've ever seen him without a broad grin on his face, and if you spend ten seconds in his company, you...

Michael Neff, like so many of us, fell sideways into hospitality and now 27-odd years later, he's still in it, opening bars across the USA, consulting, podcasting and just plain bartending.  He's a real bartender's bartender, and you can see that DNA in all the places he's opened or consulted on or worked at: Ward III, Rum House, Holiday Cocktail Lounge (NY), Cottonmouth Club (...

Robert's a swashbuckling figure even by liquor biz standards: son of a fighter pilot, he grew up in England, set up a chain of radio stations across Europe in his youth, ran an agency, then slipped sideways into the liquor biz (armed only with a degree in languages) and climbed the greasy pole at Bacardi for 26 years, ending up as CEO of North America, after stints running the business in Mos...

Angus is so old a friend that we can't remember exactly where we met but we're 99% sure it was at a bar show or get-together of some kind, probably in London, where he, a bartender from Oxford, was in on the ground floor of what we can now look back - after thirty years - to confirm was the birth of the Second Golden Age of cocktails.  He and I were the two first people from the bar biz...

I've been a fan of Ben's since his first book, Schott's Original Miscellany came out in 2002, a collection of quirky facts and insights into subcultures; his 13 (!) subsequent books expanded on the theme and have sold more than 2.5 million copies, in multiple languages, to date.  Ben also wrote two of the best "homage" books in the style of PG Wodehouse, which, if you&apos...

The irrepressible Edvinas "Eddie" Rudzinskas is a fixture at just about every bar show and party, and the Instagram he created, @cocktails_for_you, boasts 565, 000 followers.  We sat down during BCBerlin to talk about how he went from working in his native Lithuania to bartending in a small town in Ireland, falling deep down the rabbit hole of mixology, and founding Cocktails for You, in...

I've always followed the industry in Australia closely, as in my opinion it is, pound-for-pound, the best mixology nation on Earth; I've visited often, for teaching and consulting, and wrote a column in Australian Bartender magazine for some years.  Last year the Sydney Morning Herald broke a story (sadly, only the first of many) uncovering alleged wide-ranging abuse at the renowned Aust...

I met Andrea in the End Times, even though we didn't know it, then; he made several delicious cocktails with Old Duff Genever for me, in New Zealand, in mid-March 2020, before the world closed down.  Andrea is a remarkably cool guy who came from Italy to, first, Australia, and then NZ, to perfect his craft, knowing that first he had to perfect his language skills.  He then worked months - eve...

Edmund co-founded Nightjar, a speakeasy cocktail bar with live music, in London with his life and business partner, Roisin Stimpson, in 2010, with its first head bartender being Marian Beke.  Nightjar quickly stormed the lists of nominations, Best Bars, and more, and a lot of that success was due to Marian's incredible cocktail presentations, in bespoke vessels, using skill and flavour combin...

I met Steve at Cologne Bar Symposium earlier this year, which also hosted the first-ever launch of Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey outside the USA.  We chatted a bit and I attended his seminar; to say Steve's life is fascinating is like saying Elon Musk is a decent engineer.  From a childhood of wealth in Cambodia with servants and bodyguards, to contracting polio and losing the use of one of...

Our mutual friend (and PR guru) Laura Peet suggested I have liquor biz lifer Ken on, and he was a great guest!  We chatted about the liquor industry, recent developments like GLP-1 inhibitors, the effects of phone-based gambling on drinks sales in bars, the Seagrams curse, and a whole bunch more, while I was drinking a Fre Damm Tostada a non-alc beer whose parent brand, Damm coincidentally is impo...

Sarah Morrissey is a little bundle of joy on the NY bar circuit, but also a skilled mixologist who's had her bar programs reviewed in the likes of the New York Times on multiple occasions, shepherded bar programs to James Beard and Tales of the Cocktail nominations (and wins) and is rightly respected by all who know her. She's done stints at Le Veau d'Or, Frenchette, Ernesto's,...