This feature is part of our 2024 Next Wave Awards.
“I am constantly looking for the intention of a classic drink and investigating what might have changed over time and how we can get back to that intention,” says Garret Richard, chief cocktail officer at Brooklyn’s Sunken Harbor Club since it opened in 2021. “That often requires looking at newer ideas to do so.”
Richard, perhaps better than any drink-maker these days, mixes the avant garde with the accessible, both through his work behind the bar and behind the keyboard in his writing.
Raised among the retro culture of Los Angeles and a tiki enthusiast before he was old enough to drink — he came to the culture via exotica music in high school — Richard ditched his focus on a radio career to get into bartending.
One year out of Fordham University, he started working at midtown New York’s Monkey Bar in 2011, where Julie Reiner acted as cocktail consultant at the time. A year later he started a “Tiki Takeover” series at Prime Meats in Brooklyn. He then helped open Manhattan’s Slowly Shirley, while simultaneously running his own tropical pop-up series “Exotica.” By 2018, Richard had been hired by culinary whiz Dave Arnold for the opening team at Existing Conditions.
“I loved how every serve was a surprise for our guests at that bar,” he recalls of his time at the now-shuttered Existing Conditions. Arnold, along with co-owner Don Lee, emphasized to Richard that they needed to make
