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.
