Panayiotis Leventis has been on the Anassa team since 2006. Over the years, he has worked in every restaurant and bar at the hotel and opened its first beach bar. For the past three years, he has been the Bartender Supervisor at Armonia. With an extensive menu of over forty speciality cocktails, his team has a lot of preparation to do. Every morning, they make the fresh juices that will serve as mixers during evening cocktails. He watches the stock of 210 distinct bottles at the bar to make sure that every item is available when needed. Panayiotis oversees training for all the bartenders and servers to ensure that they meet the high service standards of Anassa. A native of Pafos, he trained in hospitality management in Nicosia, Finland, and England. With the evening air cooling, we asked him for a late summer cocktail suggestion. He recommends Smoky Bacon, which features Anassa’s homemade bacon-infused bourbon. Fatty bacon is deep fried in oil in the kitchen. After extracting the oil, the team mixes the bacon with Jim Beam in a pot. The fat rises to the surface of the mixture and, after deep freezing, can be easily removed, leaving just the smoky bacon flavour in the bourbon. The cocktail melds the bacon-infused bourbon with two kinds of bitters (cardamom and sour angostura) and demerara sugar. Finished with puffs of chicory wood smoke from a smoking gun, the cocktail exemplifies Panayiotis’s creativity and attention to craft. Stop by Armonia to see him and his team in action.
