#29, St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance and Gage & Tollner, Brooklyn, NY

I sat down with St. John Frizell, who founded Fort Defiance bar in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighbourhood back in 2009, and brought Gage & Tollner, long the most vaunted fine-dining restaurant in Brooklyn since it opened in 1879, back to life in 2021 (yep, 2021!) after it lay dormant and closed for almost two decades.

I met St. John when he taught a seminar I attended on the subject of playboy travel and food & drinks writer  Charles H. Baker, Jr., at Tales of the Cocktail, around 2006 or 2007; in fact, his seminar inspired the first-ever cocktail menu at door 74 (which I opened in Amsterdam in 2008), which was all Charles H. Baker, Jr., cocktails.

We kicked it for several hours and it's all here: laundry tips for white shirts, why martinis now cost $21, St. John's exciting new side hustle as a liquor smuggler, why he'll open more Sunken Harbor Clubs but not more Gage & Tollners, world premiere of the Sunken Harbor Club Membership Scheme, serving Hearsts, the old Pegu Club,  having to relearn the art of concentration, and a whole bunch more.
We were fuelled solely by coffee, so me and St. John should really do this again some time with a drink in hand!

St. John on IG: St John Frizell (@stjohnfrizell) • Instagram photos and videos
Gage & Tollner on IG: Gage & Tollner (@gage.and.tollner) • Instagram photos and videos
Fort Defiance on IG: Fort Defiance (@fortdefiance) • Instagram photos and videos 

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