Brian Van Flandern

Brian Van Flandern has over 20 years experience as a New York City bartender/mixologist. He helped open Per Se as its head bartender in 2004, and left three years later to found Creative Cocktail Consultants Corporation, a consulting firm dedicated to the design of cutting-edge cocktail lists and training bartenders in the art of mixology. He has created cocktails for some of the finest restaurants and resorts in the world, most notably at the famous Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas Texas, and the World Ship (the first international floating community).

Brian’s cocktails have been featured in The New York Times, Gourmet Magazine, Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, Martha Stewart Living, New York Magazine, Food & Wine, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, Food Arts Magazine and USA Today. A key television appearance includes a feature on Gourmet Magazine’s “Diary of a Foodie” produced by Ruth Reichl for PBS.

Brian Van Flandern is a member of the United States Bartenders Guild (USBG) and a graduate of the first-ever B.A.R. (Beverage Alcohol Research) class run by spirit experts Paul Pacult, Dale DeGroff, Dave Wondrich, Steve Olsen and Doug Frost. Brian’s expansive knowledge of spirits and cocktail history allows him to lecture internationally as a recognized spirits authority and an expert in fine dining beverage standards. He is also a frequent guest lecturer at the French Culinary Institute in New York.

In 2006 Cheers Magazine named Brian one of America’s Ten ‘Top Shelf Bartenders’. That same year he was ranked the number two bartender in the world by BOLS Liqueurs of Amsterdam after participating in the BOLS 200 Masters International Championship. Brian won the iSante Iron Bar Chef Competition held in the spring of 2007, and in 2008 Tanqueray Ten Gin named him one the top ten bartenders in the world.