vorite brand Harris mentioned once. He asked her to interview for a job. Though at the time she was certain she was moving to Chicago to follow Bachman, her mentor, she went to see the bar in person. “I absolutely fell in love with the space that would become Trick Dog. It was afternoon, and that light comes through the window. … It just felt like it was supposed to be a bar. So I decided to stay in San Francisco,” she says. “Two years later, Trick Dog wouldn’t be the same without her,” says Harris.
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Caitlin Laman catches up on her laptop before Trick Dog opens its doors to patrons.
The new regulars On a recent Saturday night two tall, preppy guys in their late 30s order drinks from Laman. They are not cocktail geeks — I see raised eyebrows while reading the menu — but they order quickly to save face. They look like they’re here for just one quick drink to check out the place everyone’s been talking about. As Laman prepares and serves their drinks at her typical speed, a woman asks to borrow their menu and vocalizes a similar struggle. “I don’t know what most of these
words are,” she says, sighing at the menu. The menu includes ingredients like Batavia arrack, sarsaparilla and fenugreek. At Trick Dog, it’s hard to guess how any drink is going to taste, even if you know all the individual components, so eventually one throws caution to the wind and just picks something. It usually works out well. “I don’t know most of the words either,” says one of the guys with a fresh cocktail already in his hand, “but this one is really good. I didn’t
know what to get so I just asked for something with rum.” The guys sit at the bar for more than an hour, and that one drink turns into three or four. They seem delighted at their good fortune: these cocktails, this bar and that bartender, with whom they’ve kept up a conversation despite her never slowing down for a moment. They love it here. Says Harris: “We challenge our staff to make one regular customer a day.” True to her competitive nature, Laman has just doubled that.