Denny Shrock

Bartender - The Arendell Room, North Carolina

Denny Shrock began his career in the hospitality industry in the kitchen. He had worked in a few local restaurants on the North Carolina coast and was building his chops as a chef when things changed one Memorial Day weekend. Shrock received a frantic call from a good friend who was a bartender at an area beach club. A fellow bartender had failed to show up for his shift on one of the busiest nights of the year, and Shrock’s friend wanted to know if he could jump in and start tending bar with him. Shrock reminded him that he had never bartended before, but he didn’t care—he just needed a body that could get there and work fast. The bar was what Shrock calls a “Sling Bar,” a high-volume place that served mostly highballs and beer. He jumped behind the bar and loved it. As he puts it, “I realized that bartending is what I wanted to do and since then it has been a fun ride.”

He worked at the beach club for a few years before moving to some other high-volume bars in Myrtle Beach. His experience in high-volume operations taught him the importance of working quickly and efficiently, and allowed him to learn about people and the flavors that many prefer in drinks.

After a few years, Shrock was looking for a new challenge and moved to historic Beaufort, North Carolina to take over the bar at a fine dining restaurant. There, he began to craft original cocktails in hopes of creating a cocktail list that was on par with the restaurant’s Wine Spectator award winning wine list. He relied on his training as a cook to come up with new flavor combinations, and his experience in high-volume bars also provided good insight into what flavors would be most successful.

As he became increasingly interested in fine cocktails, he learned that an old friend, Trace Cooper, was planning on opening a new cocktail bar in Morehead City. Trace told Shrock that his goal was to open a bar similar to the great cocktail bars he frequented in New York and San Francisco. Shrock knew that the area had a great restaurant scene with many talented chefs, but saw this new venture as an opportunity to show people that great tasting things could come from the bar as well as the kitchen.

He started at this new bar, The Arendell Room, two years ago. From the beginning, they have used fresh fruit, herbs and spices—much of it grown by local NC farmers or in his own garden— to create cocktail menus that change with the season.

Last year, he began thinking about pairing cocktails with food. One night while working at The Arendell Room, he ordered take-out from the local sushi bar and started working on a cocktail that would compliment his food. He knew that the base should be Domaine de Canton and loved the vegetal edge that Cachaça brought to the drink. He wanted to add something to make the drink crisper and to tie it to the light, fresh flavors of the Japanese food. He took a bite of the cucumber salad accompanying his Sushi and realized that cucumber was the missing ingredient—he muddled some cucumber with citrus juices and the Canton Cucumber was born.

They started the drink out on the features board, but after several regular customers kept asking for “one of those cucumber things” they added the drink to the menu and it has been a best-seller ever since.