The memorial was gutting, nevertheless it was additionally one hell of a celebration.
Restaurateur Ethan Stowell secured the occasion area, a transformed warehouse in SoDo. Organizers shelved preliminary plans for a bouncy fortress, one thing greatest loved in forgiving waistbands: Rocky Yeh would have demanded any celebration of his singularly expansive life be a dressy affair. He additionally undoubtedly would have demanded the recent canine stand, the jamon iberico carving station, and the picture sales space. To not point out the desk stacked together with his most popular late-night booze antidote, Cup Noodles—and the ice luge formed just like the carton of on the spot ramen.
Bartenders from Rocky’s favourite Seattle cocktail locations shook drinks, and three tattoo artists stayed practically as busy. Possibly 50 individuals left the service with new ink: a dumpling with wings; a set of Mickey Mouse ears that mentioned “Rocky.” Jenn Tosatto, a bar supervisor from Kansas Metropolis, opted for one in all her beloved pal’s signature phrases, “Order the entire menu,” on her inside proper arm.
The group surged above 550 individuals, together with bartenders who flew in from Florida, New York, even London. Some wore enamel pins that depicted Rocky in white, full with wings and halo, arms upraised. He sports activities the identical exuberant stance on the evening’s commemorative koozies, besides he’s carrying a Seahawks jersey, celebrating a perpetual win any time somebody cracks open a chilly beer.
“Rocky had FOMO greater than anyone else,” remembers Jim Romdall, one in all a bunch of shut pals who organized this soiree. Their objective: A bash so spectacular, its honoree would look down from the heavens and rue his premature departure as a lot as his assembled company did.
Rocky Chien Wen Yeh was simply 42 years previous when he collapsed from coronary heart failure inside his College District townhouse on December 1, 2019. A connector extraordinaire with deep reserves of empathy and humor, he spent his first decade of maturity attempting to reconcile himself to the kind of profession his upbringing had templated for him. As an alternative, he discovered his non secular house within the cocktail world, changing into the hyperlink between producers and practitioners of high-end liquor. In recent times, he crisscrossed the nation and traveled far past it on behalf of the French firm Maison Ferrand.
Tales about Rocky circulate sooner than pictures of pineapple rum. There have been the costume-driven Husky soccer bets, and an annual celebration dubbed Goutmas: a two-day feast for members of Seattle’s hospitality business too slammed to make it house for the vacations. When Rocky famously ordered each merchandise on a restaurant’s menu, he would drop extra meals off to pals working busy shifts at a close-by bar, usually en path to his second or third dinner of the evening.
Buddies going by onerous instances recall grand gestures, just like the time Rocky prompt a burger run…to In-N-Out in California. However he additionally overperformed in joyful moments. Jon Krier, a longtime pal, recounts how Rocky was not solely the very best man in his first wedding ceremony—he additionally catered the reception, helped Krier’s then-fiancee select her wedding ceremony costume; when she discovered a dream robe out of her worth vary, he picked up the tab as a present. At a unique wedding ceremony, Rocky confirmed up with an excellent soaker stuffed with negronis.
For a man who loomed giant within the cocktail world, Rocky’s identify doesn’t reverberate a lot with lay drinkers. Nevertheless, his affect quietly pervades most of the greatest bars in America, the place patrons (a minimum of pre-Covid) would possibly discover cask-aged rums, the sort you sip slightly than chug on spring break. Or maybe geek out on a tiki cocktail, as colourful and thoroughly assembled as Rocky’s huge assortment of Hawaiian shirts.
Nothing about Rocky’s upbringing—first in California, then in Washington’s Tri-Cities—prompt he’d discover a trajectory in nightlife. However then, cocktails have a approach of attracting individuals with curious minds, life fanatics with an excessive amount of brio to sit down behind a desk. Even when that’s what’s anticipated of them.
