Erik Lorincz

Coming Up

Pub service in Nitra gave the early work its measure: repetition, clean lines of service, and attention to the small maintenance that keeps a bar honest. From 1998, Erik Lorincz was a pub worker / bartender at local pub in Nitra, Slovakia, where the job included the practical handling of beer, guests, glassware, and the routines behind the pour. Cocktail work in Slovakia moved the practice from pub rhythm into mixed-drink discipline. Behind the bar at Slovakia's first-ever cocktail bar in Slovakia, Lorincz worked in a register that required precision, pace, recall, and composure, with the drink made in view of the guest and the room. London bar work tested the same fundamentals under heavier pressure. The progression ran from glass collector at Attica in London, UK, to bartender at Nozomi in London, UK (from 2006), then to the team at The Connaught in London, UK (from 2008). Each post placed Lorincz closer to the mechanics of high-end service: clean mise en place, controlled movement, and consistency across a full room. Hotel-bar leadership brought the craft into a room with inherited standards. As 10th Head Bartender at American Bar at The Savoy Hotel in London, UK (until 2019), Lorincz worked inside a bar defined by ritual, polish, and expectation. The role required more than execution at the station; it required standards carried by a team, night after night. Independent bar work now extends that service lineage into self-led projects. Erik is founder / owner of Kwānt (since 2019) and co-founder of Antique American Bar, roles that follow a working path from pub service and hotel bars into ownership while keeping the bar itself as the central craft site.

Where They Are Now

Contemporary hotel-bar and cocktail-room practice meet in Kwānt in London, where Lorincz is founder. The project gathers experience from pubs, cocktail bars, hotel lounges, and landmark rooms into an operation built around the guest’s full arc: arrival, seating, drink, service, and departure. That role keeps the craft tied to the station rather than only to ownership: glass, garnish, service movement, and the direct exchange between bartender and guest remain part of the work. Named ventures also include Birdy by Erik Lorincz. Across these projects, the through-line is bar craft as a working discipline: presentation, timing, hospitality, and a properly made drink served with control.

Signature

The named drinks attached to the work include The Malecon, One Night, Green Park Cocktail, The Connaught Bloody Mary, and Vir-gen. Read as a set, they sit across hotel-bar reference points and contemporary cocktail authorship, with Lorincz’s signatures carrying both room memory and individual construction.

In Their Words “We served the best beer in Nitra and I learned how to treat the beer properly, and not just in the serve: when we changed every single barrel we would clean the pipes with little sponge balls. We treated it like a golden liquid.” Beer service here is described as maintenance as much as pouring. Lorincz’s recollection places pipe cleaning, barrel change, and serve quality in the same craft system, the sort of routine care that determines what reaches the guest. “After spending seven years at The Savoy [Lorincz was the 10th Head Bartender at American Bar and oversaw its rise to be named The World’s Best Bar in 2017], I was done with themed cocktail lists.” The statement marks a shift after a major hotel-bar chapter. It does not discard tradition; it identifies the point at which a bartender who has worked within a highly structured list format chooses another way to build a bar’s language.

Honors

Recognition spans individual competition, bar leadership, and new-opening performance. Erik's honors include World's Best Bar for American Bar at The Savoy Hotel (2017), London Essence Best New Opening Award for Kwānt (2020), and World Class Bartender of the Year (2010). Each belongs to a different stage of the work: the bartender, the room, and the independent opening.