Recipe by Chef Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett has spent his entire adult life behind a bar — nineteen years of it — and now serves as a founding bartender and bar program director at The Alchemists' Garden in Paso Robles, where he oversees the cocktail program alongside its adjoining laboratory bar, The Remedy.
Bennett builds drinks the way the surrounding valley grows: locally, seasonally, and with nothing wasted. Pineapple husks from the day’s juicing become house tepache in perpetual 18-liter mother batches. Cherries come from a family farm two hours east. Regional olive oil, stone fruit, vineyard herbs, and Anchor Verjuice - a menu that treats Paso Robles as an ingredient rather than a backdrop. House-made assets — rosehip liqueur, cinnabar bitters, oleo saccharums drawn from kitchen trim — are produced entirely in-house by a small team he trains himself.
Nineteen years in, the through-line is still the room. “Transformation is the whole idea,” Bennett says. “Turning what’s already here into something people remember.”
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