Twenty nine-year-old Australian mixologist Tasha Lu is anything but ordinary. The sloe-eyed cocktail expert, whose life is as a colorful as the tattoos on her arms, believes that the world will never be the same without cucumbers or that she could be a wizard if she weren’t doing what she does today.
Tasha is quirky, approachable and cool—someone you would want to talk to all night over a glass (or four) of gin tonic. In the last eight years, she has been in the hospitality industry, managing and operating bars such as Eau de Vie Melbourne. And in October 2015, she became Hendrick’s Gin’s brand ambassador for Southeast Asia.
It’s a match made in heaven, to say the least, as the peculiar mixolgist meet the equally oddly gin. Hendrick’s, unlike London Dry gins, is made of 11 botanicals including yarrow, juniper, elderflower, angelica root, orange peel, caraway, chamomile, coriander, cubeb berry, orris root and lemon.
Tasha recently had a bar shift at Sage Bar in Makati Shangri-La. For a one-night-only “Date with Tasha,” she let guests taste the wonderful flavors of Hendrick’s Gin as she talked about starting in the bar biz.
Tasha had a lot of ‘office jobs’
Photo from Hendrick’s Instagram Account
“When I was young my mom told me to get a real job and I was like, ‘okay.’ So I had a lot of office jobs, like a sales administrator for a real estate firm. But no offense to people who do these jobs, they’re boring—boring for me. And I was 19 at that time and everyone in those offices were a lot older than me, I wanted to make friends my own age.”
She became a mixologist because she liked getting paid to party
“It allowed me to earn a living and have fun. I got an opportunity to start learning skills and I realized that I have a talent for mixing things together, mixing flavors together, matching flavors together.”
Her most favorite part of the job is meeting people
“The most interesting part of being a bartender is meeting interesting people. Seeing them have a good time is worth all the hard work.”
She likes her cocktails bitter
“I don’t like citrus-heavy cocktails. If I would drink Hendrick’s, it’s definitely in a Negroni (Editor’s note: Tasha creates her own version of the cocktail and calls it Unusual Negroni, where she puts burning cinnamon bark). I also like drinking Hendrick’s with soda or sparkling water and cucumber.”
Tasha Lu’s cocktail recommendations:
For first-time gin drinker: Fairytale or Gin Garden (Fairytale: Hendrick’s Gin, toasted juniper and rhubarb syrup, maraschino liqueur and lemon juice / Gin Garden: Hendrick’s, fresh apple juice, coriander, lime juice, sugar syrup, egg white and black pepper)
For a night in: French 75 (Hendrick’s, fresh lemon juice, syrup and champagne or sparkling wine)
For party with friends: Gin Garden Punch (Hendrick’s, apple juice, mint, elderflower syrup, soda water, and slices of apples and mint leaves)
For an afternoon on the beach: Eastside Highball (Hendrick’s, cucumber, fresh lime, sugar, mint and soda water)