Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/148134
With years of hospitality experience under his belt, Sean Bucalo is serious about spirits. Local Edition's Robert Baker meets with Sean Bucalo in the subterranean San Francisco bar. new products from disparate sources, to make wider choices available to their customers. Kyle Nadeau at D&M Liquors, for example, asked Bucalo about a certain bourbon he was unfamiliar with. Where had Nadeau heard of it? On a user forum on Reddit—a somewhat obscure source, but with very reliable information. As Nadeau and Bucalo talk about the bourbon, it's evident that there's an ease between them, as if Bucalo has been calling on the store for years. But it hasn't been that long at all. "To be honest with you, it's tough to build a relationship," Bucalo says. Especially when the clientele is so well-informed. "They want somebody who's actually read about the production side of spirits," Bucalo says. "What's the sourcing of the raw materials? What's the fermentation process like? What's the distillation process like? You can't just plug anyone in. Guys who are doing on-premise or bar programs in the city really want to know what's going in the glass." Bucalo says working with these folks has helped the knowledge rub off on him, and he'll never stop learning. Bucalo moved to San Francisco in 2004 from Washington, D.C., where he had held positions in operations and management. He worked in restaurants while in high school in New England. The restaurant and spirits business "is all I've ever done, really," he says. After high school, Bucalo moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, because he wanted to be in hotel management at a high-end resort. There, he worked in a variety of positions to get an idea of how the different departments in an operation connect with each other. He truly had the bug now, so he left Colorado to pursue a Hospitality Management degree at César Ritz in Washington, Connecticut. From there Bucalo went to work at the historic Hay-Adams hotel in Washington, D.C., where he stayed right up until 9/11 happened. "On any given day you're serving high tea to Hillary and Chelsea Clinton," Bucalo says. "It's one of those places where you enter your workday and feel totally inspired." The hotel is basically across the street from the White House, so in the aftermath of the terrorist attack, life was anything but normal, and business was heavily affected. Bucalo subsequently moved to the Fairmont in Georgetown, where he was the dining room manager and stayed for another year. Eventually Bucalo expanded his field of interest to include fine wines, and as that interest grew, he made a ten-day scouting and networking trip to California. The outing convinced him that he wanted to move West. The dining scene in San Francisco was hot, and the bar programs were really taking off, so he went back to D.C. and packed his bags. He came to work for the Kimpton Group in 2004, again as Dining Room Manager, this time at the Sir Francis Drake. Eventually he rose to become Assistant General Manager at Harry Denton's Starlight Room, and that was an excellent match, in that the Starlight was at the center of the classic cocktail and mixologist movement in San Francisco. He was with Kimpton for a couple of years, then left to do consulting work in Pittsburgh. But that's something of an odd twist: Why leave the hotbed of the craft movement just as it was reaching fever pitch? Bucalo laughs and simply says, "There was a girl involved . . ." He returned to the City by the Bay a couple of years later to help relaunch 110 / the tasting panel / august 2013 TP0813_104-132.indd 110 7/24/13 9:40 PM