Highballs are Bar Mate’s main attraction
Bar Mate? What is it?
Bar Mate is a bar located on Pieni Roobertinkatu, specializing in highball drinks and modern bar food. The house-made highball cocktails are carbonated in-house and served straight from the tap. Also on offer are various wines and beers as well as non-alcoholic drinks. In terms of interior, Bar Mate has a loft vibe and offers an atmospheric environment with relaxed and cheerful funky and groovy music.
Bar Mate is helmed by Mika Ammunet, who during his ten-year career as a bartender has worked at, for example, Bulletin Place in Australia, one of the world’s best cocktail bars. Mika is also known for his Mate Hospitality ideology, which aims to develop the restaurant industry at an organizational level. We asked Mika a few questions about cocktails, Bar Mate, and the restaurant industry.
What is currently Bar Mate’s most popular/most ordered drink, Mika Ammunet?
Highballs. Because highball taps are Bar Mate’s thing and long and refreshing interests people. Fast and consistent. Fizzy, Fast and Fun. One of the most popular is Jamaican Me Crazy. Long, refreshing, and a bit more unusual. People are increasingly adventurous. But this is still easily approachable because it’s a familiar highball concept.
Jamaican Me Crazy is made from clarified carrot and lime juice. The drink also features spruce tips and two different rums as well as curaçao.
What do you think will be the hottest new thing in drinks or otherwise in the restaurant industry this coming winter?
Bold flavours / comfort food. Big and rich flavors. For example, dessert-related and dessert-based drinks. Like an autumnal apple pie. Emotions are running high after the corona years.
What has been the most unforgettable moment in your career?
The turning point was clearly working in Australia at one of the world’s best bars called Bulletin Place, which gave me the knowledge and skills to open my own bar. As a continuation of this, a long-time dream came true—opening my own bar in the summer of 2022 in the heart of Helsinki.
If you could change one thing or problem in the industry, what would it be?
One problem is that managers (and through them employees) have overly heavy days and hours—the risk is burnout in the industry. Unfortunately, too many are chewed up and spat out. People are used up and squeezed dry of their last drops. A solution could be distributing workload and responsibility more evenly in organizations to eager and motivated employees. Community-driven approaches are the future!
What’s the best thing about industry competitions?
Competitions allow you to challenge yourself, meet other industry professionals from around Finland and the world. The learning curve in competitions is really fast and steep. In a short time, you pick up a lot of lessons along the way. And even if the brightest medal doesn’t always come home, many have found opportunities for new collaborations, jobs, or opened doors to new places.
Where do you find inspiration for cocktails?
Often it starts with a local ingredient, around which I bring in flavors I’ve encountered around the world for support. Sometimes an idea is born purely through a story—for example, a place or theme gives the first idea or impulse, from which I creatively form a drink. Sometimes, for example, I might have a story about the sea or a campfire in mind, and I create a cocktail around it.
For example, Jamaican Me Crazy was born when I read somewhere that in Jamaica they drink milk and carrot juice together.
As a challenge, we asked him to create a cocktail inspired by a maple leaf and its colors. As a fun coincidence, Jamaican Me Crazy fits this template perfectly.
In Mika’s opinion, spruce tips are like Finnish maple syrup, and maple syrup and carrot are a familiar combination from the culinary world. In terms of color palette, these ingredients—with green spruce tips, orange carrot, and brown rum—bring to mind the colors of an autumnal maple leaf. Of course, this drink is also clarified using the age-old milk punch method.
What was milk punch again?
Milk is heated to about 76 degrees (i.e., when it bubbles) and when you add a citrus-based cocktail base to this, the acid and milk curdle, and when this is strained, you get a clear, transparent liquid with a rich mouthfeel.
Who is Mika Ammunet?
Award-winning bartender Mika Ammunet has worked in Helsinki’s best cocktail bars during his 10-year career and gained the confidence from them to go to Sydney, Australia, where he worked at one of the world’s best cocktail bars (Bulletin Place).
In 2022, he was crowned Finland’s best bartender in the same week at both the PRO Gala held in Finland and the Bartenders’ Choice Awards held in Sweden.
Mika is also known for his Mate Hospitality ideology, which aims to develop the restaurant industry at an organizational level, making work more meaningful, authentic, and efficient. With these tools, he also opened Bar Mate in the summer of 2022.
All photos: Timo Jalkanen