Jimmy Barrat

Jimmy Barrat, the Dubai-based bar consultant who brought a thirsty world the Tomatini cocktail, was pretty much born into the industry. Aged eight, he was already cooking in the kitchen of his family's restaurant in the south of France.

'The restaurant was my playground,' he recalls. 'My parents and my grandfather, who was in the kitchen, had the tendency of eating early, like other restaurant professionals, and the time didn't suit me. They always said, "No problem. But if you don't eat in time, you have to cook for yourself." So that's how we started.'

As a young man, Barrat fell into bar work while pursuing competitive sport-wakeboarding on the French national team in summer, then snowboarding for pleasure in winter. Today, he dismisses his wakeboarding skills: 'It was a different era. You had two or three different flips and you made the French team. Today, those sports have evolved in a way that is crazy.'

But he maintains his competitive spirit and has brought it to bartending. In 2012, he reached the final of World Class and competed in it the day after attending his son's birth. And, while his first attempt at an independent bar, Ergo, foundered on partnership issues, he still has plans to pursue that dream.

The Zuma years

Alongside his grandfather, Antoine, a lifelong role model until his recent death aged 94, Arjun Waney, the restaurant entrepreneur who co-founded Zuma and took La Petite Maison international, was a formative influence on Barrat's career. They met for the first time in 2002 on the beach in the south of France, where Barrat was working a season as a beach boy. Waney said he was going to open 'a small Japanese restaurant in London' and asked if Barrat wanted to join.

Barrat passed on the opportunity, however, until summer 2006, when he found himself in need of cash. 'I met Arjun again on the beach-he has a house just up the top. And he said to me, "Are you sure you don't want to come to London now?" so I said, "OK, I'm coming for six months."'

Almost 20 years on, Barrat has neither moved back nor looked back, working his way up from barback to bar manager of Zuma. While he hated Dubai when he first arrived in 2008, finding it restrictive and un-free compared to the Dubai of today, let alone to the south of France, he recognised an opportunity. 'I saw a place where you could achieve greatness and make changes,' he says. 'I don't think I'd have been able to do what I did in Dubai elsewhere.'

At Zuma Dubai, Barrat was one of the first bartenders to bring the craft of the speakeasy to high-volume bars. A dedicated station for carving ice enabled the team to push out 200 Old-Fashioneds with hand-carved ice balls in a night. And it wasn't easy. Setting up the bar required everything from sourcing books and mixing glasses to training a local supplier to produce ice blocks.

A taste of France

It was Waney, also, who helped trigger Barrat's contribution to the contemporary cocktail lexicon, the Tomatini. Waney had brought his golden touch to La Petite Maison, a Nice restaurant with an impressive pedigree, and taken the brand global. And, in 2010, La Petite Maison duly arrived alongside Zuma in Dubai.

'Arjun gave me a phone call and said, "Jimmy, can you please help the team out?"' says Barrat who, while born in Corsica, spent his formative years not far from Nice. 'So I said, "Yes, of course, this is a concept that's very, very close to my heart. It's home, so I'll work on it with pleasure."'

Working with the bar team, Barrat insisted that everybody should create a drink and contribute it to their plans for the menu. But one team member said they should only do it if Barrat also contributed a drink. So, nostalgic for the taste of home, he created a drink based on the bull's heart tomato.

'In France, there are these massive tomatoes that you share between four or five people,' he says. 'You cut it, they are ripe, they are juicy, and it's just incredible with fresh baguette, salt, pepper, and a bit of balsamic, that's it. I had that emotion and I wanted to put it in a glass, so I thought: "Why not treat the tomato for what it is, a fruit, not a vegetable?"'

The Tomatini's DNA, as the name suggests, remains very much that of a fruit martini, apart from the vinegar. 'I was playing a lot with vinegar at the time. I was doing a lot of shrubs. But I couldn't use balsamic vinegar because it would look brownish, so I tried the white balsamic, and it worked right away,' Barrat explains. It's still on the menu at La Petite Maison to this day.

Looking to the future

For the last two years, Barrat has been bringing his skills to brands and a few select bars, co-founding the Bee Leaf Boutique Bar Consultancy and working with clients that span the prestige drinks gamut from boutique sotols to Diageo brands. 'It's great,' he says. 'When you've had that taste of freedom and freedom of expression, joining a corporate group again would have been so unnatural. I could never have made that decision.'

But Barrat emphasises that consultancy is not the final stage in his career journey. 'I haven't given up the idea of having a bar. I'm working on a project that I hope to open towards the end of 2026, and moving to the capital of the UAE, Abu Dhabi,' he says. 'I will reopen a bar, because that's what I missed the most. I'm a natural born operator. I enjoy being behind a bar and, as much as consultancy is great, I miss my true love. So, stay tuned!'