Small towns shaken & stirred: How bartenders from Mokokchung to Moradabad are making their mark
Bartenders from beyond metros are shaping the drinks scene with homegrown ingredients and fresh perspectives, and India Bartender Week is proof of this shift.
The inaugural edition of India Bartender Week, held recently in Gurgaon, featured some impressive names. International superstar Erik Lorincz, commissioned to create a cocktail for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, was in attendance. So was Michito Kaneko, who is in the vanguard of Japanese bartending, along with influential industry heavyweights like Arijit Bose and Pankaj Balachandran.
Naturally, the audience included various stakeholders from India’s $17.5 billion bar and café industry. However, the most prominent attendees were young, ruddy-faced men and women from smaller towns across the country. Some already worked in bars around Delhi, while others had travelled from further afield. They packed the front rows at sessions covering everything from bourbon to indigenous liquors. Fittingly, the event was organised by celebrated mixologist Yangdup Lama, originally from Kurseong, and Minakshi Singh, co-founder of the award-winning Sidecar (Delhi) and Cocktails & Dreams Speakeasy (Gurgaon), along with Vikram Achanta of the beverage consultancy firm Tulleeho.
Beyond the metros
Delhi, Goa, and Bangalore may be driving India’s cocktail culture transformation, but many of its brightest bartenders hail from smaller towns. Santanu Chanda, who leads the bar at PVR Home in Delhi and has represented India at global bartending competitions, comes from Silchar. Govind Koranga, head bartender at the highly rated Americano in Mumbai, is from Bageshwar, Uttarakhand, while Aashi Bhatnagar, the first woman to represent India at the Diageo World Class competition, was born and raised in Moradabad. This year, about ten bartenders on the annual 30BestBars India list were from non-metro cities. As their numbers grow, they are also incorporating their cultural heritage into their craft.
Expanding the map of Indian bartending
Uttarakhand has traditionally supplied talent to the hospitality and F&B industries, says Nitin Tewari. Known as @mr.bartrender on Instagram, Tewari runs the Bar Kala Academy in Gurgaon in association with Bacardi. “But now, interest is emerging from Tier 2 and 3 cities across India. I recently conducted a session in Lucknow, and 90 participants signed up at short notice,” he says.
Talented bartenders also get noticed quickly. “A hospitality professional would have to wait much longer for the same recognition,” says Singh. She believes that bartenders from non-metros, especially those from the Himalayan states and the Northeast, are enriching India’s cocktail culture by introducing spirits enthusiasts to lesser-known flavours and ingredients. Singh’s latest venture, The Brook (Gurgaon), celebrates the Himalayan region with regular ‘Pahari’ bar takeovers. “Our team is a mix of people from the hills, and we source ingredients from all over—Sikkim, Nepal, and even Assam. They take great pride in their cultural roots and don’t want them to be ignored,” she says.
Flavours of home
Independent bar consultant Jishnu AJ, from Peramangalam near Thrissur, Kerala, says his upbringing significantly influences his creativity. Like many bartenders, he started his career in 2013 as a server at a five-star hotel in Mumbai before transitioning into bartending. At chef Niyati Rao’s Mumbai restaurant Ekaa, which made the extended list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2023, Jishnu researched 2,000 ingredients from across India, including those from Kerala, to create Dwadash, a cocktail menu inspired by Ayurveda. His ingredients include eucalyptus leaves, camphor, and kapur khachri (perfume ginger). For Bombay Daak, Rao’s ‘daru-chakna’ bar, he developed drinks like Finding Feni (gin, feni, and mango curry) and the Kerala-inspired Naadan Kallu (tequila, toddy, pickled lemon, and green peppercorn).
“At Ekaa, we had Mountain Pepper, a cocktail made almost entirely of foraged ingredients. Much of that was inspired by meals my grandmother cooked in Kerala. She would gather certain leaves, herbs, and roots from around our home and add them to our food,” he recalls.
Mixing memory and mixology
Rohil Kalita, head bartender at Bangalore’s Bar Spirit Forward, grew up in Shillong and values the diversity of his team. A finalist in the 2022 Diageo Reserve World Class competition, he incorporated khar—a staple of Assamese cuisine made from the ashes of banana peel—with smoky malt whisky in his competition entry. His latest recruit, Ishwar Yarlagadda from Vijayawada, is passionate about pickles and is experimenting with a picante-style drink featuring pickles from his home state.
Alemchizung Jamir, the first member of Nagaland’s Ao tribe to compete at the Diageo Reserve World Class finals, ranked among India’s top three bartenders last year. Often seen in his tribe’s traditional attire, Jamir, who grew up in Mokokchung and now helms the bar at Lucia in Pune, says he wants to tell stories of Nagaland’s culture through his cocktails. “The Western Ghats and Nagaland are full of spices and ingredients that you won’t find anywhere else,” he says. One of his signature creations, the Still Flow Martini, is a “minus-degree” (ultra-cold) cocktail made with gin, lemon peel oil, and a rice vermouth infused with Semnostachya menglaensis, a ‘sticky rice’ herb from Nagaland. “It is often used as a rejuvenative and has this lovely toasted grain-like quality,” he says. “My mother would make a concoction out of it when I was sick. That’s where my inspiration came from.”
