The Ten: Tatjana Sendzimir

Name and job title? Tatjana Sendzimir, Bar Manager, FAM

Where were you born, and where do you live now? Linz, Austria, and London, England

How you describe what you do? I’m the bar manager at FAM, the UK brand ambassador for Singani 63, 1/3 of Threeafter3, and somehow also still an Actor and Writer.

How much did you spend on your last cup of coffee? Nothing, Chelsie Bailey bought me my last cup of coffee that I didn’t make for myself at FAM, but otherwise whatever a flat white costs at Ripley and Lambert.

What is one ingredient that is crucial to life? Love. Ain’t got shit without that. Also Singani 63. It’s my bartender ketchup.

What does a culinary system mean to you? It’s a way of nurturing your community with the gifts that you have to offer in a way that tells a story and literally feeds and waters you, like a plant. I basically think we’re all just plants with lots of feelings and ideas.

How does your immediate locale affect your work? It influences every single thing, the bar I’d have in Dalston is very different than the one I’d have in Rye, Cape Cod, Key West, or New York City, or even Soho, but they’d all use the specific environment and spirit in a way that serves the community to it’s best advantage and make it a place that the locals can call home, whatever that home is.

Where do you draw inspiration from, in your work? Pretty much everything. Books, music, theatre, art, my personal history, my family history, whoever I’m in love with at the time, whoever I want to be in love with. I’m obsessed with being a human being and how fucking weird, terrifying and wonderful it is and I just want my work to reflect that. That sounds mad but it’s sort of how my brain works. ADHD basically means my mind is constantly running about finding a new adventure and trying to figure everything out, all of the time. So my work perpetually echos that.

What impact do you want to have?

I want to be a better person everyday than I was the day before and I want to inspire others to try to do the same. Also I want inspire everyone to actually be a feminist and anti-racist, not just say they are. Basically let’s all be better and kinder and just don’t be a dick head.

What change do you want to see in the culinary system? I want us to grasp the long term consequences of our decisions and also be simpler. Paring things back yields vastly more than you’d expect. Also I want more people to drink Singani 63, mainly because I love it so fucking much and I want to find it more places so I can drink more of it.

We ask all our interviewees to send us two photos: one of themselves and one that represents their work. The picture of Tatjana is by Luke Fontana. The picture of the drink is by Veronika Casarova from the Threeafter3 event at FAM