How This Mixologist Turns Soup Into Inventive New Cocktail Recipes

In Person of Interest we talk to the people catching our eye right now about what they’re doing, eating, reading, and loving. Next up is Jae Bae, a New York–based mixologist and influencer who draws inspiration from iconic international soups.

Like most kids plunging into a bowl of noodle soup, Korean American beverage influencer Jae Bae remembers slurping every last buckwheat strand from his mother’s homemade naengmyeon, only to abandon the chilled, complex broth of beef stock, kimchi brine, sesame oil, and fresh pear. He chalks up the error in culinary judgement to the folly of youth.

“My mother would warn me, ‘The broth is the best part!’” recalls the now 28-year-old Queens, NY, native, who goes by @Jarbae on Instagram. In early 2024, he started to wonder how naengmyeon would taste as a cocktail. Or Hong Kong egg tarts, even Mexican chilaquiles. Out of curiosity, he developed a video series in which he adapts nourishing Asian soups and other cozy dishes from around the world into their cocktail counterparts.

Drawing from classic cocktail techniques Bae picked up from a college stint at Boston’s Hojoko Japanese Tavern—plus intel from canonical reference texts like Liquid Intelligence and The Flavor Thesaurus—he reimagines, for example, Vietnamese pho as an umami-rich margarita of sous vide pho-spiced tequila and dashes of fish sauce.

“These dishes have been around forever, and I am not in any way trying to take credit for the flavors,” says Bae, who works in public health by day, while his beverage pursuits, which include bartending pop-ups and consulting for liquor brands like Guilder’s Gin and Kokoro Tequila, remain extracurricular. For now, his main mixology platform is on Instagram, where he broadcasts to 26,000 followers and counting.

The “bright and comforting” flavor of a sinigang sour is an homage to the unofficial national dish of the Philippines, with a toasted-rice-water ice cube studded with halved cherry tomatoes and chopped red onion that melts into pork bouillon-washed tequila mixed with puckering tamarind syrup. And of course, Bae has atoned for a childhood of broth evasion with his savory naengmyeon martini, mixed with sesame-washed gin and pear-infused vermouth.

Bae’s concoctions are as visually striking as they are inventive, catching the eye with juicy hues and quirky garnishes like a spoonful of boba or a cleanly severed pear stem. Producing his recipe videos from his tiny Astoria, Queens apartment kitchen, Bae takes care to include respectful gestures like phonetically attuned pronunciations and research on the cultural background of the inspiration dishes—these drinks go beyond mere sentimental attachment.

“People seem to feel so seen when I recreate their favorite foods, and I never want to take that for granted,” he says. Bon Appétit speaks with Bae about how his musical training and science education inform his creative process, what it means to carve out space for cultural conversations, and how he engages his audiences with respect and curiosity.

One of my idols in the beverage industry is Suwincha “Chacha” Singsuwan, the beverage director at Bangkok Supper Club in Manhattan, who just won a Michelin Guide New York Exceptional Cocktails award. Her drinks are somewhat inspired by Thai or Southeast Asian cuisine: the Fish Sauce includes ingredients like Napa cabbage broth, fish sauce, and fresh pear, while the Truffled Pandan is a concoction of truffle oil-washed gin and pandan syrup. To see an Asian-immigrant woman lead an award-winning beverage program with these kinds of flavors in a white-dominated space is so meaningful to me. [Based on recent data, only about 4% of bartenders in the United States are Asian, while 65% are white.] After all, another Asian-immigrant woman, my own mother, first introduced these flavors to me. I finally feel like I can go to a bar where I can understand the cultural significance of the ingredients. I’ve never had that experience before.

Growing up, I played the violin and wanted to be a classical violinist. Then in my senior year of high school, my mother had the typical immigrant conversation with me about what I needed to do to make money. So I went into the sciences. In the process, I almost forgot about my creative side. But now I’m discovering how my love of music translates into artistry in other aspects of my life, and especially in the beverage space. I also like to sing, and I’ve performed Korean love songs with Brooklyn’s AAPI Jazz Collective. Jazz or any music your practice can be like developing cocktails. I once created a potato-chip-and-caviar-inspired martini with a potato chip-infused vodka that was delicious and really did taste like chips. But then I decided to clarify vermouth with crème fraîche [a classic accoutrement for caviar]. It tasted terrible, like sour cream champagne. What was I expecting? It was bad. It happens a lot more than successes. But I was also in the moment.

One thing I like to remember is that the recipes aren’t just for me. At the end of my videos, I always ask for suggestions on soups or dishes to turn into cocktails. The Asian diaspora always chimes in, and as a result sinigang is still my most requested cocktail recipe. One ask was for a cocktail based on filter coffee from India, which is chicory root coffee with milk and sugar, very smoky and earthy. I had so many people in the comments say things like, “I’m from South India. I drink this every morning. This is so cool to see.” Without my voiceovers where I provide some cultural history of the inspiration dish, the line of appropriation could get hazy.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a classic martini or margarita, but I just think there’s room for different stories in the beverage space. Since everything is so crazy expensive right now, it’s important to consider making these drink experiences worthwhile. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of inspiration adapting Asian dishes, soups or not. Speaking for myself, I grew up around Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Indian and many other cuisines. I’m always asking, “What’s this dish? How do you pronounce it? What are the ingredients?” Having those experiences for as long as I can remember really shaped Jarbae, and how it provides an opportunity for me to give different cultures and their foods as much visibility as I possibly can.

Speed Round Questions with Jae Bae

Go-to drink at a new bar? Mezcal Negroni

What’s in? What’s out?
IN: Savory cocktails (of course), overall bar vibe instead of over-the-top technical drinks, drinks at 7pm and home by 10pm.
OUT: No snack with my martini, a salt rim around the entire glass, music too loud to talk

What’s your favorite spirit? Undisputedly…mezcal

Do you have a go-to life hack or technique you’d like to share? Wrap your bottle of wine with a wet paper towel and stick it in the freezer horizontally. It’ll chill your bottle in 10 minutes and no weird shoving the bottle into a bowl of definitely not enough ice.

Speakeasies: Yay or nay? A resounding yes. Although I fear I sometimes look like I’m about to break into someone’s house looking for the entrance to a speakeasy.