![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ben-2000-01.jpg)
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ben-title-2.png)
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ben-2000-02.jpg)
Boka Restaurant Group veteran Benjamin Schiller, 33, developed the cocktail programs at GT Fish & Oyster and the Girl & the Goat. Currently he's beverage director with the Fifty/50 crew and a partner in their latest venture, the Berkshire Room.
Interview by Kate Schmidt
Photographs by John Sturdy
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ben-2000-03.jpg)
I was always intrigued by movies, like on AMC, where you’d see someone look at a bottle of wine and instantly know whether it was good or bad and everything about it. That world was just so foreign to me. And so when I had a chance to study wine at 21, I dove in.
Paula Houde was the person who hired me [at the Peninsula]. She came out of Charlie Trotter’s, and she must’ve had a soft spot for people who have no idea what they’re doing. I worked in the wine bar area downstairs. It took me a while, but eventually I got it. I just kept working hard and showing up and eventually, I guess, I was pretty proficient at my job.
I remember I saw in all these magazines bartenders on the east coast [and] west coast going to farmers’ markets, picking out fresh fruit, making their own syrups, and using all these crazy spirits I’d never heard of. And I was so impressed and just so envious of those guys. I think this was in ’06, ’07.
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ben-2000-04.jpg)
I’d party sometimes with friends and I’d try to batch out a cocktail or make something and it was always horrendous. But when I got to In Fine Spirits I got a chance to work every day at it. That’s where I really found my stride. A couple years ago I went and took my sommelier exam, and I passed that, but I decided not to pursue it.
I started at Boka just as a bartender, and I guess they were happy with what I was doing. They brought me in one day and said, “Hey, we’re opening a restaurant with Stephanie [Izard] and would you be interested in heading up the beverage program?” I met with Stephanie and she was really cool. Everyone was really excited about the Girl & the Goat, but this was before the Girl & the Goat turned into the juggernaut it became. So I headed up that program, and obviously that was the most successful restaurant in the history of food, pretty much.
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ben-quote.png)
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ben-2000-051.jpg)
From there they asked me to do GT Fish & Oyster. I worked at GT every day for the first month just so that the reviews would be positive, so I would be there making all the drinks for all the food critics.
I had gotten to a point where I had a lot of very, very serious people, very, very affluent people, people with a ridiculous sum of money come to me and say, “How much would you like?” Pretty much just like that. “If I would write you a check, what would it be?”
So I started looking at what I thought I wanted to do and where I thought I wanted to do it and conceptually what that would be. I knew I didn’t want to open a place just to open a place. And while I was doing this, the guys from Fifty/50 [Restaurant Group] reached out, and we just really hit it off. They knew what they wanted. They said, “We’re going to open the Berkshire Room, why don’t you head it up?”
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ben-2000-06.jpg)
This whole craft-cocktail thing, there’s been so much negative feedback, and maybe rightfully so. If you’ve actually had a craft cocktail, there’s a very good chance you’re going to be either in a pretentious bar or some unbearable hipster is going to be making you the drink at a slow pace, and it’s just going to be a grating process to anyone with any kind of decency. And I said, “Listen, we need to make this a bar first and foremost. This should be like a corner bar that you can just walk in, come as you are, but corner bar done right. There’s a smart selection of spirits. There’s no crappy beers on tap. There’s no ten huge plasma-screen TVs giving you a seizure with rapid images. We don’t want the bartender who thinks he’s the Second Coming behind the bar. We just need professionals. We need, like, lifers.”
I do want to work in something besides bartending, where I can start out as an apprentice and go to journeyman, and maybe one day if I’m lucky hit master status, where I can make something, create something that’s tangible.
![Benjamin Schiller](http://people2013.chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/video-BG-2000x7005.png)
Woodworking and working with metal, I’ve done all that before. I still have scars on my arms and hands from welding and threading conduit and sheet metal work. I want to do something like that with my hands, something permanent. So I decided to start working with leather. I would like to keep that going on the side, just to keep me sane, and not have everything in my life revolve around booze. ●