08/21/2026
What happens when a bartender starts thinking more like a chef?
Comatl from Casa Kenji received the highest audience score at our Houston Summer Craft Clash, and his approach was completely different from a traditional cocktail build.
With a background in culinary work and catering, Jose regularly looks toward the kitchen when developing drinks. For Tetzauqueh Michimeh — “weird fishes” in Nahuatl — he built around fire, smoke, earth and the sea, pulling techniques and ingredients from the food side of Casa Kenji into the bar.
Yuzu sake introduces Japanese citrus character while helping connect the drink to the Japanese side of Jose’s Japanese–Latin flavor approach.
House-made fish sauce brought sugar, vinegar, garlic, shallot, cilantro, salt and anchovy into the actual cocktail — essentially treating savory seasoning as another tool for balance.
And the garnish wasn’t really a garnish. Jose fire-roasted a Castelvetrano olive, tossed it in smoked soy sauce and stuffed it with scallion, garlic and Japanese mackerel. It was designed as the final ingredient of the experience, served using a cleaned tuna backbone as the vessel.
Even the leek, basil and mint oil floating across the top was intentional: Jose wanted to play off the silky mouthfeel created in Waterloo Gin Company through its use of Texas pecan as a botanical.
That’s probably the biggest takeaway from his approach: the kitchen and bar don’t have to operate as separate creative departments. Existing ingredients, techniques and flavor knowledge from a culinary program can become R&D tools for beverage development.
Jose took that philosophy pretty far & the Craft Clash audience rewarded him for it.
Save this one if you’re experimenting with more culinary-driven cocktails.
