THIS YEAR’S BAR TEAM
PHOEBE ESMON
Phoebe Esmon is a bartender, beverage consultant, and educator. She was born into a family of academics and antique dealers, and has lived all over the south-eastern/mid-western United States. Her own academic pursuits landed her in Philadelphia, where, in 2008, she received an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts.
Phoebe’s specific focus as it applies to program design is on back of house prep for streamlining programs utilizing heirloom and contemporary technologies, as a means of both eliminating waste and increasing bartender efficiency, so that bartenders in turn can focus on providing their guests with the best experiences possible.
In Philadelphia, Phoebe was fortunate to open and to work in some of the city’s best cocktail programs (you might have met her at Chicks, Emmanuelle, or the Yachtsman, among many others.). She was the founding president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild. She was also a board member of the Tequila Interchange Project. In 2016, Phoebe and her partner and fiancée Christian Gaal moved to Asheville, North Carolina where she spent 3 years running the cocktail programs at Chef Katie Button's two restaurants: Curate, where she opened the Vermuteria and Nightbell, where she also ran the preservation program and designed a line of fermented sodas. Together she and Gaal opened the tasting room at Eda Rhyne Distillery, and Pink Moon: a hidden bar focused on natural wine.
Phoebe is a regular contributor to the educational programming for Portland Cocktail Week, where she has found a second calling as a teacher. She is the leader of The Suffering Bastards: the bar team for the Hukilau, an annual tiki celebration held in Pompano Beach, FLA. Her cocktails have been featured in many books & periodicals. She and Gaal also run Spirit Animal, a beverage alcohol consulting business, and have just launched their newest venture, RePast, a source for heritage table, bar, and kitchen collectibles and hospitality ware.
CHRlSTIAN R. GAAL
When his college friends introduced Christian to books on craft bartending, he found that the love of history his father had encouraged could intersect with the palate he had inherited from his mother; that very nose that dogged his teenage years; that inspector’s, that schoolmarm’s nose whose wrinkled, questing inquisitions so unfailingly thwarted futile efforts to conceal telltale illicit odors.
Heredity’s alchemy had corrupted this discriminating weapon of rectitude from an all-too-easily scandalized forensic chaperone into a licentious accomplice with which to explore sublime, sensual information, to float with the mind’s nose through the internal void in kaleidoscopic waltzes of recombination. Once he’d eaten and drank for satiety, perhaps for comfort. Now the prism of analysis, placed in his path by an atavistic thirst for dusty recipes and techniques, had exposed a hidden spectrum of reality.
Such accidents of experience excavate predispositions from our genetic bedrock to be utilized as skills. It is often our privilege in hospitality to help reveal new experiences and unearth new skills in those around us. Christian was doubly fortunate when his partner in life, Phoebe Esmon, was revealed to share the skill to manipulate flavor, and the drive to serve others. They are best pleased when working together on beverage and hospitality-related projects, and when cooking together at home. In an ultimate irony, Christian once again lives with a woman from whom, for better or worse, no aroma may be concealed.
WILL LARDINOIS
William "Dublar" Lardinois of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has over 20 years of service industry experience and has been a member of the Hukilau Barteam since 2018. A Fellow of the Fraternal Order of Moai, he’s been a part of tiki pop-up events in New York, North Carolina, Alabama, and his native North Dakota.
IAN YARBOROUGH
Ian comes to us from Tonga Hut, LA's oldest tiki bar, where he's been bartending for nine years. He also holds it down behind the stick at General Lee's in LA's chinatown. Over his twenty years in the hospitality industry, he's worked at everything from the fifth largest Marriott in the world to the diviest of dive bars. Calm, adaptable, totally ready to get his hands dirty and always in good cheer, he's usually just glad to be able to help.
KIMBERLY PATTON-BRAGG
Kimberly Patton-Bragg is proud to be currently the Bar Director at Palm & Pine in New Orleans.
She has about twenty years in the industry under her belt, honing her skills from Danny Meyer’s Blue Smoke in NYC, and has been working and running programs in NOLA for the past 13 years.
Her cocktails have been featured in multiple publications such as Food and Wine, HBO’s “Treme” cookbook, Imbibe, and “Drinking Like Ladies: 75 Modern Cocktails from the World’s Leading Female Bartenders.
