New Saint John Cocktail Lounge Challenges Your Expectations Of Hospitality
SAINT JOHN–At first glance, Ka•ku•tə•ru is a small cocktail lounge, tucked in the alley at the former home of Rogue Coffee, at 34 Grannan Street.
Inside, it’s primed to become the personal playground of bartender Eric Scouten. So personal, in fact, he’ll be the only one working the room.
There are no servers or added staff, just Eric and his years of cocktail knowledge.
“I’m a one-man show. I’m doing all the prep myself, I’m doing all the accounting myself, doing all of the errand running myself, literally doing everything,” Scouten tells Huddle.
Scouten says Ka•ku•tə•ru is “never going to be a traditional business model.” The lounge’s Facebook page says it’s open Thursday to Saturday, from 2 p.m. until midnight, but Scouten has been more inclined to say if the light is on and the door is unlocked, you’re welcome to come in.
That fits well with Scouten’s overall philosophy. Ka•ku•tə•ru is a name that draws heavily on his motivation to offer quality service while leaving familiar cocktail conventions behind.
Foreign words like “cocktail” that don’t have a perfect Japanese translation require an assist from the Japanese phonetic alphabet, which Scouten cooked back into English phonetics as Ka•ku•tə•ru.
“It literally just means cocktail lounge,” Scouten laughs. He says the only Japanese feature of the space is its name, which he says is a daily reminder to grow and hone his service.
“I am very taken with Japanese hospitality and bartending,” Scouten says.
He also doesn’t mince words as he laments how sales-based he feels North American and European professional bartending have become.
“It’s a corporate ass-kissing game. It’s really ‘how well can you sell this specific product?’ And the person who does the best at selling this product is the person who’s going to win the competition.
“Are there still some bartenders creating very interesting drinks with high technique and a polished level of skill? One hundred percent. But that’s not the focus,” Scouten says.
He argues North American bartending has become the epitome of being a brand ambassador. Scouten, meanwhile, prefers to take any product, find the best of it, and then show it off.
He says Japan, in particular, showed him what was possible because Japanese bartending puts its focus on technique and repetition.
“They don’t care about the product itself, the branding or sales component, it’s about being an excellent bartender and polishing your skills. It’s about hospitality,” he says.
Scouten doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to personify what the Japanese call omotenashi, a term that means to wholeheartedly look after guests, though it still serves as his ideal goal.
He’s come to understand it as a microcosm of the country itself; a representation of the Japanese mindset of hospitality more focused on care than expectation.
“Providing for another person purely for the joy of providing for another person,” relays Scouten, “preemptively calculating all of their needs before they even realize they had a desire because it was already catered to.”
No Easy Feat
Scouten’s retirement plan had always been to open a very small cocktail lounge and the creation of Ka•ku•tə•ru is a reflection of his way behind the bar.
“We took all these things and broke them down, found the best parts of them and put it back together into this new thing. It’s what I like doing with cocktails,” he says.
He’s now standing in that space years before he ever really saw himself there.
Like many others trying to make ends meet during the pandemic, Scouten was looking for something, even though he wasn’t sure the opportunity was right when it presented itself.
“When the space opened up, it was just really hard to not try, even though we really weren’t in a financial situation to be able to do it,” he says.
From there, Scouten says nothing was straightforward. He saw his initial opportunity for investment dissolve after signing the lease, something he said was “terrifying” after committing to the business.
“All of a sudden the rug gets yanked out from underneath me. We had already started construction, which had been done out of my pocket up to that point. We were burning through our savings.”
But Scouten eventually sourced the required funding needed for Ka•ku•tə•ru to cross the finish line. Help came from many sources, even one of his carpenter friends, who helped him relocate an antique organ from the former St. John the Baptist Church in the city.
“We basically spent our weekends through the entire winter here. The bar itself is bits and pieces of ten different church pews, an organ, eight sheets of plywood, and two by fours.”
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Scouten, who’s prepping his official launch day for June 4, is looking to reserve Wednesday nights for groups of six-to-10 people who want to book a private tasting and enjoy some small bites.
“This is going to be an exceptionally flexible place if you’re looking for an experiential flavour adventure through these drinks,” says Scouten. “It’s going to be a great place for you to come and check out.”
Tyler Mclean is a Huddle reporter based in Fredericton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].