This story originally appeared in our August 19 – September 1, 2026 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
Therapist, bodyguard, friend, quiet spy, matchmaker, lifecoach: These are just some of the roles bartenders play when they step behind the stick.
“They’re a big part of the community,” Cincinnati’s cocktail queen, Molly Wellmann, told CityBeat.
A great bartender or mixologist doesn’t just produce a killer drink, they play a key character in the story of your night. They give you a micro-moment that makes you feel special, welcome and important, she said.
“The ones that give me a great experience … I want to come back and hang out,” Wellmann said.
Barkeeps also act as ambassadors for the city and each of its 52 unique neighborhoods.
“Think about when you go travel,” Wellmann said. “The first thing you do after you check in to your hotel or Airbnb is usually go to the bar … the first person you meet is the bartender.”
Wellmann knew this when she opened Japp’s – Since 1879. The bar debuted on Main Street in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood back in 2011. The business is widely credited as Cincinnati’s first modern cocktail bar, which kickstarted a nightlife cultural renaissance in the city.
“When I started, I was really into introducing these classic cocktails with the story behind them so people could really … go back in time,” Wellmann said. “That was my whole philosophy”
It was through this philosophy that Wellmann became arguably the most famous mixologist in the region. In addition to Japp’s, she’s owned several bars including the Famous Neons Unplugged, Old Kentucky Bourbon Bar, Myrtle’s Punch House and more.
Wellmann published her book “Handcrafted Cocktails: The Mixologist’s Guide to Classic Drinks for Morning, Noon & Night” in 2013, and in 2023, she released her Cincinnati Gin brand, a collaboration between Northern Row Brewery & Distillery, Five Stories Spirits and the Krohn Conservatory. It can now be found behind most bars across the region.
Julia Petiprin has also earned her spot among Cincinnati’s cocktail royalty. She helped open apothecary-themed OTR cocktail bar Sundry and Vice in 2015. She now owns nationally recognized HomeMakers Bar and Cincinnati’s Fifty Fifty Gin Club along with design company House of Departure.
“When I opened Sundry and Vice, that was at the height of craft cocktail culture,” Petiprin said.
It was a time when cocktails in Cincinnati became a culinary art form. Dimly lit bars became the galleries. Bartenders were the artists, each glass their canvas and every guest the critic.
It’s a bit of a different world now.
“After the pandemic, it was a slow trickle,” Petiprin said, “where guests started to just want familiarity. So now instead of creating the weirdest cocktail that you’ve never heard of with all these crazy ingredients that nobody recognizes, we’re finding ways to create twists on the familiar.”
Although national data shows younger generations are drinking less alcohol, bar culture overall is still very much alive in Cincinnati.
“The cocktail culture now, I’m really impressed with, especially here,” Wellmann said.
There’s an endless amount of creativity behind the city’s bars as cocktailers continue to adapt to give their customers what they’re looking for, while still blowing them away with an experience they’ll never forget. And it’s not limited to the city’s urban core.
Martibel Payano (She/Her)
Tokyo Kitty
575 Race St. in the Central Business District
Martibel Payano has played just about every role on the card.
When she’s not acting, doing improv, training in the gym or on tour as a professional wrestler, you can catch her making cocktails at Cincinnati karaoke bar and night club Tokyo Kitty.
“I have a lot of hands in a lot of different things,” Payano said.
She’s been wrestling since 2009 and has toured the world working for various organizations under ring name Marti Belle, including Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, All Elite Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment and more. With more than 141,000 Instagram followers and around 26,000 followers on her professional Facebook page, it’s safe to say she’s a big deal.
About three years ago, a friend encouraged her to step behind the bar for the very first time.
“My entire adult life, everyone’s always been like, ‘You’d be such a great bartender,’” she said.
The New York City native has worked a lot of service industry jobs throughout her life, but never bartending. She went into her first interview with zero experience but was able to land a job at Covington Yard, an open-air food court, beer garden and social entertainment space in Northern Kentucky.
St. Patrick’s Day and Cincinnati Reds Opening Day were among her first shifts.
“It was literally sink or swim,” she said.
About a year later, she landed a job at Tokyo Kitty.
“I genuinely enjoy coming to work,” Payano said.
She loves the people. And when you’re a bartender, you get a glimpse into the lives of strangers every single shift.
“You get to see people sometimes at their worst … but you also get to see people celebrating,” she said.
From birthday parties to weddings to even divorce parties, she’s seen it all.
