COCKTAILS & CONVERSATIONS: PART 3
Featuring Calsin from Molecular Food & Cocktails at the Conrad Washington.
February 23, 2021
REBECCA: Thank you so much for having this Cocktails and Conversation. Calsin with Molecular Foods and Cocktails is joining us and actually made our cocktails. Do you mind telling us what this deliciousness is?
CALSIN: Absolutely, so this is a version of a French 75.
REBECCA: No wonder we love it!
CALSIN: So I like playing with that. You know, I just take the classic recipe, you know, lime and syrup, champagne, and then just add whatever is seasonal or moody or whatever the theme is. So of course this is a holiday drink. I had to do an apple cider and cranberry, and French 75.
LAUREN: So good!
CALSIN: So, if you have apple cider and cranberry on top, you’ve got yourself a holiday drink.
REBECCA: It’s so good.
LAUREN: Amazing.
CALSIN: Yeah, do you like it?
REBECCA: You also have champagne, that is like our drink. Part of why we’re all trying to get together is really to chat about how the pandemic has affected you and maybe shifted your business, mentality…
LAUREN: The way that you do events.
REBECCA: Life.
CALSIN: So it’s a total 360, obviously, and I feel like it’s that way for everybody. Right? So, the biggest lesson for me was I really had to learn how to be versatile and just flexible and kind of like roll with the punches. Cause I knew, pivoting, everyone was doing it. You know, it was like an experiment for everybody.
REBECCA: I think it still is.
CALSIN: So I tried some things that worked. Some did work, but obviously for what I do is meant to be very experiential and interactive, so COVID definitely kind of like totally flipped that over the head, right?
REBECCA: Derailed that.
LAUREN: Just a little bit.
CALSIN: Cause 6 feet apart doesn't quite necessarily say interactive, right?
LAUREN: It doesn't translate well.
CALSIN: So I kind of just had to configure the business to a more, kind of like DIY making a cocktail kit that goes with my branding, my science branding, and lets the DIY mixer experiment at home. So, I designed the kit and so I started doing kits, and then with that came the virtual cocktail hour options where I can mail the kits, you book me for a cocktail hour and we get to do the cocktail experiment.
REBECCA: So in terms of what lessons you may have taken from COVID, is there anything that stands out in terms of like, something you're maybe hanging onto that you don't want to let go of after we get back to a more "normal" environment?
CALSIN: That's a very good question. If I had to really think, it's a, it really pushed me to the edge. Like, I had to be super creative. When your back's against the wall. Because I feel like pre-COVID you just want to remain with the safe ideas. You don't want to try new things. But if it's survival for the, swim or sink, then you have to think outside of the box most of the time, right? So, just you have to be comfortable to try something knowing that it might fail or it might work, so I think that attitude is what I hope I don't lose if we go back to normal, right? Just to be really bold and experiment with ideas that might seem, like, crazy or out of the box, but you know, not really just go with what's traditional or classical.
LAUREN: And that's how we learn, right?
CALSIN: Right. Right.
LAUREN: We experiment a little; see what works, what doesn't work.
CALSIN: What doesn't work. And then you make it better or you decide it's not something you want to keep doing, Right?
LAUREN: Yeah.
CALSIN: How has it been for you guys? As entertainers, can you probably share that? I'm really curious.
REBECCA: It's been different.
CALSIN: It's been different?
LAUREN: It's been very different just keeping you know, COVID restrictions in mind, trying to keep people distanced. ‘Cause for us, the most important thing is of course to, you know, help make an event be as incredible as possible, but with these restrictions, how do we keep our people safe? How do we make sure that we're taking care of them? That they are okay. And you know, making sure that we can still perform at the levels that we're used to. We just kind of get creative with creating different groups and figuring out creative solutions to still have the same end result, but just keeping all of these new things in mind that we have to think about now.
REBECCA: And I think being flexible is probably the biggest thing. It's like, we can plan on something that happens in a month, but since everything is changing day by day, I think it's really about flexibility. ‘Cause when you get to that event, if you're within a week and things are changing, we've got to shift.
CALSIN: Or even on the spot. ‘Cause with food and drink, I do a lot of ingestibles, so that's the other beast I had to deal with. Like, in the beginning, we were not sure how COVID was transmitted, so there are all these new rules about how you serve. ‘Cause I do a food, like a station-type of thing, where we're presenting and playing with the food in front of the audience so that in the beginning was like a no-no. Right? Cause everywhere was like, no more buffets. You know what I mean?
LAUREN: Right?
CALSIN: So I was like how do I change the times and just still do that. Of course, now events are not booking. I don't get to test that, but it's one of those things where, if you're doing an ingestive, so catering companies or anybody who does food, that's almost like an added layer of protocol that you have to think about.
REBECCA: Well, we will all get through this and I hope that we can actually have more discussions like this because I think it's helpful for us as partners and having relationships in the industry to really lean on one another even more to figure out how to get through his.
CALSIN: Right. Exactly. And I feel like as a community, if you're all in sync, then it's not like a guessing game. So that you know, everybody's safe and you don't have, you kind of minimize the risks.
REBECCA: Well, thank you for joining us, and thank you for our cocktails.
CALSIN: Cheers!
REBECCA & LAUREN: Cheers!