Suit: NY barkeep's arrest doesn't stop fiery stunt

[November 02, 2010]  NEW YORK (AP) -- A bartender once featured in "The Real Housewives of New York City" is taking more heat over a flaming liquor trick.

Despite a reckless-endangerment arrest in June, Albert Trummer tried the trick again last month, according to a lawsuit filed by one of his co-owners in a Manhattan bar.

"If I'm going to be arrested, it's going to be for real!" Trummer yelled as he tried to take a match to an Italian liqueur he had poured over the bar at Apotheke on Oct. 17, co-owner Heather Tierney said in a sworn statement accompanying her lawsuit. A staffer dumped water on the bar before anything caught fire, she said.

Trummer's lawyer didn't immediately return a call Monday. Trummer has said he's a mixologist, not "a pyrotechnic maniac."

Trummer was arrested June 13 after authorities said he sparked a huge fireball by pouring various liquors on the bar at the boite and setting the mixture aflame. He's pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges and is due back in court Nov. 9.

His co-owners pleaded with him to stop such antics, Tierney said in her court papers, but he has been "erratic," "belligerent and uncommunicative."

He came in around 1 a.m. Oct. 17, sliced the tops off four Champagne bottles, sprayed nearby patrons and staffers with the sparkling wine and opened two bottles of sambuca by smashing them on the edge of the bar, the papers said. Then he poured out the Italian liqueur and tried to light it on the bar, the papers said.

The suit, filed Friday, asked a court to ban Trummer from the bar. Tierney's lawyer didn't immediately return a call Monday.

Notwithstanding the dispute, the bar's website lauds the Austrian-born Trummer as a "cocktail artist" dedicated to crafting "the liquid equivalent to gourmet cuisine."

He and his fiery bar feat appeared in a May "Real Housewives" episode in which one of the reality show's stars, Countess Luann de Lesseps, goes on a date at Apotheke.

[Associated Press; By JENNIFER PELTZ]

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