She was recently named in this year’s “Imbibe 75” and thanks all the people that have sat across the bar and have worked with and for her that got her to this point.
TAMARA BROWN
Tamara is a woman who wears many hats, all of them impressive. She excels at Organization and Management: she was an obvious choice for General Manager for Parliament, one Dallas' number one Craft Cocktail bars, as the first female to be selected for that position 3 years ago. She currently manages Henry's Majestic, Dallas' popular Brunch Restaurant and Atwater Alley, a no menu Speakeasy hidden on the backside of Henry's in an alley.
She is accomplished as well: before breaking into the Cocktail world she spent 5 years in the US Army leading soldiers.
She is active and involved: from her participation as Former Batch Master for Tampa Bay Repeal Day Conference, A team, B team, and Deputy Sheriff for Camp Runamok, Varsity for Portland Cocktail Week to one of the founding members of OKC's USBG Chapter as Secretary, a member since 2015.
Tamara has never taken the cocktail community for granted, instead always being involved and working to help it grow. She is compassionate and strives to improve and help everyone around her. Her calm determination has helped make her the Dallas Powerhouse she is today.
LUCKY MUNRO
Lucky Munro returns to the bar team this year, happy to rejoin the rest of the crew to facilitate many delightful drinks fornthr Hukilau Villagers. He has been a bartender on and off in various cities for nineteen years, having stumbled into it by way of Beachbum Berry's Grog Log, and The Book of Tiki. Though he currently works with Autonomous Vehicles, he's excited to once again batch cocktails with the other Suffering Bastards for some of the best tiki bars in the world.
He has been called "gregarious, with a booming voice" by Punch Drink, interviewed by Playboy, and his cocktails and penchant for having a tipple in unusual places have appeared in numerous books. In 2020, he helped found the Hui'ana Molaloha chapter of the Fraternal Order of Moai, and is Honui Moai. When not at the Hukilau you can see him in Ripley's Odditoriums across the globe, as his alter ego: Lucky the Painproof Man, World's Greatest Sideshow Performer.
OWEN THOMPSON
Owen is a DC native (real dc not like Bethesda or something) who’s worked in bars for almost 20yrs now. He has been the bar director for both Jose Andres and Bryan Voltaggio and did some stints at Bar Pilar and Roses’s Luxury while building my own bar Archipelago. He also was one of the founders and 8yr president of the DC Craft Bar Guild. Somewhere in there he got a bunch of degrees he doesn’t use like a BA in Archaeology and a JD, because he really just likes making drinks and has questionable taste in fashion (as witnessed below).
CARLOS ENRIQUE CUARTA
Carlos Enrique Cuarta is a native of Venezuela. He is a long time resident of the USA and the great city of Chicago, and has been part of The Hukilau cocktail kitchen team since 2015. Carlos has a long experience with rum, and consults with many rum brands from Venezuela and overseas.
Carlos values supporting his fellow bartenders, various charitable organizations, and also mentoring and financially assisting other Latino Bartenders in pursuing our great craft. Those who know Carlos can personally attest also to his enthusiasm for life, and his inexhaustible curiosity. Carlos, though grounded in classical mixology, has never shied away from modern challenges, including creating a variety of tropical rum cocktails. At home he is constantly working on various infusions, syrups, cordials and recipes for his own pleasure, but also in preparation for many projects and competitions. As Carlos says, “Always dare to share and experiment!”
ASHLEY IOAKIMEDES
Born in Vallejo, CA, Ashley was raised in Charlottesville, VA and has made her home in Asheville, NC. She’s worked in hospitality, food and beverage for the last 20 years, putting her big Greek schnoz to good use evaluating chocolate, fresh pasta, cheese and spirits.
Most recently, she’s had the honor of working on the tiny team at Oak and Grist Distillery—one of the Southeast’s few 100% grain-to-glass distilleries—making single malt whiskey and Genever. Starting as a brewer and distiller, she later moved into sales, meeting the wizards behind North Carolina’s most lauded bars. She went on to co-create the distillery’s cocktail program, emphasizing seasonality, the sharing of knowledge, and the plucking of flavors from the cocktail garden she tends at home.