5 Questions with Keifer Gilbert on Tell Your Friends’ Cocktail Program

Award-winning bartender Keifer Gilbert known for his work at Counter Intuitive, Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour, Toca Madera and more has temporarily come out of bartending retirement to develop the cocktail program at Tell Your Friends – a cocktail bar and live music lounge opening under The Americano in North Scottsdale early this summer.

The luxe, 52-seat venue will feature nightly performances as well as small bites curated by Chef Beau MacMillan. We sat down with Gilbert to chat about mixology, the Valley’s cocktail cognoscenti and what to expect from his new gig.

What made you decide this was the right time to return to the cocktail industry?
I think, personally, you need some time to acclimate to life outside of the hospitality industry. I left Toca Madera in 2021, so it had been maybe three years of me being completely out of the industry when I’d met with Beau. I felt like I’d stepped away long enough that I felt comfortable with the new career path that I was rooted in within the technology space.

It was also cool to have the opportunity to return to the industry working with somebody like Beau who was instrumental to me building the reputation that I did in town. I’ve worked with him on numerous events, so it was exciting to work together again.

What was the most fun part about the cocktail program development experience?
One of my favorite things about the restaurant industry, and one of the things I miss most about it, is the people you interact with. The people in the hospitality industry – especially those that do it at a high level and do it as a career – those are my people. Being integrated into that environment again and having those minds to bounce ideas off of was really enjoyable for me.

What are you most looking forward to when you come in as a patron?
The full experience. The beauty of this place is that it’s an underground bar, it’s going to have live music every night, and it’s going to have a great beverage program. I’m really curious to go in a few months from now and take a seat and watch the room do its thing and see who is going to be in the space, who is going to become regulars there, and experience what the live entertainment is going to be like. I’m looking forward to being able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of the labor because I’ve seen almost from scratch everything that not only myself, but that that the rest of the team has put into it. It’s going to be a really special time.

What can people expect from the cocktail menu?
It’s essentially a clean split of classics to originals. There are about ten originals and ten classics. It’s a diverse menu with different spirits we’re highlighting and different flavor profiles that are fun.

Is there a cocktail that’s unique to Tell Your Friends that everyone should try?
There is and it’s a really fun one. It’s a drink that I’ve been conceptualizing since I was at Counter Intuitive. I was working really closely with Jason Asher and Rich Furnari at Barter & Shake, and we’d taken a trip to London and I’d seen a lot of the bars there doing things to incorporate texture into their drinks. I noticed they were using waxes and oils – one bar was even infusing a spirit with beeswax – and I thought it was so interesting. So, I took a little bit of what I found there and tinkered with it a couple of times and I just never found the right home for it.

Now, at Tell Your Friends we’re taking beeswax, liquefying it completely by heating it up then coating a bottle with it.  From there, we’re pre-batching and adding an Old-Fashioned into that bottle and letting it rest so one of the things that whiskey is going to sit in there and do is start to break down some of the lipids within that beeswax which adds the coolest, silkiest texture to it. I love that anybody that’s gone into a cocktail bar before has probably had an Old -Fashioned, but this puts a really unique twist on something that’s familiar to people.