James Beard Award winner Julia Momosé on the art of bartending

Last month, the James Beard Foundation announced the winners of the 2025 James Beard Awards at the Lyric Theater in Chicago. Winners in the major categories included Jungsik Yim of Jungsik in New York City for Outstanding Chef, Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colorado for Outstanding Restaurant, and Bucheron in Minneapolis was named Best New Restaurant.

Julia Momosé of Kumiko in Chicago took home Outstanding Bar.

Women, and API women in particular, have long been underrepresented in the spirits industry, so it’s high time to celebrate Momosé’s achievements. Born and raised in Japan, Momosé moved to the United States at 18 to study design and environmental analysis at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She eventually dropped out to pursue her love of cocktails—taking with her a designer’s eye for detail. After moving through the ranks in New York and Baltimore, Momosé opened Kumiko in 2018 and quickly garnered a string of prestigious awards from GQ, Food & Wine, and Time. In 2017, she published a widely circulated “Spiritfree” manifesto on her blog that helped spearhead a shift in public perception of non-alcoholic drinks. Her debut book The Way of the Cocktail (co-authored with Emma Janzen) was named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2021 by Vanity Fair, Boston Globe, and WIRED.

“It's this idea that there's a process to everything, and wanting to honor the process, and wanting to honor where things come from, and that we ourselves as people are like little pieces that are coming together every day,” Momosé tells JoySauce.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Clara Wang: Congratulations on winning the James Beard Award! How did y’all celebrate?
Julia Momosé: We took a moment with the team the next day before service, just to acknowledge everyone's hard work and have a quick little toast, and we're right back into service. It's one of those things where it happened on the back of an extremely busy week because everyone was in town for the awards, and then we went right into another extremely busy week. I think it almost felt like the celebration started even before we were awarded. (As the awards took place in Chicago).

CW: Kumiko is a Japanese woodworking style that uses precise tension to assemble intricate wooden pieces. What inspired you to choose this name?
JM: I wanted people to get the sense that it was a Japanese word, and I wanted it to bear meaning and have an art and ethos behind it. Kumiko phonetically could be a woman’s name, but in the context and the kanji (characters) I use to write it, it is a woodworking technique. When I was thinking about the design for the space, I knew I wanted to incorporate Japanese elements into the design. And I designed an extended entry way, because I wanted to give people the chance to have a little journey, a little moment into the space instead of opening the door and just being in the middle of the dining room. In Japan, Kumiko panels are used in between rooms because they let light and air through, but still provide a sense of privacy. I felt like it would be a really good name for the bar, because it is such an extensive process to make these panels. It starts with the tree itself, Japanese cedar trees, and how long it takes for them to grow, selecting the right one, and then from the planks of wood broken down further into these tiny pieces that fit together without any metal hardware.

It's this idea that there's a process to everything, and wanting to honor the process, and wanting to honor where things come from, and that we ourselves as people are like little pieces that are coming together every day. Our guests are part of that, and our vendors and farmers, and I like the idea that we get to create a beautiful pattern or design together.

CW: What are some ways your upbringing in Japan and your Japanese heritage influence how you approach bartending and hospitality?
JM: Omonetashi (hospitality in Japanese) is so much a part of our culture. I think at the heart of it, it's listening to other people, whether it's their body language, or the actual words that they are saying, and then knowing the questions to ask to help guide them to something that they might love on the menu. I think it's easy to fall into the habit of when someone asks, “What should I have?” to just list off top sellers on a menu, but at Kumiko we take a lot of care to turn the question back around and find out what our guest typically enjoys, or what their mood is, or where they're coming from, where they're going, how this is fitting into their their evening, so that we can find something that is special and right for them. I think growing up in Japan, I'm more attuned to what people are doing, how they're feeling, and that kind of thing.

With the bartending side of it, from a purely physical perspective, there's a flow to it. It's very much like how to connect one movement into the next in such a way that there is no point of hesitation. There is no jerky movement or motion. Rather, it's just one thing into the next that flows seamlessly so that it doesn't interrupt the guest experience. So we work quietly, we work smoothly. There's a flow to everything. And that's something that I learned just watching other bartenders or just existing in Japan. How so many people can move without bumping into each other on the sidewalks—that kind of comes into play on the floor at Kumiko as well.

