Max Reis
Mírate | Los Angeles
April 2024
Not every kid spends their childhood foraging for mushrooms with their dad and selling boxes of chanterelles to The French Laundry, but not every kid is Max Reis. The bartender’s career started in Napa at 14 years old when he got a gig at a local bakery. At 17, Reis moved down to Los Angeles for art school, joined a band, and started working at RockSugar in Century City. While there, he learned from some of the restaurant's cocktail consultants, practiced making cocktails at home, and eventually took a pay cut to work as a barback. And at 21, when someone called out sick, they finally threw him behind the stick.
After touring with his band, Reis returned to L.A.—with some bartending experience under his belt—and went to work at Gracias Madre and République with Bartender Shawn Lickliter in 2016. Reis fell in love with bartending—and République’s fast-paced farmers-market-driven cocktail program—learning about spirits, storytelling, and hospitality along the way. He returned to Gracias Madre full-time and, after several formative and educational trips to Oaxaca, took over the beverage program. Focused on building a conscientious, sustainable, and creative tequila and mezcal list, Reis worked with the team at Gracias Madre to remove many of their most popular, but unethical, brands from the backbar.
After the pandemic, Reis was approached by Restaurateur Matthew Egan and Chef Joshua Gil to join the opening team at Mírate and lead their new Mexican spirit-focused beverage program. Since opening in 2021, Reis has continued his work to promote and support ethically sourced, wide-ranging Mexican-made spirits—from tequila and mezcal, to sake and xtabentún—and has placed an emphasis on the education of his staff and customers, offering mezcal classes to other industry professionals as well.