In 2003, Ethan Stowell wasn’t but a prolific restaurateur, however an formidable 29-year-old whose new restaurant, Union, injected Seattle’s restaurant panorama with unfamiliar kinetic bravado. Rocky’s IT job left him loads of psychological power to pour into the web culinary discussion board eGullet. Right here, his urge for food for excellent meals and love of thought of dialogue took maintain. Below the deal with Rockdoggydog, he traded countless restaurant assessments amongst a group of equally obsessed Seattle diners, most of whom liked Union as a lot as he did.
Within the restaurant’s heyday, Stowell estimates Rocky got here in possibly 5 nights per week. A kitchen stuffed with hypercreative cooks, lots of whom would go on to outline our subsequent wave of eating, embraced the problem of crafting off-menu meals for superusers just like the eGullet crew. “It was our playground there,” remembers Traca Savadogo, a fellow eGullet diner. Finally Rocky even felt snug slipping into the kitchen and sticking round for after-hours workers karaoke.
At first, he targeted extra on meals than on Union’s L-shaped bar, the place Keith Waldbauer was pushing the cocktail program to replicate a renaissance occurring throughout the nation. However his basic drinks drew Rocky in. Quickly he was simply hanging out on the bar, absorbing each attainable piece of details about what went on there.
Union opened the identical 12 months Seattle bar legend Murray Stenson dusted off the recipe for a Final Phrase cocktail and educated a nationwide highlight on Zig Zag Cafe, a small spot on the Pike Hillclimb. Rocky and Waldbauer bedrocked their friendship over evenings spent exploring the motion taking maintain behind a only a few Seattle bars. “For those who went to Zig Zag in these early days,” remembers Waldbauer, “you’ll have seen your entire bar high ringed by bartenders with notebooks.”
Again at Union he created a drink in Rocky’s honor and enshrined it on the cocktail record. Rum wasn’t but Rocky’s signature, so the Yeh, Yeh, Yeh packed two and a half ounces of Woodford Reserve bourbon, smoothed over by blanc and rouge Lillet. Rocky appreciated to order it because the Me, Me, Me.
He wished to be taught extra about this world. “That’s all he ever did in life was be taught stuff,” Jim Romdall remembers. By 2007, Romdall labored at Vessel, a slip of an area on Fifth Avenue that bolstered Seattle’s nationwide cocktail cred. Rocky requested, Can I be your barback on Monday nights? You don’t must pay me. He was the best-dressed man in Seattle working drinks and bussing tables. Rocky carried enterprise playing cards that merely mentioned “bon vivant,” and in 2008, flew to New Orleans for his first Tales of the Cocktail, the annual business gathering. It wasn’t but the weeklong combo of bacchanalia and sponsorship-drenched seminars it’s grow to be, nevertheless it was a convergence of the craft cocktail vanguard from throughout the nation. Throughout that blurry romp of days (and even blurrier nights), Rocky’s consciousness expanded: Cocktails might be greater than a factor he liked. They might be his complete life.
He talked about medical college, a profession he knew would carry his mother and pop loads of delight, however did so with dwindling enthusiasm. Working in IT at a medical analysis arm of a college was nonetheless a job dad and mom might perceive. Rising up thus far exterior the spirits world, Rocky’s youthful brother Ryan remembers, his household understood it as “the seedy underbelly of tradition—the mafia and the yakuza.” Rocky spent one other 12 months balancing each his day and evening personas however by subsequent 12 months’s Tales, he knew for certain. He was going to give up his day job.
Ryan Yeh was all of 10 years previous, minding his personal enterprise, studying a e book within the household’s basement, when his older brother Rocky barged in to interrupt. Typical large brother stuff, besides most don’t carry alongside an armful of Shakespeare’s Globe performs. As Ryan remembers it, Rocky dropped books in his lap and informed him to complete Hamlet by tomorrow. “For those who don’t, I’m gonna beat your ass.” Ryan invariably accomplished these impromptu assignments; in any case, his brother had six years and lots extra kilos on him. “He had a perverse enjoyment of ensuring I used to be well-read.”
