This is Darien Hamedani
Darien is 24 years old. She is from a small town called Newmarket about 45 minutes North of Toronto and moved to Montreal for the first time in 2014. She is the first person in her family to live in Quebec.
The story of how Darien came upon making drinks is a pretty funny one. In December 2015, she got a job at a restaurant in Toronto. The bar manager liked her and decided to give her a try at the bar. However, Darien had lied on her resume and she had no idea how to make a cocktail. The manager clearly knew about it, so he asked her to make a mojito. Darien got all the ingredients right, to the exception that she added triple sec to it. Kind of luckily for her, she got busted and was put to the task of making lemonades until she could balance acidity and sugar. Then she was allowed to play with fruits. And finally, alcohol. Least to say, she wondered for a while why she wanted to bartend at first, not impressed as she was by making lemonades all night long!
Darien likes to learn on her own. She hears or reads about a place and will actually travel the world to experience it. She went to New Orleans to learn about cocktails, to Italy to learn about Amari, to Poland to learn about vodka, etc. There seems to be both a match made in heaven and in hell for Darien and Poland. She had some exquisite stories about her trips there, but we will let you ask her next time you see her or when you meet her.
Darien is one of these people that inherently have something hospitable about them. She is naturally shy and not very talkative, but there is something in her presence that makes you want to connect with her and listen to what she has to say, as few the words may be.
If you want to meet Darien, you can find her behind the bar at Still Life. She is also the co-founder of Social Drink Tasting.
A little bit more about Darien
The three words that describe her best are –
Adventurous / curious / chaotic
Her life moto –
Humanize your emotions. Treat your emotions as if they were guests at your door. Let them in, sit down with them, see what they want because if you don’t, they are gonna come back at less and less convenient times. Address them properly, and decide when it’s time for them to go.
One thing she has yet to do on her life bucket list –
Go to Iran, where her father is from.
The most magical place she ever visited –
Iceland. It just does not look from this planet, it was hours of jaw dropping moments.
Or the Canadian West Coast.
Her interests outside of work –
To knit. Anything with fibers.
What she likes most about our community –
The unspoken camaraderie. It’s the one career you look at your peers and you can think that you actually found your people. People like you, that want to make other people feel better and welcomed. And that transcends border