Bartending allows Payano to be creative in a different way. To her, cocktailing is a lot like baking.
“You can take someone’s recipe and make it your own,” she said. “Very rarely are you ever gonna invent something for the first time ever.”
Tokyo Kitty’s cocktail menu is created by the staff, and Payano’s Yokai cocktail recently landed a spot.
On the surface, it’s a tequila cocktail with a little blue curaçao for a bit of fun. But to Payano, the drink’s meaning cuts deep.
It’s a tribute to her late friend Adam Ramey, the lead singer of the American nu metal band Dropout Kings. He passed away in May 2025 shortly before his 32nd birthday.
The cocktail’s colors, style and name are all inspired by the band’s 2025 album with the same name.
“I get to honor my friend in a really cool way,” she said. “When the menu was approved, I took a picture of it and I sent it to the other singer in the band and he was just so stoked because it’s like our friend’s memory is going to always live on.”
Although she’s only been in the industry for a few years, the social drinking culture has become a significant part of her lifestyle.
“I’m Dominican, I grew up in New York and I grew up surrounded by family and nobody loves to party more than Dominicans,” she said. “Any occasion to get together with family, to get together with friends is welcome. And there will always be food and there will always be a lot of drinks.”
Bartending and mixology in general help her feel connected to her family, even when she’s away. Making a Caribbean rum cocktail can bring back childhood memories of family traditions. It can be a way to honor her cultural heritage, Payano said.
Although she’s got a lot of responsibilities and is a bit of a career chameleon, Payano is confident that bartending is going to be a mainstay in her life for many years to come.
“Down the line, something that would be really cool for me is I would love to either own a small bar that does like a small club type thing,” Payano said.
Yokai
- 1.5 oz Lunazul Reposado tequila
- 1 oz Hana Lychee sake
- 0.5 oz melon schnapps
- 0.5 oz lime juice
- 0.5 oz simple syrup
- Shake and strain into a rocks glass
- Float with blue curaçao
- Garnish with lychee fruit
Kiki Hunter Avalos-Gould (She/They)
Fifty Fifty Gin Club
35 E. 13th St. in Over the Rhine
Kiki Hunter Avalos-Gould is at the top of her game. Her creativity and talent have earned Avalos-Gould recognition on national and international stages, both for the drinks she creates and the expertise she brings to the craft.
She’s currently the lead bartender at Fifty Fifty Gin Club. She’s also the catering manager in charge of HomeMakers Bar and Eat Well Catering’s partnership. They’ve worked under Julia Petiprin for the past five years.
Her work has gotten them national and global recognition. In 2024, she won the U.S. Tastemaker of the Year title during the United States Bartenders’ Guild World Class Top 30 competition. That same year, they advanced to the national finals as one of the Top 30 bartenders in the United States in the Diageo World Class competition, one of the most prestigious global bartending competitions. In 2025, Avalos-Gould landed a judging spot for the Bartender Spirits Awards.
Their first bartending job was at Catskeller, the student bar on the University of Cincinnati’s campus. After graduating from the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning with a BFA in fine arts in 2013, she spent some time bartending in Northside before transitioning into fine dining.
Naturally, she takes a gourmet approach in her creative process.
“I really like learning weird culinary practices,” they said. “I learned how to do a lot of molecular gastronomy. It’s like messing with the structure of the items.”
Curiosity and a thirst for knowledge drive their passion.
“I love just learning,” they said.
Recently, they’ve become known for developing culinary and beverage menus while curating intimate, limited-seat omakase pairing experiences. These usually come to life after Avalos-Gould asks her managers if they’ll let her pursue their “weird idea.”
“She should have a James Beard Award,” Petiprin said.
As Avalos-Gould continues to push the cocktail scene forward, she’s also thinking about their own future and surprisingly, it isn’t behind a bar.
“I romanticize the idea of making this pivot to being a morning person as opposed to a nighttime person,” she said. “I’m definitely interested in becoming a pastry chef.”
In a perfect world, Avalos-Gould’s work will evolve into a role that isn’t locked down to one or two spaces.
“It’s being kind of like a pop-up person who gets to do high concept stuff and then be done with it and move on to a new idea.”
In the meantime, stop by Fifty Fifty or HomeMakers, and Avalos-Gould and her team will take good care of you.
