Toby Maloney is Philly’s James Beard Award-winning bartender — times 2

Saturday night, Philadelphia-based mixologist Toby Maloney won a James Beard Award for his book The Bartender’s Manifesto: How to Think, Drink, and Create Cocktails Like a Pro, coauthored by Emma Janzen.

The win is Maloney’s second Beard Award. In 2015, he won for outstanding bar program at the Violet Hour cocktail bar in Chicago, which he cofounded. The Bartender’s Manifesto was inspired by his work there.

» READ MORE: Nearly 60 new restaurants are on the way in the Philly area

With his win for the book, “it feels like a big piece of the puzzle got put into place,” said Maloney, 54, bartender in residence at Hop Sing Laundromat at 1029 Race St. in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. “It’s come full circle.”

At Hop Sing, Maloney works most Fridays and Saturdays, serving a maximum of 24 patrons a night — all vetted by the owner, who is known only as Lê. Maloney can work from his menu but prefers to query customers on their preferences and create original drinks. This is all in the name of research. Maloney said he is working on a proposal for a new book.

“Not per se,” Maloney said. “It’s more of a playing field for some theories and practices and such.”

“I’m lucky to be here in this magical time of food and drink,” he said. “It’s cool to be part of it, and I didn’t know that I could eat as much hummus per month as I am right now. It seems to be at so many different places, and it’s really amazing.”

“You know, there’s not much difference; I mean, they’re all adventurous and thoughtful and they run the gamut from fun and whimsical to really seriously hard-core. I feel it’s a sophisticated and thoughtful drinking population.”

He said he was 9 or 10.

“The first drink that I ever remember was, I would say, the late ’70s in Juarez, Mexico, and my parents had given me a few pesos to go run around while they were doing some stuff. It was like 120 degrees out. I found a guy with an Igloo cooler and he had a guitar strap to hang it around his neck. I gave him some pesos and he opened it up. He had a salt shaker and a lime and he shook the shaker across the top of the beer, squeezed the lime in it, and handed it to me.

“I took that first sip of that freezing cold beer with the salt and the lime, and it is seared into my memory as one of the most delicious things I’ve ever had in my life.” (He said he had to “relearn” to enjoy beer when he was older because there was no salt, lime, or high temperature involved.)

“The first time I remember having a bad drink, I was probably right around that age. My dad drank rum and Cokes. I was at a party and my uncle was pouring drinks for people and I ordered a rum and Coke.

“Without tasting it, I said, ‘Put some more rum in it,’ and he put more rum in it because I didn’t think he’d put any rum in. I was 9 years old! Well, he had put rum in it, and the second amount of rum that he put in it made it undrinkable. That was my first unbalanced drink, where I realized that the proportions of things are of utmost importance.”

“Everything is cyclical. We went from cocktail bars that were very much like Milk & Honey and Death & Co. and the Violet Hour and Hop Sing, which are about the rules and decorum. We had just come out of the horrifically bad drinking of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, so there had to be a complete change in the paradigm of drinking culture. We completely changed what you were drinking.

“Instead of sour mix, everything was fresh. It was about classics and technique. Then about 10 years after that happened, people started doing really high-end cocktails in more relaxed settings. I think there’s going to be a new outcropping of bars that are cocktail meccas — another rash of really serious cocktail bars.”