COLUMBIA — Ratio, a small plates restaurant focusing on Peruvian cuisine in northeast Columbia, has named its newest bar manager after longtime barman Grant McCloskey left the restaurant for a new venture.
Nathan Vaughan, who most recently led the cocktail program at Black Rooster in West Columbia, will take over at the upscale eatery along Spears Creek Church Road on April 10, after training under McCloskey.
"I've got big shoes to fill, but everyone's been really nice and already really welcoming to me," Vaughan said.
Vaughan has worked in bars around Columbia since he was a student at the University of South Carolina. He started as a bartender at Black Rooster when the restaurant opened in 2019 and eventually worked his way up to bar manager at the West Columbia Italian restaurant.
Outside of his work as a bartender, he helped direct a few seasons of "At The Addition," a virtual house show that featured livestreams of bands from around Columbia and the surrounding region.
Vaughan said he's most excited to learn more about pisco, a type of brandy produced in Chile and Peru, and to establish connections with diners at the restaurant. He said that he plans to also keep zero-proof drinks and non-alcoholic options on the cocktail menu.
"(Those) are sort of the wave right now ... I'll be working on a devoted mocktail list. I did at (Black) Rooster and I hope to do the same thing at Ratio," Vaughan said.
The announcement of Vaughan's hiring comes a week after McCloskey, who started Ratio's cocktail program when the restaurant opened in the fall of 2020, announced he'd be leaving the restaurant to work at The Hollow, a new wild game restaurant in the Vista.
McCloskey, alongside chef-owner Javier Uriarte, put Ratio on the map despite its distance from the city's downtown with an impressive food and drink menu and has drawn a consistent following in the northeast. The prominent Columbia bartender will head the cocktail program at the new Vista restaurant which opened at the beginning of March.
"Grant's been here since before we even opened and he's been great. He's like family to us and he's done a great job here," Uriarte told Free Times in a previous interview. "He's really come into his own in the last three-and-a-half years he's been here, and I'm happy for what he's going to do."
