In 2004, a young bartender from Melbourne, Australia named Sam Ross, arrived in New York City in search of a burgeoning cocktail scene. Just barely old enough to drink in his adopted country, it took him a minute to find his footing and his way. Little did he know then, but he would go on to create some of the most popular cocktails today including the Penicillin and Paper Plane.
Back then, the craft drink markets remained small, with only a handful of bars showcasing innovation, including Angel’s Share, Flatiron Lounge, and Milk & Honey. But slowly, Ross figured it out. First, he started working at The Sunburnt Cow in the East Village, mixing drinks at the Australian-themed restaurant, before finding his way to the Lower East Side.
There he landed an auspicious meeting with late legendary bartender and bar owner Sasha Petraske, who founded the tiny Eldridge Street cocktail bar Milk & Honey in 1999 and was still flying under the radar, despite garnering legions of devoted patrons. On the same day that Petraske brought Ross on, he hired another transplanted bartender named Michael McIlroy, who’d just landed in New York City from Belfast, Ireland. The pairing was divine.
In 2013, when Petraske moved Milk & Honey to a bigger space in the Flatiron District, Ross and McIlroy took over the boxcar-sized room, creating their own bar called Attaboy. Now, over two decades after arriving in New York and getting paired up with McIlroy, the duo are still great friends and business partners. Today they run 10 bars between them, having expanded to Brooklyn and Nashville.
In 2022, Attaboy was named the World’s Best Bar in North America, something that meant a lot to the team after a few shaky pandemic years. We caught up with Sam to learn about what brought him to the Big Apple in the first place, what’s kept him here, how he grew his mini empire, and if he’s still hustling in the bar industry, despite the accolades and mega-long reservation list.
Let’s start from the beginning. What brought you all the way over to the States in the first place? To New York City?
I started barbacking in Melbourne at [age] 15 or 16. Both of my older sisters and brother were all deeply involved in the hospitality scene so that’s where I started. After barbacking, and before I turned 18, which is the legal drinking age in Australia, I was promoted to coffees, which was a very big and important scene in Australia and still is.
But the second I got behind the bar as a barback, that’s exactly where I wanted to be. I loved it. I loved the teamwork. I loved the social aspect. I loved the hours. I loved the creativity. And the common path for career bartenders from Australia was to go to London to further their development. We still fall under the monarchy, so shared visas for Australians to the U.K. and vice versa were easy to get.
However, I didn’t want to take the normal path of going to London. Separately from bartending and hospitality, I was always very into American pop culture and sports. [My family] did a West Coast family vacation when I was 5, and that left an imprint on me. But New York [City] had always been in my head. I built it up as the place that I needed to go to, to try and conquer, so I took that path.
If going to New York was always the plan, what role did Milk & Honey play in your journey?
This was 2004, [and] I didn’t know about Milk & Honey. My best friend and business partner, Michael McIlroy, did something similar,coming [to NYC] from Belfast. But he actually did research, found out about Milk & Honey, reached out to Sasha ahead of time, and organized [his] visa that way.
I had no idea about Milk & Honey, I just thought I would get to New York, bounce around, find a bar doing interesting things cocktail-wise, and get a leg up that way. But it wasn’t as easy as that. In fact, the cocktail scene in New York back in 2004 was far inferior to the scene in London and I was disappointed I couldn’t find a bar. I was only 21, really eager to learn new things, and it took time to find a place doing anything halfway decent on the cocktail front.
About six months into being in New York, a good friend gave me a tip about this bar on Eldridge Street called Milk & Honey. I went down, and got sent away because I didn’t have a reservation, and came back and immediately knew this was where I needed to be. I got a phone number to call the next day, and it just so happened that Sasha Petraske picked up the phone and agreed to have lunch with me. And that’s where and how it started.
Which was a stroke of luck. And yeah, in 2004 the cocktail scene hadn’t blown up yet.
Yeah, exactly. Obviously, the internet hadn’t exploded with recommendations for bars and restaurants either. And in a big way, Sasha and Milk & Honey were anti-press. [Sasha] had been [on Eldridge Street] for four years [but Milk & Honey] hadn’t really gone mainstream in part because Sasha didn’t do interviews. He didn’t allow photos in there; he wanted to be as low-key as possible.
The explosion of the cocktail scene would soon be met with the explosion of food media. But you’re right, it was easy to stay under the radar back then. So did you have a master plan? Or were you just excited to learn?
Yes and no. Sasha hired both me and Michael McIlroy at the same time and it’s a testament to him putting together teams, because fast-forward 22 years later, we’re still best friends. We have 10 businesses together. I was the best man at his wedding last summer. So kudos to Sasha for putting us [together]! (laughs)
He’s a matchmaker, and what a skill and gift to you both! What do you think he saw in you two?
