In Bar creates a high-quality cocktail experience in the comfort of your home. With an emphasis on hospitality and customization, I use my extensive knowledge as a cocktail bartender to provide delicious, memorable drinks for you and your guests.
I am available to work as a private event bartender or a cocktail class instructor, both in-person and online. I love making tasty NA drinks as well (our 8-year-old has dubbed them “dream drinks”:)—check out some of my recent creations on the In Bar Instagram page.
Bring the cocktail bar to you
How it works
You tell me about the event you’re hosting, and I build a drink menu and/or class that you’ll love. A teacher at heart, I believe in meeting students where they’re at in a fun and engaging way, and can work with a manager to design a cocktail class that goes well beyond the average team-building experience.
After we work together to secure the required ingredients, I set up my tools—along with any necessary ice and glassware—in your space, and then get shaking!
To set up a call for a complimentary estimate, first fill out the form here and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
I fell in love with bartending somewhere between a basement in Cambridge and an alleyway in Tokyo. At the first spot, I watched a rockstar of a bartender holding court with a full rail of Harvard Square regulars, spinning around his partner while the ancient jukebox played James Brown at 45 RPM. My thought was instantaneous: I want to do that. At the second, over a decade later, I was stunned to silence by the most perfect highball I’d yet tasted, stirred and served by a well-dressed man who had earlier carved the drink’s ice off a block that was bigger than my head. To sip on something that was a product of such a labor of love—not only was it delicious, but it felt almost prayerful, and I yearned to imbue my own drinks with a similar attention to detail.
There were of course many bars in between those two, way stations running alongside the big moments of my young life: getting married, earning my Ph.D. in English, becoming a father, failing to get a full-time job as a professor. I include that last part because failure—though a lot of people choose not to talk about it—is real and it is hard. And yet, if you listen long and close to it, failure can also be a good teacher. And as I worked the jobs I could get, at bars that ranged from the legendary hangout Clyde Common in Portland to the Michelin-starred Kumiko in Chicago (all while being the primary caretaker for our family’s two young kids), I learned that a well-run bar can be its own kind of classroom.
I created In Bar because I realized that the human connection I was seeking in a “professional” space can very often be found over great drinks and food. I also wanted to give people the hospitality they deserve in a place they could always get into: the place they call home.
Thank you for considering me and my craft. Here’s to making something fantastic together!
— J. Basa Nemec
