• Bar Manager Mustafa Tumburi takes us behind the scenes at 45 Jermyn St. Join us as we talk about sustainability in the drinks industry, ice-cream floats, his childhood and his formative years. But also cocktails and the best seats in the house.

  • Sep 1 2022
  • Length: 22 mins
  • Podcast

Bar Manager Mustafa Tumburi takes us behind the scenes at 45 Jermyn St. Join us as we talk about sustainability in the drinks industry, ice-cream floats, his childhood and his formative years. But also cocktails and the best seats in the house.

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  • Mustafa Tumburi - Bar Manager at 45 Jermyn St.On meeting Mustafa (or ‘Musty’ as he’s known) for the first time, I sit as he makes me a #55 - and I learn that each number corresponds to something to do with the drink..."it's served with a shot of Cachaça, a variant of rum made in Brazil..and 55 is the country code for Brazil."So I kick off with the obvious question…What's your history with Fortnum’s?"I joined in the winter of 2016, and I've been with the company six years. I started as a bartender...so when our Head Bartender moved to another position I took that role. When the Bar Manager left to work on a project with our Hong Kong team, I took over the position of Bar Manager"How do responsibilities vary between the different bar roles?"When you're a bartender you have to make sure that the limes are cut just right, otherwise the Bar Manager will have something to say about it...and in that role it's opening and closing duties, plus service. Also learning how to deal with the prep that goes into making all of our lovely ingredients. There's quite a lot to learn as I think there are about 15-16 different homemade ingredients in our menu.”Once you become the Head Bar Tender it's your job to support the Bar Manager, and start ordering, but also being responsible for keeping the bar stocked. Once you get to Bar Manager you're partly responsible for the success of the Bar, and you have to lead the team, motivate and inspire them.”Favourite things?"One of my favourite things about 45 Jermyn St. is that we're very egalitarian when it comes to menu development. So everyone has a go. It doesn't matter if you're a junior bartender or you're a senior bartender, or if you're the Bar Manager, everybody has input into making our drinks.As Bar Manager - when our people are developing drinks - what I try to do is guide their ideas and try to elevate them, but also ask them if they've tried pairing with other ingredients.”Have we got a drink that's unique to 45 Jermyn St.?"Yes! We've got a few. One drink I'd like to highlight...We've been quite hot on re-use as part of our sustainability drive, so what we want to do is try to figure out any way that we can squeeze the last drop out of any ingredient. A good example of that is The Thicket. A cocktail originally developed for our FIELD restaurant, which we've started developing at 45 Jermyn St. as well. One of our ingredients is Raspberry cordial, and it shows up in our ice cream floats, and in our signature drinks such as our Negroni. Previously when we made that we were throwing away a lot of sweetened raspberry seed pulp which was going straight to food waste. So we thought to ourselves - how can we use that again and get some more life out of it? So now, whenever we make a batch of raspberry cordial we split the pulp and half of it goes into a vat for use in our raspberry seed rum. The rest of the pulp is spread out onto silicone and dehydrated, and what we're left with is a lovely raspberry shard that's crunchy and sweet, but it still has some of the sharpness from the berries. We then pair that with amaretto, Peychaud's bitters and Fortnum's Rosé sparkling tea.”How many total combinations of drinks do you need to be aware of?"150 classics and 50 or so 'regionals'. For example if you worked in New England you should probably know how to make a Caesar, because everyone has Clam Chowder there. I now like to work to a tight edit of 100 classic cocktails. We have a classic cocktail 'Bible' for the bar, and add to that our menu which currently has approximately 27 cocktails. It was as many as 40 at one point.”What else might people not know about the 45 Jermyn St. bar?"Before 45 Jermyn St. was known as 45 Jermyn St. (the bar), it was known as 'The Fountain'. Almost like a 50s style American diner where you could get a Knickerbocker Glory. I believe the soda fountains in the bar were one of the first to feature in London at the time, they were custom made and came from the United States. So it's a very unique and retro feature that still exists and that we're lucky to have. The soda fountains are used for our ice cream floats, which are quite unique to Fortnum's. I'm actually the son of an ice-cream vendor, in fact I come from an ice-cream family. I remember my Dad saying to me - 'do you want to take over the family business?'...and I said, not on your life - I will never scoop a single ice-cream ever again! Flash forward to 2017 and I was back behind this bar doing just that. However my grandparents also owned a Diner when I was a kid, very old-fashioned by today's standards - with venues in London and Suffolk.""My favourite float for the record, is The Kentucky Morning. We have 2 scoops of Cornflake flavoured ice-cream, which creates a buttery-sweet delicious flavour, we then pour some soda water over that, some Bourbon and then finally add - my favourite ingredient - some Beurre noisette syrup. The end result is outstanding."What are Fortnum's ...
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