Blood & Sand owners TJ Vytlacil and Adam Frager continue to bolster their staff in preparation for next week’s launch of their members-only bar and restaurant downtown. In July, the duo hired chef Chris Bork, who was at The Mud House at the time, to man the kitchen. Today comes news of the latest hire: bartender Lucas Ramsey, who has been behind the bar for the last few years at Eclipse at the Moonrise Hotel in The Loop. Sauce readers named Ramsey their favorite bartender in this year’s Readers’ Choice poll.
Vytlacil expressed his enthusiasm for bringing Ramsey aboard, noting that he and Ramsey had worked together at The Flamingo Bowl downtown. At that time, Vytlacil was bartending and Ramsey was a door man. Both Vytlacil and Ramsey recalled the evening when Vytlacil prepared a Blood & Sand for Ramsey. “It was my first introduction to actual cocktails,” said Ramsey, who has since gone on to become a prominent player in the area’s craft cocktail scene and worked his way up the ranks at Eclipse to his current position as bar manager. Replacing Ramsey at Eclipse will be the restaurant’s lead bartender, Seth Wahlman. For more on the unique concept behind Blood & Sand, click here.
— Photo by Carmen Troesser
This article appears in Sep 1-30, 2011.