Former soap opera star and Sehome High grad takes cocktails to a new level
Matt Benoit
To Matthew Twining, the perfect cocktail is the one that speaks to whatever moment and mood someone finds themselves in.
The 44-year-old Whatcom County resident — and owner of the downtown Bellingham bar Matthew’s Honest Cocktails — describes the cocktail as an honest lubricant for the social experience. And as a longtime bartender and former professional actor, he’s acquired a good handle on cultivating the right mood at the right time.
“I know [it’s the right cocktail] when I see people’s eyes, or when I see them take that first sip and then they just kind of sink into their chair,” Twining said.
Business has been steady since Matthew’s Honest Cocktails first opened in August 2022 in the former longtime Starbucks location at 132 E. Holly St. Twining and five other bartenders operate the modern and elegant watering hole, with the bar’s many windows beckoning patrons inside, seven days a week, at the corner of Holly Street and Railroad Avenue.
Living in the limelight
Twining’s journey to bar owner has had many plot twists. Born in La Jolla, California, Twining came to Whatcom County with his parents as a baby.
His father, who went on to become a successful financial adviser, used what money he had then to buy a small piece of property in Sudden Valley. It came with a barn, which is where the family lived for nine years, sans modern conveniences like television and running water.
The formative experience gave Twining an appreciation for family, friends and the little things in life. Another formative experience came from vacationing with his parents in Italy as a young boy. The trio encountered a band of gypsies and decided to live with them for several months. Twining said the experience awakened him to the power of words, music and performance — and the knowledge that art can be found everywhere.
His journey into acting began when he read his first play — William Shakespeare’s “A Comedy of Errors” — in grade school. When Twining attended Sehome High School, local thespian Teri Grimes was his drama teacher and cast him as a loveable hobo in his first play, “Scapino!”
Twining did additional stage work with the Bellingham Theatre Guild, and after graduating from Sehome in 1999, he moved to Los Angeles in 2000 to embark on an acting career.
“It was a massive learning curve for me,” he said.
Twining booked whatever acting gigs he could get, including direct-to-video horror films like 2003’s “Leeches!”
In 2004, Twining was cast as the “bad boy love interest” of a main character on the long-running ABC soap opera “One Life to Live,” necessitating a move to New York City. He remained there for three years and is still friends with his character’s “ex” – “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” actress Melissa Fumero.
The time in NYC, Twining said, allowed him to more properly cut his teeth as an actor, finding the many differences between television and Broadway acting in a sometimes humbling manner. He also gained brief bartending experience as a way to make additional money.
Back to the Wild West
In 2007, Twining moved back to LA. He continued acting in low-budget movies, including the 2006 kung fu film “The Adventures of Johnny Tao.” Twining was cast as the lead character, who uses his father’s old guitar to defeat an army of “donut-eating kung fu demons,” according to IMDb. Twining did his own stunts for the movie.
“Those were fun things to film,” he said of B movies. “You feel like you’re on top of the world when you’re on a set. There’s nothing like it.”
His second go-around in LA also led to life as a musician. As the songwriter, guitarist and vocalist in the band Odaal, Twining was able to frequently record and tour the West Coast with the band, which he describes as a four-piece group with a “folk punk” or “rattle pop” sound. The group is currently working on one of its final albums.
Twining was also able to use the money he’d earned acting to buy his own recording studio. Besides frequent band recordings, Twining’s studio was used for video game soundtracks and voiceovers for animated shows and commercials. Once, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons popped in to record a whiskey ad.
While working as a musician, Twining met the woman who’d become his wife. The couple had their first child in 2010 and now have three boys, ages 9, 11 and 14. The year after becoming a father, Twining felt coming back to his roots would be a better place to raise a family. He loved the geography and multiseasonal weather in Whatcom County, and his family was also here.
“I loved [acting],” he said. “But I hated the business part of it. I knew that it was time to engage in maybe a different side of business.”
A dream and a dram
After returning home, Twining found a passion for bartending and spirits after becoming involved with the Bellingham Bourbon Society.
“I started to understand whiskey and why the American cocktail culture was important,” he said, “and what it actually did, historically and culturally.”
Twining began bartending at the Silver Reef Casino and other places before finding a longtime home as bar manager at Bellingham’s Springhill Suites by Marriott, where he worked for seven years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the longtime Starbucks location at Railroad and Holly closed after several decades. The landlords didn’t want a bar to replace it, but Twining began what he said felt like an audition process to convince them of his idea for one in the space.
Once they agreed, Twining and a designer set about crafting an inviting cocktail bar that provides plenty of space to mingle, including a curved bar to encourage interactions. The location was also serendipitous for Twining: His father once ran a business nearby and was among the first-ever customers to the former Starbucks.
Since opening, Matthew’s Honest Cocktails has cultivated a loyal cast of regulars, in addition to college students wanting to impress a date or provide visiting parents a nice evening, Twining said. The bar features plenty of seasonal specialties, as well as nuanced variations on classic cocktails like the negroni, old fashioned and mojito.
Matthew’s Honest Cocktails also serves a “Dram of the Moment” — a specially selected and bottled whiskey courtesy of the Bellingham Bourbon Society; Matthew’s is the only bar in town that serves it.
Although Twining said he was initially hesitant to add his name to the bar’s title, he said its mention of honesty invokes what he’s learned from his time in acting and music.
“If you are not honest — if you’re disingenuous in your craft — people know,” he said. “Your audience is not dumb. You have to listen earnestly, and people will pick up on that. And people appreciate an honest listener — in acting, in music, certainly in bartending, but also in business.”
Twining said he hopes that honesty comes across in both the quality of his bar’s cocktails and the bartenders who pour them. A good bartender, he believes, should be a “master of moods,” helping stoke the coals of interaction that are the underlying reasons most people go out to drink.
And despite no longer being a professional actor, Twining hasn’t abandoned his first love: He performs in one or two plays a year with the Bellingham Theatre Guild. Last year, he received the guild’s Bentley Award for
Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Male Role.
Whether onstage or behind a bar, the challenge of communicating to an audience never gets old for Matthew Twining.