Featured Bartender May 2026: Evgeny Tolmachev, Mace, New York City, NY

Evgeny Tolmachev is the Head Bartender at Mace in New York and the creator of one of the first large-scale POV-style bartender education channels on YouTube. In this piece, he reflects on his journey from Siberia to New York and explains how observation, imitation, and real service shaped a new way of learning behind the bar.

From Siberia to Mace: Building a New Way of Learning Behind the Bar

I was born in Siberia, in a small northern town far removed from cocktail bars, hospitality schools, or any global bar culture. At the time, bartending wasn’t a career path — it was simply a job. I couldn’t have imagined that years later I would be working behind one of New York’s most concept-driven bars, helping shape how the next generation of bartenders learns the craft.

But at the same time, a bar was never just a workplace for me. It was a classroom, a laboratory, and eventually a broadcast studio.

My career began in Moscow at City Space. At the time, my bar manager was Bek Narzi, a direct student of the late Sasha Petraske from Milk & Honey. That lineage mattered. The standards, discipline, and respect for structure that defined Milk & Honey were present in City Space every night behind the bar.

For five years, City Space functioned as a crossroads of the global cocktail scene. Guest shifts and collaborations brought in bartenders I had previously known only by reputation: Simone Caporale, Alex Kratena, Angus Winchester, Steve Schneider, Salvatore Calabrese, Tristan Stephenson. I didn’t just meet them — I worked next to them. I watched how they moved, how they organized space, how they spoke to guests, how they solved problems mid-service. That inside view shaped how I understood the craft.

My path later took me through Europe and Indonesia, including Bali, where I held senior roles up to beverage director. I also spent several years as a Brand Ambassador for Beam Suntory in Ukraine, representing Auchentoshan whisky and Courvoisier cognac. During that period, I won the Ukrainian final of the Angostura Global Cocktail Challenge. Still, titles and trophies were secondary. What mattered more was translating knowledge into systems that could actually be used.

What consistently frustrated me about bartender education was its inefficiency. Training relied on verbal explanation, repetition, and third-person videos that looked polished but failed to teach how service really works. Knowledge disappeared with staff turnover. Managers burned out repeating the same instructions. The most ancient and effective learning method — imitation — was largely ignored.

That gap led to my YouTube channel.

I created what became the first large-scale bartender-to-bartender educational content filmed entirely in first-person point of view. No host-facing camera. No staged tutorials. Just real service, real drinks, real pressure — exactly what a bartender sees behind the bar. This format allowed viewers to immediately understand ergonomics, station setup, tool placement, ingredient logic, movement flow, hygiene standards, and the mechanics of shaking, stirring, pouring, and jiggering. Learning happened natively, without pausing service to explain it.

The channel has grown to over 500,000 subscribers and tens of millions of views worldwide. More importantly, it influenced thousands of people to enter the profession or fundamentally change how they work. It became an unconventional textbook — built on observation, repetition, and realism.

Today, I am Head Bartender at Mace. Mace is built around spices — often rare, unfamiliar, and geographically specific. Founded in 2015 by Nico de Soto, the bar’s concept is inseparable from travel. Ingredients arrive not as finished products, but as ideas brought back from different parts of the world.

Some of those ideas are deliberately challenging. Strawberry gum, a type of eucalyptus that grows only in Australia. SwarnaDwipa, a spice blend from Indonesia that cannot be purchased in the United States at all. My role is to translate these concepts into stable, repeatable cocktails that can be executed consistently in a demanding service environment. Exploration at Mace is never chaotic. Curiosity is supported by structure.

Mace is also a platform for exchange. We regularly host pop-ups with leading bars from around the world: Paradiso, Himkok, Kwant, BarUs and others. These events are not about spectacle. They are about dialogue — between techniques, cultures, and philosophies.

Looking back, the common thread in my work is access. Access to process, to decision-making, to the inside of the bar. I learned by watching great bartenders from inches away. When that access wasn’t available to most people, I built a way to share it.

For bartenders at the beginning of their path — and for those a few years in, still refining their direction — learning often starts with attention. Observation is a valid beginning. Imitation is not weakness when it’s conscious. Watching how others move, think, and build systems is often the fastest way to understand what works — and what works for you.

Structure matters when it supports clarity, not when it limits curiosity. Originality doesn’t appear first; it reveals itself over time, once you understand your strengths, your role, and the kind of bartender you want to be. Bars will keep changing. Tools and media will keep evolving. What stays constant is the value of seeing the work clearly and learning from it honestly.

If you can truly see how the work is done, you can take it further than any manual ever will.