John Hiner has seen a lot from the storied Utah bar at The Alta Club. From making classic cocktails to mixing it up with movers and shakers, he’s been a fixture there for over 30 years, and he has tales to tell.
“I’ve had to reinvent myself perhaps 12, 15 times in the course of bartending,” Hiner says. “There’s nothing new under the sun as far as bartending. People have been bartending for 2,000 years, but we have trends that come upon us. One day, we are mixologists, throwing everything but the kitchen sink into our drinks. Other times, we are purists and ‘refine’ all the old drinks.”
The taste of nostalgia
The old drinks are really what Hiner likes to make more than anything. His Old Fashioned is famous. “John Landis, the director, his wife likes my Manhattan, so they come sometimes,” he casually mentions as an aside. “What I like to make are the ‘memory drinks,’” he says. “It’s one of my specialties. These older fellows and ladies will come in, and I’ll bring out a drink they loved from the ’50s or ’60s. I’ll try to make it just so. They get that look on their face, and suddenly, they are back with their babe, back in the day. That is the biggest reward. The taste of nostalgia. They’ll order a second one, and you’re like, yes! I got it.”
The biggest secret to Hiner’s long career behind the bar? “Just be friendly. People don’t know how to be friendly,” he says. “I knew everybody’s kids’ names. I knew everybody’s dogs’ names. I knew where they lived. I knew what they liked, knew what they liked to eat. You get to know your clientele.” Especially in a place like The Alta Club, where the clientele are regulars. “But oftentimes, you’re just making their day better. That’s what a bartender needs to do. You need to leave that outside world out.”
When you think of your clientele as family and The Alta Club as their home away from home, like Hiner does, everyone is a relative. “I like the variety of people you meet here,” he says. “Like the old jazz coach, Frank Layden. He brings me books all the time. I also got to work with Mitt Romney quite a bit during the Olympics. And he still talks to me about things he’s doing. And I used to know Senator Hatch and Neil Armstrong, who walked on the moon. I met Diane Keaton and Danny Trejo, from both ends of the acting spectrum.”
A new chapter for a storied bar
Hiner is a self-proclaimed bookaholic, to the point the members of the Alta Club bring him books all the time. He talked with relish about some of the great authors who have visited over the club’s long history. “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has been here,” Hiner says. “His first Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, was about blood atonement within the early Mormon Church. They’d sent a killer to England to effect revenge. And so the Mormon Church wrote him a letter, ‘Dear Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we’re not savages. Please come visit us.’ And to their surprise, he did. He came and stayed at the Hotel Utah. But he likes to have a drink and a cigar. So he came to the Alta Club.” Hiner says the Club also hosted Mark Twain when he famously passed through Utah on his way to San Francisco and eventually the Sandwich Islands. “Of course, when he came to Salt Lake, he needed a drink,” Hiner says. “So he came here. He’s a Sagittarius man. Same as myself.” If Mr. Twain happened to be a bartender in modern-day Salt Lake City, he’d be John Hiner. Gruff, observant, studied in human nature, dedicated to his craft without taking it too seriously, skilled at reading people and bookish—with a winking sense of humor.
The bar at the Alta Club is changing. It was recently remodeled from top to bottom, and Hiner is at the bar a little less frequently these days. “It’s been an interesting ride here,” he says, winking. “I’ve enjoyed all of it, mostly.”
