Re-Enchanting Nightlife
Maria Bastasch created "No & Low" pop-up, Disco Mary, through both her experience and with a little magic.
You can use the word magic to make something ordinary seem extraordinary, but perhaps the true magic is to find something extraordinary within the ordinary. For Maria Bastach, it started as mud pies.
“I used to make potions and things in my backyard when I was a little kid, says Bastasch, “My dad had set up a brick oven where I would make mud pies, add… flowers and leaves from my garden. And I had these big jars and would try to brew things.” These were her first concoctions, she says.
Her father—a fourth generation baker—and mother started a bakery when Bastach was three years old. They experimented with recipes in their kitchen, and Bastasch was witness to her parents’ alchemy.
“Imagine being a kid and seeing something going into a bowl and, within hours, it changes on its own,” she says, referring to bread rising.
But, then again, alchemy was happening all around her. Growing up in Cambria, her parents friends where farmers and artisans. Many worked for the Hearst Castle, Cambria’s definitive landmark. The castle incidentally was formerly called La Cuesta Encantada, “The Enchanted Hill.”
Bastasch remembers fondly her family feasts with 6 siblings, 14 aunts and uncles, and 52 cousins. “It already kind of felt like a restaurant,” she jokes.
Those feasts led to a deeper fascination with restaurants, which felt glamorous to her. Though, she starts laughing, “I have worked in restaurants for over 20 years and ‘glamorous’ would not be what I say to describe my experience.”
Her first job in restaurants was as a host at the Trump National Golf Course in Palos Verdes at 15 years old. (This, of course, was long before Donald Trump’s political aspirations.) It was there, and at a nearby Italian restaurant, J. Trani’s Ristorante, where she learned the trade.
She remembers vividly attending to a regular who was explaining quadratic functions to her, drawing them out on a cocktail napkin. After 30 minutes, as her other six tables waited, her otherwise magnanimous boss, Joe, changed his tone. She explains, “[Joe] said, you have to learn the art of walking away.”
Bastasch traded restaurants for bars at 18 years old, also working in personal training. She began as a barback and cocktail waitress at the restaurant by day, club by night, Union Cattle (which is now closed). And, when she turned 21, she became a bartender.
She simultaneously started college but soon realized it wasn’t natural to her.
“I was terrible at school,” she says, “I was failing at of every class.” That is, until she was challenged to join debate team.
“I joined [a] speech and debate class, and I was top of my class in debating... but I wasn’t showing up and turning in the homework,” says Bastasch. The professor gave her an ultimatum, she could either join the debate team or fail.
“I had no idea there was this robust speech and debate [culture],” she says, “We ended up winning state championship and nationals.” She excelled at debate—and took a break from bars and restaurants—but she also met her ex-husband, Justin. However, after a promising start, her life was coming unwound.
“My personal life was kind of in shambles. I was on track thinking [Justin] and I were going to law school,” she says. But she found herself using drugs and alcohol to cope when her marriage started to fail. She became sober for three years and, after Justin and her divorced, moved to Washington, D.C. where she started drinking again. She found refuge in the D.C. bar and restaurant community but also found a party scene that drew her in.
“My life was not going according to the plan,” says Bastach. But she was re-captivated by the emerging bar and restaurant scene in D.C. “It was the precipice of a new era, a lot of development and new changes, says Bastach, “[It] influenced me to take that idea of food and beverage seriously.”
She started working for restauranteur, Ashok Bajaj, but eventually moved to a smaller restaurant created by Rose Previte—Compass Rose—that was doing work with wine and spirits from lesser known regions of the world.
“Now you see Georgian wines across the country, but at the time [2013] they were unknown,” says Bastasch, “We were selling more Georgian wine than anyone else in the U.S.”
She valued taking an underrepresented position as a wine director, working with obscure wines and spirits including Sotol, an agave-based spirit from Mexico, and Sochu, a Japanese low-alcohol spirit. “Sometimes we’d go to the place and bring back things in our suitcase,” says Bastasch.
For her, the goal was to showcase beverage regions where people had not payed attention to, typically these were regions that had economic challenges.
During the pandemic, she left Compass Rose, which had bloomed into a full-fledged restaurant group during her tenure, adding Michelin-starred Maydan. And she started plotting her next moves, eventually opening the pop-up, Disco Mary, at the Columbia Room, which lasted for five months and introduced Washingtonians to no- and low-alcohol cocktails side-by-side.
“The idea was… opening a space where people could gather and what [they] were consuming was nourishing them on a different level,” says Bastach, “I was really motivated by seeing the havoc that was being unleashed on myself and co-workers.”
Bastasch stopped referring to herself as sober but now embraces drinking mindfully and encourages others to do the same. She argues that nightlife can make it hard to take care of yourself and her aim is partly selfish. “I was given, false choices… it’s become easier as there are more [no and low-alcohol] options when I go out.”
She likens beverage programs without no- and low-alcoholic options to theatre where part of the production is missing. Going out without those choices feels incomplete to her. As if, she says, “There [is] an element of magic removed.”
There’s that word again, magic.
I ask her what’s next and tears well-up in her eyes. She then composes herself and grabs her sunglasses. The fact is, everything takes a toll, and so does a life where we face against the grain. “I have a super rebellious and finicky brain,” she says. But that rebellion has been at the heart of her journey, one that she may not know exactly where it leads, but one we are certain will be nothing less than magic.
Note: Maria Bastasch is my partner in both business and life and, as such, I am by no means disinterested or impartial. However, I think you’ll agree, her story is compelling and an important chapter within “No & Low” cocktails.
Derek Brown is an author, NASM-certified wellness coach, and founder of Positive Damage, Inc.
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