After over two decades as a bartender, Novato resident Jeff Burkhart has put his bartending experience and insight into human nature in a new book, Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender.
His popular weekly column, “Barfly,” has been running in the Marin Independent Journal since 2006. As in the column, his book offers a look behind-the-scenes of a busy bar and restaurant, mixology, cocktail recipes, bar etiquette and amusing anthropological studies.
Like Marlon Perkins's animal observations in Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Burkhart’s job puts him in position to monitor humans in their unguarded moments around the watering hole. From the regulars to the rookies to the celebrity clientele, the best stories are of the clueless at their worst behavior — often before they’ve ordered their first drink.
The book is more than a compilation of his published columns. Burkhart also gives us juicier reads than you would find in the pages of a family newspaper.
Twenty Years Behind Bars is available as an iBook ($8.99) and is scheduled to come out in paperback in October.
To read a Marin IJ interview of Jeff Burkhart, click this link. An Examiner review of the book is available here. And Burkhart's blog, The Barfly Online, proves there's no shortage of good material.
