LOCALadk Magazine

Winter 2016 LOCALadk Magazine 62 LOCALadk I arrive at Zach's apartment in Lake Placid for a prearranged in- terview, and when he lets me in, I notice he's watching a video of a very large man helping people work out. The dude looks just like notorious backyard brawler Kimbo Slice and is dressed head to toe in all black. "What's that guy doing," I ask. "Oh, that's C.T. Fletcher, he used to be a competitive bodybuilder but had a heart attack. He should have died. Now he travels the country motivating people." I want to ask 'Motivate them to do what?' but keep the question to myself. As it turns out, Zach used to also body build on a competitive level, but now he just does it for fun and health. "Ready to go to the gym," he asks. How can I refuse? Afterward, Zach drives us to pick up his daughter Chloe from school. Chloe's in the first grade. Zach and his ex-wife share par- enting duties. Apparently, the divorce process for Zach has been "incredibly hard." Chloe climbs in the back seat and proceeds to tell her dad all about her day. It ends when she proudly unfurls a picture she made in art class of a Halloween green witch with a tall, pointy black hat. Zach smiles at her in the rearview mirror as we turn onto the main road back to Lake Placid. When he dropped out of college, Zach bounced around the Plattsburgh area as a waiter, but it was when he helped open up a new Uno Chicago Grill as a bartender that his whole world changed. "I fell in love with being behind the bar and being the center of attention. Going from zero training behind the bar to being an actual bar trainer, I thought I found my niche." After he mastered the standard Uno drinks, he started to think about how he could push boundaries, (and push tastes), while el- evating customer expectation. He needed an establishment that would support such a vision. That's when he found the Whiteface Lodge and cracked the cocktail code wide open. But it wasn't until he spent his first night in New York City that things started clicking. "Going to New York City this year was awesome," Zach said. Bars like Employees Only, NoMad, and yes, The Dead Rabbit, were on the menu and they didn't disappoint. Zach was like a lit- tle kid climbing in and out of yellow cabs, smiling up at all the tall buildings. But sequestered in the warm glow of some of the best bars in the world, Zach was all business. At The Dead Rabbit, you have to wait in a bar on the ground floor before they'll let you up to the main attraction: the second floor bar. But once seated, the mixologist greets you with a small antique tea cup filled with a bright red cocktail. This is their welcome drink, on the house, for the guests. As far a drink list goes, they hand you a comic book—an actual, full colored comic book capable of making any fanboy weak in the knees at your standard Comic Con. The drink list is called, aptly enough: The Dead Rabbit: Resurrection. It's brilliant and a little bit of a mind blowing concept. "Yeah, a lot of people tell us that," the mixologist quipped. Zach asked question after question, challenged, listened. It was clear he wanted to learn as much as possible and get that much better. The biggest takeaway for him? "Utilize local ingredients!" Ingredients like venison bone marrow in a heartier drink recipe he serves at the start of hunting season and hand-harvested ev- ergreen tips he steeps in simple syrup allow him to promote his ADK roots while still stretching the boundaries of what's classi- fied as 'the modern cocktail'. And he's as comfortable behind the bar as he is with a sude vide machine, slow-cooking locally sourced apples in a circulation bath for his famous Apple Pie Bourbon. It's another busy October night at Whiteface Lodge, and the patrons are three deep at the bar. Zach's drink ticket machine is printing nonstop as the servers inundate him with cocktail after cocktail, beer after beer. He's so busy he can't personally attend to each and every patron waiting at the bar, let alone play The Game with them. "God, this sucks," he says. "I can't stand it when I can't give a cus- tomer an experience, can't interact with them." And that's when I get it: Zach loves the underdog. That explains his love for motivational speaker C.T. Fletcher, who had no right coming back from that heart attack, and for his own relentless pursuit of perfection. He was never supposed to be where he is today: some kid kicked out on his own when he was just a teenag- er; some college dropout with pregnant wife in tow; some divor- cee trying his best to be an attentive and loving father. The cards, it seems, were always stacked against him. Yet he thrives. A group of Millennials make their way to the bar. The din reaches a new high. "Hey Zack," one shouts. "What's cooking?" Zach smiles, hitting a cinnamon stick with what looks like an in- dustrial-strength torch. "Oh, you know," he says between puffs of fragrant smoke. "The usual."

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