Curry Wallbanger
- 2 oz of acid adjusted orange juice (or alternatively, 1.5 oz fresh orange juice, 0.5 oz fresh lemon juice)
- 0.5 oz simple syrup
- 0.5 oz madras curry infused Galliano liqueur
- 2 oz bison grass vodka
- Shake and strain into a chilled Collins glass that has been half-rimmed with everything bagel seasoning
- Top with Hazy IPA
Luis Ildefonso Saucedo Lomeli (He/Him)
The Overlook Lodge
6083 Montgomery Road in Pleasant Ridge
Luis Ildefonso Saucedo Lomeli has been behind the bar for more than a decade.
He’s currently the manager at the Overlook Lodge, a rustic neighborhood bar themed after the iconic horror movie “The Shining,” located in Cincinnati’s Pleasant Ridge neighborhood at 603 Montgomery Road.
It’s a career Lomeli never thought he’d have, but he wouldn’t want it any other way.
“The creativity, the freedom and the openness” are gifts, he said.
Lomeli grew up in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, which is about 300 hundred miles north of Mexico City.
When he was young, his grandfather Ildefonso Jesus Lomeli Fernandez — one of his biggest inspirations — made sure he developed a palate for the good things in life.
“He would say the best pleasure in life is to eat good,” Lomeli said, “(and) to drink good.”
His grandfather’s advice has been a throughline in his life.
When Lomeli was just 17, he chose to travel and work in Canada instead of going to medical school in Mexico. After spending some time in the Great White North, he found himself back in his home country, this time studying the culinary arts at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. When he graduated, he bounced around different kitchens and resorts.
He fell in love with cocktailing while working at a big vacation destination near Playa del Carmen. Resort bartending was more about speed than quality, but “I enjoyed it more,” he said.
He eventually worked his way up to managing a gin and tequila bar in Mexico, but he felt stuck. The ownership made the big bucks, but Lomeli would never get the chance.
In Mexico, Lomeli said it is very common for people to travel abroad and send money back to their families. So that’s what he did.
Lomeli landed in Cincinnati with a plan to stay for a few months, leave and go work in Spain, but that quickly changed when he met his now-wife, Emily.
“She’s a Cincinnati girl,” he said.
They’ve been married for five years, just about as long as he’s been working for the bar’s owner, Jacob Trevino.
Many industry veterans often hop around between bars. But, Lomeli found success working his way up within the organization. The culture, in large part, is what’s kept him coming back.
“It felt like it was a good place where I could fit in … like I wouldn’t feel weird,” he said.
As an immigrant, Lomeli said it can be difficult to find a place where he can feel normal and not like an outsider of sorts.
“It’s 100% more welcoming than a lot of other places where I’ve been,” Lomeli said.
Bartending gives him the opportunity to keep the flavors of his home close at hand.
“I miss it a lot of the time,” he said. “You can bring all ingredients, say, from your hometown into the cocktails and make a story from there. Cacti and prickly pear are grown in my town. You can bring them into a cocktail, it’s super simple.”
His proud Mexican heritage isn’t the only inspiration for his work. An idea can take shape from a song, the weather, a type of glass or even just one ingredient, Lomeli said. For example, Room 217, which is currently on the cocktail menu at the Overlook Lodge, was born through Lomeli’s love of the animated American sitcom “King of the Hill.”
Character Dale Gribble famously said “Boil up some Mountain Dew, it’s gonna be a long night.”
“I ended up making a Mai Tai with the Mountain Dew syrup,” Lomeli said.
Creating weird drinks is fun and all, but when he’s not working, Lomeli is “studying the classics.” You need to know the rules to be able to break them, he said.
The spirit world is a humbling space, Lomeli said. There is never a dull moment and the opportunities to learn something new are endless. Right now, rum is his obsession.
“It’s so different everywhere you try it,” he said.
Tiki cocktails are his new passion, after attending a recent convention.
Lomeli’s long-term goal is to open his own bar. Right now, he loves the idea of opening a Tiki bar somewhere where the weather is really cold.
“In the middle of the winter you can go into this Tiki bar and it’s like you’re on an island,” he said. “It’s like an escape for people.”
In the meantime, he’s curating a momentary escape from reality for Cincinnatians at the Overlook Lodge. And even if he doesn’t serve you, he’s had a hand in anything you’ll order off the menu.
Monkey Business
- 1.5 oz Malort
- 0.5 oz Doctor Bird Jamaican rum
- 0.75 oz lime juice
- 0.5 oz pineapple
- 0.5 oz orange juice
- 0.5 oz falernum
- 0.25 oz orgeat
- 1 bar spoon of allspice
- Shake everything with ice, serve over fresh crushed ice in a big rocks glass. Garnish with a mint sprig.
