Charis accepting our 3rd top ????award, for the 100 best restaurants in America! This one is for best overall, we also won for foodies and most romantic! There are over 10 million votes and over 24,000 restaurants that use OpenTable nationwide, all very high caliber. To place in the Top 100 three times this year and to be in the same breath as America’s very best is almost to unbelievable to comprehend! Thank you for all of your love and support, we appreciate you helping us live our dream! ~ photo credit: Antebellum


Meet Charis Minkoff, a bartender at Antebellum in Flowery Branch.
Charis has worked at Antebellum for four years,  was born in Atlanta and raised in the Alpharetta/Cumming area and started bartending about 20 years ago.
“I moved to California for about five years and worked at one of the Pebble Beach Resorts and that is where I learned a lot. I had an opportunity of having input on the cocktails that we were making for resort guests,” she said.
She said she loves working at Antebellum and especially loves chef Nick St. Clair.
“I’ve worked at a lot of different restaurants…Chef Nick is so talented in everything that he does, I am a very picky eater and he is able to convince me to eat things I thought I didn’t like,” Charis said. “He is really skilled at pulling flavor combinations together and constantly changing it up.”
We want to thank Charis for spending time with us recently to tell us more about her life and love of Hall County.
Question: What  do you love about being a bartender?
Answer: “I get to craft some pretty awesome seasonal drinks, lately I have been infusing rums and it’s fun to have a different craft that you can play with–a different medium. And it makes people happy.”

One of Chef Nick’s favorite cocktails – The Lavender Lady with Empress 1908 Gin, Cointreau, Merlet Creme de Mure, fresh squeezed lemon and lavender. The perfect, refreshing beverage for summer! (Photo credit: Antebellum)


Q: What is your specialty?
A: “I’ve really been playing around with the sous vide machine, it’s generally used in kitchens but I’ve been using it to infuse liquors. I’ve made a housemade lemoncello and it usually take as a month for it to sit but I can make it in a day. It’s been fun to play around with this. Probably the ones that are my own, that I can claim as mine, are the rums that we have right now. I try to change it up for each season.”
Q: What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
A: “I do pottery, I enjoy a lot of different crafty things. Recently, I’ve been working on cutting glass with a Drimmell. I play disc golf which is basically golf with a frisbee, I like to go to Cleveland and get in the river and look for gold.”
Q: What is your favorite thing about Hall County?
A: “I just like the quaintness of it, it’s growing a lot more than it was. Everyone is friendly…and I like that.”

The Best Bartenders in Hall County is a special social media project by the Abernathy Cochran Real Estate Group. To nominate your favorite bartender email: babernathy@gonorton.com.