CW: Females, and Asian American females in particular are still underrepresented in the spirits industry, though this is certainly starting to change. You’ve been in the game for a long time. Why do you think this is, and how have you seen the industry change over the last decade or so?
JM: Being in the industry for 20 years or so now, I've always been the one woman in the room, and it was just normal, and I didn't think to question it at first. One of my first bar jobs, the manager flat out said, “I don't hire college girls.” And I remember hearing that and thinking, “Oh, okay, well, let me prove myself to you.” That was my thought process. And this is very much me coming from Japan, where it's even more intensely broken out.

In the past 10 years or so, I think through the pandemic, people started speaking out on issues. There was the #MeToo movement, and then I started hearing all these stories from people, and my eyes were really open to the fact that that's not how it should be. And even me just being like, “Oh, let me prove myself,” was leaning into that, and I didn't realize it. I just was trying to do my best and be accepted. But from that job and onward, pretty much every job that I've worked in, you know, as a woman, I've been harassed and abused and the idea of opening my own bar was the opportunity to open a safe space where people would be held to a very high standard. It would be a place where anyone could work.

As a woman, I’ve seen different paths to take. One where you just dive in with the boys and make the same jokes and lean in the same way, and it builds into that culture. And there’s the other side, where you’re just very, very sharp and tough and hard. And then the ideal would be you’re just quiet and strong and precise and they respect you. Building that has been a challenge, but so very rewarding, and it started with realizing I needed to be the one to build the culture again. It’s changed everything. So now it’s myself, my CDC, Evelyn, who is a power being, and the split is 50/50 women to men.

So I think, from like a big view of the industry, we're slowly seeing more women in these spaces, but from experience in even my own restaurant, it's really, really hard, and I can see why there hasn't been a massive shift, and I hope that there are more women run establishments that open up, because it has to happen from the ground up.

CW: Along with helping to develop spirit free cocktails for nationally recognized programs, you’ve also authored a book, The Spiritfree Manifesto, on spirit free cocktails. What sparked your interest in this particular drinks category, and what do you think is unique about your approach to spirit free cocktails?
JM: My parents don't drink alcohol, and I knew that they would worry about me going into that space. As an Asian kid, I just want my parents to be proud of me, and I ended up not finishing school and becoming a bartender. In my mind I was like, “I need to make this matter.” So I made it my mission at every job I got to write a menu that there would be thoughtful non-alcoholic options, in the hopes that they would visit one day. And if they did, I wanted them to have the full experience, and have them see the alcohol has nothing to do with it. It’s the atmosphere and the way we make people feel through food and beverage.

The result of that was thinking about what we call these non-alcoholic drinks. At the time, the way people would say “mocktail” with such hesitation or embarrassment—the crinkling of the nose and the lowering of the voice—made me want to empower them and empower bartenders to see it as a choice, to see it as a positive. There’s a canned non-alcoholic beer alternative from Suntory called All Free. I just love that so much, because it sounds like a choice, and I went with the word “spirit free.” And the idea is that it's something that is thoughtful. It's curated, it's made with precision and technique, and fits a mood, or fits a time of the day or the evening. From that point forward, there's always been a spirit-free section on my menu. It’s made such a difference. And my parents did come in and experience Kumiko, and it was one of the coolest things to see them enjoying those drinks and recognizing the ingredients and being shocked and surprised by them and asking questions. So it was for them, really, but also for me.

CW: What are your favorite alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails?
JM: The first drink that I really leaned into as a bartender was the Old Fashioned. But then I quickly shifted into highballs. Just how simple but complex they are, and how technique driven they are. Currently it’s the martini. Similar reasoning—just the feeling of making it, connecting one movement to another.

For non-alcoholic, there’s a drink we serve at Kumiko called the pepperberry tonic, and it's made with Tasmanian pepper berries, which, when steeped into water, turn this really stunning kind of purplish red hue, magenta. And partnering that with Angelica root and ginseng, it's a little bit bitter, and we top it off with elderflower tonic. So it's a little bit floral and a little bit sweet, and it's just bubbly, bright reddish aperitif style, spirit free. And it's so refreshing. 

2025 API James Beard Award Winners

Outstanding Hospitality presented by American Airlines
Chef Junghyun "JP" Park and Ellia Park, Atomix, New York

Outstanding Chef
Chef Jungsik Yim, Jungsik in New York City

Best Chef: California
Jon Yao, Kato, Los Angeles

Best Chef: New York State
Vijay Kumar, Semma, New York

Best Chef: Northeast (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont)
Sky Haneul Kim, Gift Horse, Providence, Rhode Island

Best Chef: South (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico)
Nando Chang, Itamae AO, Miam

Best Chef: Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma)
Yotaka Martin, Lom Wong, Phoenix, Arizona