Toronto’s best flair bartenders showing that flair is not only for flash but for cash

Flair bartending has always been controversial: from those hard-core traditionalists who look down on it as a lower form of entertainment that discredits the profession to those who embrace it as an art and defend its enormous contribution to the guest experience.

The Toronto Flair League (TFL) is a collective for all those bar artists who not only can put together a great show by flipping bottles and tins and setting bars on fire but can do it while offering a top service: skill, speed and grace together to offer and unforgetable experience to the guest. Night after night, the TFL guys polish their skills to raise the level of flair bartending in Canada and show the world that bartending is an art.

Nine of Toronto’s best flair bartenders, all of them quite young, ambitious and really promising gathered at the College Street Bar, a venue with a reputation for opening its doors to bartending talents, for a working flair competition to demonstrate that flair is not only for flash, but also for cash.

Kaitlyn Janetta, Rob Renda, Matt Conway, Phil Piasecki, Josh Alexandriw, Dustain Costain, Andres Herrera, Dan Sacco & Yusuke Ono: names that you have to keep in your mind since they will be rocking the bars throughout Canada and the world in the next years. Each and everyone of this bartenders put together an amazing performance combining rhythm with speed and precision. Three minutes for every contestant made this a fast an exciting competition, one of the challenges with flair bartending is that sometimes you can get too absorbed into the flair and suddenly realize that you only have 10 seconds to finish the drink or get penalized. This is why working flair brings out the best skills of most bartenders