#29, St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance and Gage & Tollner, Brooklyn, NY

The Philip Duff Show

I sat down with St. John Frizell, who founded Fort Defiance bar in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighbourhood back in 2009, and brought Gage & Tollner, long the most vaunted fine-dining restaurant in Brooklyn since it opened in 1879, back to life in 2021 (yep, 2021!) after it lay dormant and closed for almost two decades.
I met St. John when he taught a seminar I attended on the subject of playboy travel and food & drinks writer Charles H. Baker, Jr., at Tales of the Cocktail, around 2006 or 2007; in fact, his seminar inspired the first-ever cocktail menu at door 74 (which I opened in Amsterdam in 2008), which was all Charles H. Baker, Jr., cocktails.
We kicked it for several hours and it's all here: laundry tips for white shirts, why martinis now cost $21, St. John's exciting new side hustle as a liquor smuggler, why he'll open more Sunken Harbor Clubs but not more Gage & Tollners, world premiere of the Sunken Harbor Club Membership Scheme, serving Hearsts, the old Pegu Club, having to relearn the art of concentration, and a whole bunch more.
We were fuelled solely by coffee, so me and St. John should really do this again some time with a drink in hand!
St. John on IG: St John Frizell (@stjohnfrizell) • Instagram photos and videos
Gage & Tollner on IG: Gage & Tollner (@gage.and.tollner) • Instagram photos and videos
Fort Defiance on IG: Fort Defiance (@fortdefiance) • Instagram photos and videos
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Bölümler

1. Laundry Tips and Tales of Cocktails (00:00:00)

2. AI's Impact on Podcasting and Writing (00:13:15)

3. Bartending Then and Now (00:18:52)

4. The Evolution of Cocktail Making Techniques (00:28:02)

5. Historical Drinks and Modern Bartending Challenges (00:38:51)

6. Cocktail Bar Culture and Creating Classics (00:49:01)

7. Alcohol Industry (00:58:27)

8. Opening a Bar (01:06:22)

9. Reviving Gage and Tolmer Restaurant (01:18:31)

10. Future of Bars (01:29:17)

11. Sunken Harbor Club Membership and Challenges' Simplified Title (01:42:27)

12. Tipping and Charges in Restaurants (01:50:23)

13. Restaurant Pricing Challenges (01:57:50)

14. Challenge of Concentration, Joy of Reading (02:08:49)