Al Coleman (They/Them)
Wildweed
1301 Walnut St. in Over-the Rhine
Al Coleman leads the beverage program at Wildweed, one of Cincinnati’s most celebrated and respected restaurants.
James Beard Award-nominated chef David Jackman and his wife Lydia opened the upscale pasta-centric restaurant with a focus on hand-forged ingredients in 2024. It’s been in the national spotlight ever since, getting prominent features in the New York Times, Bon Appétit, the Wall Street Journal and more.
“I wanted to work here since I heard it was opening,” Coleman said.
Coleman, who’s been at the restaurant since November 2025, was drawn to Jackman’s idea of excellence.
“David pushes his staff to take it further,” they said.
Coleman left their job crafting the cocktail menu at another upscale restaurant for a chance to just be inside the building.
“When I started everyone knew that I was a skilled bartender. But I was like, ‘just put me where you need me,’” They said. “I just wanted to be here.”
Naturally, Coleman ended up behind the bar. They humbly attribute much of their recent success to luck, but in reality, their talent and drive is what led them into such a coveted role.
“I fell into it at the right time,” they said. “Then all of a sudden, the house cocktails were all made by me.”
There’s a natural alignment to Wildweed’s ethos and Coleman’s upbringing.
“This place is about the land we’re on,” they said. “This is about the Midwest. And so it kind of hit me one day. My family has been in this region for basically as far back as records go. “They’ve always been farmers. They’ve always tended to this land.”
Coleman takes a holistic approach to craft cocktailing. It’s about respecting the land and paying homage to where they came from and working within their community sustainably.
At Wildweed, consistent ingredients are fleeting. And that’s not a bad thing.
At the beginning of a shift, Coleman will walk down into the basement prep kitchen and take a look at what’s in the walk-in fridge because it is a steady parade of fresh and unique produce.
“David will be like, ‘I’ve got something cool for you,’ and it’ll be like the nicest smelling melon I’ve ever seen in my life and he’s like, ‘Just think about what you could do with this,’” they said.
The creative possibilities within Wildweed’s walls are virtually endless.
“There’s so many odd and amazing tools here,” they said. “There’s a centrifuge so you can completely clarify things within minutes.”
Coleman believes mixology has a supernatural element.
“I’m a haunted individual. I think most of us are,” they said. “I’ve lived a lot of places. I’ve known a lot of people. I’ve failed a lot of love … all of that I carry with me in my work.”
Sometimes inspiration strikes at really strange times that aren’t always convenient. Other times it’s more reasonable.
“I will typically be working a bar shift here and an idea will hit me or I’ll notice spirits that we aren’t going through,” they said. “So sometimes I’ll have strange flavor combinations outside of here, you know … write it down … we need to do something with this.”
How do they know when a drink is done, especially when the ingredients can become so complicated? Much like any artist, Coleman said they can feel it.
They also pull on their years of experience in various roles within the industry when creating new menus and collaborating with the team of bartenders. From working at a sushi restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, to stints as a barista in Los Angeles, to managing a coffee shop in Manchester, England, they’ve done it all.
“It’s the only thing that I am able to stick to in my life,” they said. “I cannot do a nine-to-five. I’ve tried it.”
Working at Wildweed hasn’t just been helpful from a career perspective; it’s been therapeutic on an extremely personal level.
“This is the first place I’ve been where they’ve only known me as a trans person,” they said. “It’s the first place that I’ve actually ever been myself and that people have met me as myself.”
It’s been really weird to go from being a woman for 30 years and figuring out what rules come with that, Coleman added. They felt like they were wearing a costume every day.
“I was extremely unhappy,” they said. “Now I can’t really hide anything. People look at me and immediately know. And I just can’t separate my work in that.”
They’ve struggled to align themselves with the status quo, and while transitioning has unlocked a goldmine for Coleman, it comes with a new set of gaps to close.
“I don’t know what the rules are,” they said. “The rules that do exist weren’t created for anyone like me.”
Their healing journey has allowed them to show up to work with a new sense of freedom.
“These are the most authentic kind of interactions I’ve had today,” Coleman said. “Which is the most authentic way of producing art.”
Laura Palmer
- 1.5 oz earl grey gin (made by simply adding any earl grey tea to any bottle of gin)
- 0.75 oz Italicus
- 0.5 oz earl grey-infused simple syrup
- 0.5 oz of lemon juice
- 2 dashes of lemon bitters
- Shake, strain and serve up!
This article appears in August 19 – September 1, 2026.