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The wonderful, wonderful things he does: Where will P/S’ Rocco Milano do them now?

Bartender Rocco Milano and the underground-garage system that once powered his cocktails on tap at the late P/S
Bartender Rocco Milano and the underground-garage system that once powered his cocktails on tap at the late P/S.

The Museum Tower mess still hasn’t abated, West Nile virus is on the loose again, and yet what everybody really wants to know is: What is Rocco Milano going to do now?

“That’s a popular question,” he says.

The former chief barman at the recently shuttered P/S, formerly Private|Social, is something of a geeky wizard behind the stick, the sort of gent who’d lead workshops about homemade infusions and bitters and then show up with a kiddie wagon full of exotic herbs and roots. At one point during the restaurant’s nearly two-year run, Rocco toyed with idea of adding a deconstructed Margarita to his alchemy, but now it is P/S that is suddenly deconstructed, its modern interior lifeless and marked by disarray.

Remnants of his apothecary dot the premises. Plastic containers of Grand Marnier “dust,” lemongrass syrup, jars of infusions, even the basement garage system that once powered his pioneering cocktails on tap. What’s going to become of it all? “Fuck if I know,” he says.

Some of Rocco's jarred stash at last year's Craft Cocktails TX festival
Some of Rocco’s stash of jarred infusions at last year’s Craft Cocktails TX festival.

One of the city’s finest craft-cocktail geniuses, the Santa Cruz-born redhead will not hurt for opportunity; nearly a dozen job offers were dangled, he says, the very day (July 20) an online item appeared offering rumor of P/S’ demise that night. Mostly, he says, he was concerned for his team, the U2 to his bartending Bono and the collective engine that made the restaurant’s top-notch bar program go. But the place never really recovered from the change in identity that followed chef Tiffany Derry’s departure.

“For better or worse, people had an idea what P/S was,” he says. “And for some people, when Tiffany left, P/S stopped being P/S.“

I’m sad to say that I was among that crowd. Though I didn’t go back to P/S as often afterward, Rocco’s legerdemain with liquor never ceased to amaze, and he was just as eager to share cocktail backstories as he was to turn the uninitiated on to something new.

Rocco looking things over before his bitters/infusions session at CCTX 2012.
Rocco looking things over before his bitters/infusions session at CCTX 2012.

So what will he do now? The possibilities range. What does he want to do? “I love educating people about drinks and cocktails,” he says. Whether that’s behind the bar, or as a spirits representative, or in some corporate role – well, that remains to be seen.

But he’s a brand new father now, so as far as what he really wants to do, it’s to spend time with his newborn son. All those clichés, he says, about how much you love the little being who has suddenly and fantastically graced your life – yeah, he’s living them now. Being unemployed has its benefits.

Heading forward, it will be the first time in five years that he won’t be working with P/S sous chef (and one-time bartender) Matt Medling, who was a pastry chef at The Mansion at Turtle Creek when Rocco tended bar there. “He was a great resource,” Rocco says. “Most important, he did not stop me from grabbing cookies.”

He says one of P/S’ fans put it best just after the closure was announced on Medling’s Facebook page, saying the test of any good establishment was what endured in its wake. Because it was at Private/Social that Rocco met girlfriend Jessica Pech, who was a manager at the restaurant: What they now have together will reflect its legacy for years to come.

One of Rocco's Negroni variations at P/S
P/S, I love you.

Private/Social closes its doors

 

Cucumber gimlet, by Rocco Milano
Little did I know this cucumber gimlet would be my last drink at Private/Social.

Sad news, homies: There is one less cocktail oasis in Dallas.

Private/Social apparently marked its last night Saturday, and the place where I enjoyed many a first cocktail experience is apparently no more. The news came in a tweet from chef Najat Kaanache Sunday morning: “Last Night At Private/Social Was The Last service We Closed ready for New Adventures within Food Thanks To My Great Team.”

Rocco Milano, among the best barmen in Dallas, confirmed the closure to me later that morning. The restaurant had struggled to reinvent itself after chef Tiffany Derry’s departure early this year, but with Rocco at the helm, P/S remained one of the more adventurous cocktail spots around: He had spirits on tap (including my beloved Hum botanical spirit, to which Rocco introduced me) soon after the restaurant opened in late 2011; his Fall Into A Glass was my favorite cocktail discovery of 2012; and most recently he’d unveiled a lineup of a half-dozen tap cocktails.

Sitting at the bar, I could always depend on a pleasant experience. It was the kind of place you could share secrets, kindle romance, celebrate birthdays and wind down even as you expanded your cocktail horizons. One mark of a great bar is its consistency, and Milano’s staff — including Matt Medling, Creighton Brown, E.J. Wall and Pro Contreras — was always a well-oiled machine. No doubt they’ll find new stages on which to showcase their craft, but it was always fun to be a guinea pig in Rocco’s lab. On Friday — not realizing it was Private/Social’s penultimate day — a friend and I took in one of his most recent and typically improbable off-menu experiments: A riot of rye whiskey, Cointreau, peach and maraschino liqueurs and Hum botanical spirit (swoon) that he called I’ll Have One Of Those.

Here, Rocco makes that cocktail for another patron: http://youtu.be/a–bWcleAuQ

Rocco Milano: I’ll Have One of Those

I’ll update this post as I learn more.

P/S: Thanks for the memories.