Filip Stránský – AnonymouS Bar

My Life

I was born in Prague on May 8, 1990. After finishing school I got a scholarship because I played football semi-professionally. Since my father was a construction developer, he wanted me to step into his shoes and therefore I started college with a major in construction, but I wasn’t very talented in either geometry or math and after just one year they said I was too bad at it to continue. My parents were not exactly amused. When I got kicked out of college, my parents basically told me it was now my turn to look after myself. At that time, it was also clear I could not continue playing football professionally. I was 18 years old and realized I would never be a top player. It was really tough, but I had to see the facts as they were. Because my mum was working in gastronomy, I decided to do an apprenticeship in the kitchen and in service. It lasted three years. The first year is very practical and you have to work six months in the kitchen and six months in service. In the second year, my parents paid for me to attend a bartending workshop in school. It was organized by the Czech bartender association, but took place at the famous Tretter’s Bar in Prague.

“It was a big wakeup call. I realized that I knew nothing”.

Filip Stránský

The instructor was Josef Zelenka. I was sitting in the middle of the bar and watched him shaking and flaring and I realized at that moment that this was what I wanted to do. It seemed very entertaining and you have a lot of knowledge that others don’t. You are kind of an aristocrat in the gastronomy sector. The course lasted one week. I especially liked the flaring part of it. My first job after graduation was in a club called Infinity. It was a famous place with lots of celebrities coming and going. I started as a barback, but I had no prior experience at this point. I remember there was another workshop—this one about spirits—taught by a guy called Samer Selbak. That was in 2009. I was flaring in front of him and when he saw it, he stopped me and told me to stop doing that shit. He asked me, “Do you know anything about gin or a Manhattan cocktail? Put the bottles back onto the speed rack, open a book and get some knowledge. Without knowledge, your flaring is only a circus show.”

It was a big wakeup call. I realized that I knew nothing. What is actually in a cocktail, I wondered. I contacted Eduard Ondrareck, who was a very good bartender at the time, but I did not know him personally. I just called him up and said, “Can you teach me?” I asked him to show me all the basics, like what a Martinez cocktail is. It was a five-day intensive course, and he was really like a mentor to me. It was just the two of us and it was mind blowing. I still loved flaring though, and I started traveling with a guy called Vaclav Abraham. We were traveling for one-and-a-half years, mainly for competitions, now that I had the physical skills combined with some cocktail knowledge. We paid for all the trips ourselves and I was still working the club to get by financially. That was when the idea with the Guy Fawkes mask came up. I used it as my alter ego at competitions. Everybody was amazed and they were asking themselves who the guy with the strange mask might be. I loved it.

When I was twenty-two, my brother David came up to me and asked, “Why don’t we open a bar together?” My parents instilled in us the credo that we should work together and stick together as a family. I was very much focused on the bartending part though and had no idea about the business. I only focused on being a good bartender. We were speaking about the concept for about a month and we liked the ideas we came up with. We were sitting in a park and my brother asked, “Why not use your mask in our concept.” It felt like we had hit the nail on the head. I know everything about the mask and the whole myths surrounding it—the hackers, the comic, the movie, etc. I am not a guy who likes popularity a lot and that made it easy to also incorporate it into a concept. We wanted to create a hideout not directly facing the street, so basically the hideout for a “hero”. My father found a fitting venue, which was a very cheap strip bar at the time. We basically only had one day to decide if we want to take it or not. Prague 1, the historical center, also proved a perfect location as it completed the storytelling. Our philosophy, along the lines of the original story, was that we were doing something good for the people by opening AnonymouS Bar. Friends told us we were crazy to open a bar you can’t see from the alley. Back then the street where the bar is located was rather quiet. We took the risk though and on November 5, 2013 we opened our doors as a trial run. We put the masks on and started working. I was twenty-three years old. A friend, Eduard, and me were running front of the house and my brother was pulling the strings in the background, managing the business.

AnonymouS Bar / Shrink’s Office / Bulletproof

AnonymouS Bar, as I already said, is set back from the street and we have a huge courtyard where people can also sit outside in the summer. We have plenty of space and attract quite a big crowd in the evenings. Around midnight it can feel a bit like a club. It can be very high volume and quite noisy. We offer around thirteen cocktails on the menu but obviously we can also do classics. What’s more, we also have an extensive spirit list.

After we had managed AnonymouS Bar for two years, traveling, spreading the word about it, we got the opportunity to open another bar behind a jewelry store. We thought about a concept and figured that me and my brother’s second favorite comic is Watchmen. We wanted to have a narrative thread connecting it to AnonymouS but with a different concept. It wasn’t supposed to be like a private club. We wanted more one-on-one time with the guests and a smaller location. It was around the time when speakeasies were getting more popular again, and we thought it would be a good time to jump on that train. We hid the bar behind the jewelry store and called it Shrink’s Office in reference to Alan Moore—which also provided the link to AnonymouS Bar. We opened the bar on November 8, the birthday of Herman Rorschach, which was the perfect date for us. In the Watchmen movie, a character of the name Walter Kovacs was wearing the Rorschach mask. Given our desire to stay anonymous, it was perfect for us to use this mask for the Shrink’s Office. We also use a Rorschach test as the menu. People choose their cocktail according to ten cards representing different character types. The blends we have in the bar are the same that were used during the Prohibition era. Blends of Irish whiskies, for example, like back in the days. Cocktails are always made with blends. The third pillar of our storytelling is that the customers come in as patients and the bartenders are their therapists.

Our third and latest bar has a totally different concept and is very easy going. But, of course, there is also a storytelling connection. A while ago I was traveling with Jarolsav Modlik (the CEO of all our three bars) to Kentucky and visited dive bars there. We thought it would be cool to bring this concept to Prague. We wanted to create a neighborhood bar where it’s all about bourbons and beer and table games. To quote from V for Vendetta: “Ideas are bulletproof.” Therefore we called the bar Bulletproof.

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The Future

That’s a tough one, especially with Covid and the current political situation. I thought since people need to drink and eat all the time, they’ll go out no matter what, but I was proven wrong. I was surprised at how small the step from survival to bankruptcy is. Just a single day can change everything. It was a tough realization. I hope that the bar industry will grow stronger, but we are in the platinum age of the bar sector, meaning, it’ll likely go downhill from here. Any crazy ideas have mostly already been done and it is hard to reinvent yourself again and again. Winter is coming and especially the winter of 2022/23 will decide in which direction it will all go. It’ll certainly get more expensive with energy prices spiking and many people having left the industry. All in all, it is very unpredictable at the moment but the signs are not pointing in a good direction … at least not for the short term.

Profile

Special skill: I am very good in micro magic. I like to combine my magic tricks with my work. I am always smiling and I like to bring experiences to people.

Free time: I like playing desktop video games and I can relax while gaming. It frees my mind. I also like reading.

Bartender since: 2009

Biggest fail: In my first year at AnonymouS, I created a custom uniform. It was super expensive and after 5–6 months, we actually didn’t use it anymore. Uniforms—never again!

Most significant career step: Survived the Covid crisis with my bars.

Favorite cocktail: Ramos Gin Fizz. Why: if somebody orders it in a rush, I smile and don’t ask why the hell they are ordering this in a huge rush. I always do it when traveling to see how bartenders react. If the bartender is rude, I order four of them. It is a very old drink, but still magnificent today.

Check out Filip’s recipes: No. 9 and Bella Ciao.

Favorite cocktail bar: Every bar where I feel comfy and welcomed. If I have to name one Atélier Coctail Bar & Bistro in Brno.

Prague in three words: Freedom, crazy, safety

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Images: ©AnonymouS Bar