This is Megan Turcotte.
Megan is 30 years old. She speaks French, English, and Spanish. She grew up in Pincourt, close to Montreal’s West Island, and studied French cooking.
When Megan was little, she dreamed to open her own restaurant. She started working at a Mcdonald's for 5 years and worked in kitchens for another 7 years. At some point, she realized that if she really wanted to open her own place, she would have to understand the front of the house as well so she transitioned to the service team. What was first something she had to learn to attain her goal turned out to be something she actually enjoyed. At some point, the restaurant she was working for needed a bartender and asked her to do it. She gave it a try and really liked it. It was a good way for her to put into practice her cooking knowledge while staying in the front of the house. It wasn’t until she started to work at Montreal’s famous whiskey bar Burgundy Lion that she got into cocktails.
Megan has been working with them for 3 years and is now responsible for their bar program. She is in charge of creating their cocktail menu, the cocktail specials, and chooses what goes in the back bar other than whiskey (they have over 800 bottles of scotch so there’s a person full time on this!). She is also quite involved in the community through her job. Every month they have a special cocktail paired with a charity and part of the sales goes to that organization. She would like to bring these collaborations another step forward and create year-round partnership with certain charities. She is currently working on that.
Overall, as much as Megan loves bartending, cooking is still a very big part of her life and she is not closed to the idea of going back to work in a kitchen at some point. She is also starting to think about working a bit less on the floor and step away from making cocktails in order to learn about administration and management.
To be quite frank, we hope she will open her own venue one day as she is extremely skilled in what she does and has a very humble and authentic service approach that would make her place no doubt one of the most hospitable in town.
A little bit more about Megan...
The three words that describe her best: sarcastic – loyal – hard working
Life motto: Pick your battles.
What she loves most about bartending: Talking to people. As much as she likes creating drinks and learning about spirits, the social aspect of the job is definitely what she likes more.
The biggest lesson her job taught her: Never judge people by the way they look. You never know who you have in front of you. Bartending gives you an amazing opportunity to meet such a diverse array of people and to open your eyes to how all individuals are different.
An advice she offers to younger bartenders: Don’t rush into things. You better learn how to make it well before you make it fast.