Rocky was only one 12 months previous when he emigrated from Taiwan together with his dad and mom in 1978. Although his given identify was Chien Wen, he all the time mentioned he picked his American identify after watching The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons that performed in numerous airport gates and lounges in the course of the journey. He appreciated the flying squirrel; he pushed his new moniker till his mother and pop relented.
The Yehs lived in California, within the Orange County city of Tustin. When he was six, he turned an enormous brother to Ryan. Rising up, Rocky absorbed his dad’s love of planes and his mother’s ardor for musicals. Each boys took full benefit of dwelling 20 minutes from Disneyland. Whilst an grownup, the theme park hovered close to the highest of a seemingly countless roster of passions—trains, historical past, sports activities, video video games, documentaries, haberdashery.
When Rocky was a youngster, his father, who had labored in avionics, received a brand new job within the financial ecosystem that surrounds the previous Hanford nuclear web site. The household moved to Richland, then a city of 33,000, in Washington’s agricultural southeastern nook. Transferring in the midst of highschool wasn’t straightforward, Rocky’s pal Christine Rodgers remembers. Making individuals like him was his coping mechanism. “As an alternative of being shy, he selected to be outgoing.”
At Richland Excessive College, Rocky performed violin within the orchestra and spent lunch hours engrossed in Magic the Gathering with fellow followers in an empty classroom. Whilst a teen, he abhorred busy work, balancing a lackluster GPA with top-level standardized take a look at scores. He wished to be appreciated, remembers Rodgers, and wished individuals to love him. Again then, says his brother, “You would see the prototype model of Rocky.”
The true expression of him emerged on the College of Washington (Husky fandom would grow to be one in all his defining qualities). Endlessly industrious, Rocky took Working Begin courses again in Richland to stockpile school credit even earlier than he arrived on campus.
He liked Seattle immediately. “I’ve by no means lived anyplace else that screams ‘that is my place’ extra,” he would say in an interview practically a decade later. Rocky had deliberate to finish a mixed MD/PhD program, however one youthful transfer as an undergrad derailed these intentions.
Rocky had left the dorms for a scholar residence. As his brother tells it, working down a flight of stairs and round a nook to examine his laundry appeared much less environment friendly than merely leaning over this second-floor balcony to attempt to peer into the laundry room window beneath. He overbalanced and fell to the bottom face-first.
“One in every of his eyes was mainly crippled after that,” says Ryan Yeh. Rocky finally did pursue that demanding graduate coursework, however when he received to the surgical a part of his coaching, his lack of depth notion meant he struggled to carry out procedures rapidly sufficient.
He shifted from one STEM career to a different and took a job in IT for the College of Washington gastroenterology division. Later, Christine Rodgers, his highschool classmate, ended up working in the identical constructing. She remembers her pal whiling away the times in a basement workplace stuffed with servers. “However Rocky lived to be round individuals.”
Today, Erik Trickett can’t even keep in mind what metropolis he was in when he noticed the telltale rum. He’d been flying throughout, doing cocktail occasions as a model rep, and located himself in a small Midwestern airport (Omaha? Iowa?) with an hour layover to kill. He plunked himself down at an airport bar between his two gates. That’s when he observed one thing out of the odd: some extravagant bottles from the model generally known as Plantation Rum lined up on the again bar. (This summer season, its dad or mum firm, Maison Ferrand, introduced it’ll rename its line of Caribbean cane-based spirits since “Plantation” carries some problematic connotations.)
Encountering spectacular spirits of any variety at an airport bar is just not regular, Trickett explains. “Not to mention seeing actually implausible expressions of these spirits.” Not solely that, the bartender spoke fairly knowledgeably when Trickett inquired about them. He was floored—“I’ve been to rum bars the place the bartender wasn’t aware of these.”
A lightbulb went off for Trickett, regarding a fellow highway warrior. He requested the person pouring his drink, “Do you occur to know a man named Rocky?”
