Cocktail Craftsman
Nathan Baggs has come a long way since his first attempts at making a cocktail as a 21-year-old bartender at a ski resort in Idaho.
“The first order that came in was for a gin and tonic,” he says. “I leaned over to the manager and said, ‘OK, but how do you make the tonic?’ They still laugh at me for that.”
Despite that rookie gaffe, Baggs wasn’t a newbie to the world of food and drink. Raised in Orange County, California, by a Japanese mom and American dad, he took his first step into the restaurant business at 19, shortly after his father passed away.
“My mom was distraught and needed something to focus on. She was a great cook and so we ended up moving to Idaho, right in the Panhandle, and opening a restaurant together,” Baggs says. “I was in charge of everything, even ordering beers, despite not being old enough to drink. We actually pulled it off, and I ran it for a year and a half until we sold it.”
Now CHOP Bar’s resident mixologist, the 36-year-old joined the Club last year after an eight-year stint as head mixologist and beverage director for TY Harbor’s portfolio of restaurants across Tokyo. Before that, he mixed cocktails at Fujimamas, the one-time expat favorite in Harajuku, while working at his aunt’s Japanese restaurant in Akasaka.
Shaking (not stirring) a martini, Baggs explains that moving to the Club has enabled him to refocus on his passion: creating and serving drinks.
“Working at CHOP gives me more freedom to source local, quality ingredients and have more fun behind the bar, creating my own things,” he says. “It gives me the chance to use more expensive, handcrafted and hard-to-source ingredients. I want to bring Members something they will struggle to find anywhere else in Tokyo.”
Among CHOP Bar’s signature cocktails are gems like the Porchside Texas Punch, which features the world’s only 100 percent blue corn whiskey, along with Japanese red pepper-spiced sugar cane syrup, fresh lemon and cucumber. Another of Baggs’ distinctive creations is the Baconhattan, which, as the name suggests, is a Manhattan but served with a slice of house-cured bacon instead of the traditional olive.
CHOP Bar, though, is about more than cocktails. The menu also includes a selection of fine wines, American craft beers and artisanal soft drinks, such as the house-brewed ginger ale, infused with locally sourced ginger and steeped with black peppercorns and fresh citrus.
“We also serve the full dinner menu from CHOP Steakhouse here, as well as a bar menu. And we have a nice selection of cigars that guests can smoke out on the terrace,” Baggs says. “Of course, there’s also more here than you see on the menu. I always encourage guests to request things that aren’t listed. I also love to improvise based on how a guest is feeling and then create something on the spot. That’s a lot of fun.”
And just what a bar should be.
CHOP Bar Happy Hour
Enjoy 50 percent off all wines by the glass, beer and bar food (except burgers) each weekday, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Words: Rob Goss
Photo: Enrique Balducci