A big part of the appeal on Sasha’s end was the idea that the professional bartender existed outside of the U.S., [in this case] in Australia and the U.K. especially. Sasha had just come back from opening Milk & Honey London and he saw international, professional bartenders, not people filling time before a real job existed. The original Milk & Honey bartenders were brought over from Italy and they taught us a lot.
I was absolutely loving all of this knowledge, not just from Sasha, but from those original bartenders. There was nothing else for us at that point and we loved it, we were helping Milk & Honey expand and grow. We were very satisfied with our work and we were given freedom by Sasha to operate this venue.
At any point after starting out in New York did you think, it’s time to go home?
When I first moved to New York, I thought I was going to be away for maybe three, three-and-a-half years and then I’d go back to Melbourne with my New York knowledge and open something there. But I got entrenched in New York and in Milk & Honey, and I just loved the city. I loved the energy, I loved living here, I loved being part of the third- wave cocktail movement that was really starting to explode.
The idea of moving back to Australia never really popped up again. And yes, the plan was always for me and Mickey to open our own place. We started talking about it early on, but we weren’t in any rush to do it. We were very content at Milk & Honey. Like I said, [we were] given freedom and it was very fulfilling. But the ultimate aim was to open a bar, and then multiple bars, and possibly have some form of an empire going on.
Milk & Honey is such a big part of your story and part of your DNA in this city. Do you think you would still be in New York today if not for that place?
Good question. I think so, just because I love the city so much. I’m very glad that I’m still here in New York, and have everything that I have as a result of it.
Recently, you guys doubled the size of Attaboy. How’s it been going from having such a tiny space to something twice the size?
We’re in a residential building [that’s] only 500 square-feet, and for 30 years, even before Milk & Honey and Sasha, there was an artist that had the opposite space on the other side of the hallway with the exact same footprint and size, who finally gave it up. We had been operating Attaboy with huge wait lists every night for over 10 years, so we thought, this is going to be a win.
We wanted to make it Attaboy, but a bit updated in appearance, and the big idea was to open the space up over the weekend to get that wait list down from three hours, to maybe 30 minutes, which is great. It’s hard to say no to a lot of people over the course of a night.
Also, in terms of successful businesses in such a competitive market, to be able to host private events and buyouts and takeovers and pop-ups and tastings, all these things that we’ve always had to just say no to because our space was too small, for us, it was an opportunity to do something else. So we’ve been focusing on cocktail classes and educational events. It’s been an opportunity to do more fun things outside of just our regular excellent service that we strive for every night.
Since you mentioned the competitive landscape in New York…you guys are on the Lower East Side, an area packed with bars. Do you worry about competition? You always have wait lists, so are you still out there hustling, even with a very dedicated clientele?
Yes, 100 percent. You’ve got to keep evolving and adapting. [Even if] we have that unofficial legacy bar title since it was Milk & Honey previously, many modern classic [cocktails] were invented in that room and we’re a place cocktail travelers seek out.
But you have to stay relevant; you have to keep hustling and adapting. We’ve had great years, but we’ve also had lighter years. We keep working on strategy for our sake, and for the sake of our team. Our bartenders stay with us for a long time, and we’ve got to make sure that we continue to have a relevant and successful place for them to also be successful in.
What does it mean to leave your mark on the cocktail and bar industry? Because Attaboy did both through cocktails and by carrying on the legacy of Milk & Honey. And what does it mean to leave your mark on New York City?
That’s a great question. It feels amazing, even if it was such a gradual thing. There wasn’t any one singular moment where me and Michael sat back and were like, holy shit. The singular goal was to come over the biggest, baddest city on the planet and try to make my mark. It’s wild to sit back, 22 years after arriving on these shores and be like, yeah we did have an impact through Milk & Honey, through Attaboy, through these cocktails I created.
That continues to bring me such joy, seeing bars named after my drink, to still have people reaching out to me. I could do bugger-all for the rest of my life and know that on my gravestone there will be a mention of The Paper Plane and The Penicillin (laughs). It makes me feel amazing! Attaboy is now 13-years-old and we’re showing no signs of slowing down. I’d love to think that Attaboy, or some form of it, will exist at 134 Eldridge St. for decades to come.
That’s a lovely thought, the idea of long-term preservation.
If you look at the cocktail landscape, wouldn’t it be amazing if in New York we had more of these spots that you could still tour and see where cocktails were birthed? That’s what my hope is with the space on Eldridge Street, that it will continue to be this legacy bar for cocktail nerds for centuries to come.
Visit Attaboy seven days a week from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m., reservations recommended. 134 Eldridge St., Lower East Side, attaboy.us