The bartender appeared over his shoulder. “Rocky Yeh? Oh yeah!”
When Rocky leapt into the spirits world, he briefly thought of proudly owning a bar, however his love of each firm and extra pointed him towards a life on the highway repping manufacturers. Finally he scored a job with Maison Ferrand, the Cognac home turned rum producer. He spent extra nights away than he did at house, hitting up festivals and tiki gatherings and big-city cocktail meccas. However even on this airport, says Trickett, “he was going to guarantee that this child with zero coaching was falling in love with rum.”
Rocky’s pal Jabriel Donohue was additionally a model rep on the time and remembers texting his pal solely to be taught the 2 Seattleites each occurred to be in New York (or San Francisco, or Portland) that day. Alighting in metropolis after metropolis, Rocky constructed an prolonged household among the many bar group and bolstered these relationships with a gradual stream of glad birthday texts, large dinners, and heartfelt, if unsolicited, opinions about large life decisions supplied over drinks. On this mode, the various sides of his persona coalesced.
His job was to journey, collect individuals collectively and foster nice instances, the type that promoted the actual spirits in his portfolio. As Donohue places it, “Rocky didn’t must do something to be a model ambassador. He simply needed to be Rocky.” Maison Ferrand gave Rocky an uncommon stage of freedom, and an uncommon twin function that straddled gross sales and evangelism. The proper setup for a consummate multitasker and innate host repelled by busy work and center administration.
“Numerous instances, you get these individuals who work for a model, they usually’re all concerning the model,” says Jenn Tosatto, the bar supervisor who went house to Kansas Metropolis after Rocky’s memorial with a brand new tattoo. Because of Rocky’s travels, the individuals he counted as pals numbered, actually, within the 1000’s.
Rocky by no means formally labored behind the stick, however he intuited the essence of hospitality—that folks have to be seen and cared for. That the artwork of tending bar differs from the act of blending drinks.
Almost a 12 months later, pals nonetheless tag Rocky on Fb with regularity, as they eat dumplings that will meet together with his approval, or when social media algorithms churn up images of bygone shenanigans. Keith Waldbauer reminds himself to examine in on pals, the way in which Rocky all the time did. In Maison Ferrand workers conferences, somebody will invariably pipe as much as ask, “What would Rocky consider this?” Throughout the shutdown, Traca Savadogo channeled her pal who taught her a lot within the Union days as she ordered 14 bouquets from a Pike Place Market flower vendor, and despatched them to varied pals, every with a handwritten observe. “He was a king of making magical moments like that.”
Jabriel Donohue was the one who discovered Rocky in his townhouse the evening after he died. The medical expert would later cite coronary heart failure, a “pure trigger” of a life in overdrive. Donohue, Waldbauer, and Jim Romdall have been amongst a only a few pals who attended the household’s small ceremony, together with kin from Taiwan and Japan and California. However Rocky’s inside circle knew his bartending household would wish a remembrance of their very own. Maison Ferrand donated a funds, and booze, for that bash in SoDo. On the behest of the group, Ryan Yeh requested his dad and mom in the event that they wish to be there; Tim and Helen Yeh mentioned sure, and booked a flight throughout the Cascades from Richland.
The evening had no formal program, no remarks till the top, when Rocky’s father took the mic. The ’90s rap and glad dialog, the clatter of ice in shakers—every part fell silent. The company virtually unconsciously shaped a hoop across the bespectacled gray-haired engineer in a black swimsuit. Rocky’s mom stood subsequent to him, two grieving dad and mom in costume garments, encircled by full-hearted proof of their elder son’s legacy.
Tim Yeh thanked these lots of of individuals for welcoming his son into their lives. The group responded with emotional applause. Then Spotify kicked again in with a tune chosen at random from the evening’s playlist: “When You Want Upon a Star.”
Rocky himself couldn’t have deliberate it higher.
