From Buenos Aires to New York City: How a World-Ranked Bar Creates a Menu Inspired by Peru and Japan

On a polished corner in the trendy Palermo barrio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, there’s a punk rock bar that feels not unlike a glamorous garage. 

Graffiti covers the dark walls, familiar rock tunes fill the air, and an electric pink-neon middle finger glows in the center of the room. Despite the sentiment that the neon middle finger might imply, it’s the warm service, attention to detail, and thoughtful cocktail menu that truly define the team at Tres Monos. 

Tres Monos is listed as the world’s No. 7 bar, and the top bar in Latin America, by The World’s 50 Best Bars. In its little corner of Buenos Aires, Tres Monos has attained cocktail bar stardom. 

Thanks to a new venture with the team behind New York City-based Llama Inn, Tres Monos’s world-famous cocktails are now available Stateside.

Latin American powerhouses come together

Partners Juan Correa and chef Erik Ramirez have worked together on popular Peruvian restaurant concepts in New York City, Madrid and London. As they started to visualize their newest project, Papa San, a fusion of Peruvian flavors and Japanese pub traditions, they wanted the bar program to be a major highlight and complement the Nikkei-style izakaya. 

“We wanted a world-class program, and it was important to us to work with someone South American,” says Correa. 

Tres Monos, then ranked the 11th-best bar in the world, was an obvious choice. Led by Sebastian Atienza, Charly Aguinsky, and Gustavo Vocke, Tres Monos had a proven track record. The Tres Monos team runs bartending training programs, including one in an underprivileged neighborhood of Buenos Aires to equip locals with marketable skills, as well as a cocktail lab to tap into Argentine and Latin flavors. They sought to amplify other passionate Latin businesses. 

“As entrepreneurs, we’ve always been really intrigued about food and beverage groups that show abilities to operate multiple venues, especially when we talk about New York City, one of the most competitive cities in the world,” says Aguinsky. “When we met each other, we realized we had made the right decision joining forces with a group of people who share our vision.”  

Building a menu of different flavors and concepts

Once the two groups could envision a future together, the work to build a menu kicked off. It needed to represent Llama Inn’s Peruvian cuisine, Tres Monos’s Argentine background, and the Japanese izakaya tradition. 

First, the Tres Monos team traveled to New York City to discuss the project. They sampled Llama Inn’s food to become familiar with its flavor profiles. The goal was for the menus to feel in sync, despite coming from different places. 

“The idea is for it to really feel like both programs are cohesive,” says Papa San’s bar manager, Matt Popp. “It shouldn’t feel like a food program and a beverage program. It should feel like they’re pulling from the same set of ingredients and trying to achieve a very similar end result.”

Discussions followed about everything from the length of the cocktail list to the kinds of spirits to be reflected in the menu. 

Llama Inn’s team then traveled to Buenos Aires to conduct a tasting of their own. Over two days, the group sampled 30 cocktails that included clarified drinks, Martinis, spritzes, sours, and, particularly important to a restaurant with Japanese influence, lots of highballs. On the menu were Tres Monos classics like the Fernet con Coca (fernet, Coke, and cherry foam) as well as drinks fresh out of the cocktail lab. 

Once acquainted with each other’s styles, the Tres Monos team set out to adapt the new concept. The group sought to keep the spirit of its brand while also incorporating Peruvian and Japanese flavors. 

Aguinsky says they looked to the three fundamental components of a cocktail that give it personality: the base spirit, housemade ingredients, and presentation. 

The base spirit

The base spirit was an obvious way to showcase the various cultures. Peru could be represented with a spirit like pisco, while Japan could be highlighted with sake, shochu, or Japanese whisky. 

The biggest challenge that the Tres Monos team faced was the many choices that such an extensive spirit list afforded. In Argentina, many factors have contributed to a limited selection of spirits, such as high import costs and a drinking culture focused on low-alcohol options. 

The team adapted by producing many of its spirits in-house. In Buenos Aires, there may be two to three options of bourbon for experimentation. In the U.S., there’s 85. “It’s kind of a good, weird problem to have,” says Aguinsky.

Housemade ingredients

The bar team used its conversations with Ramirez and his culinary team to dream up fun ways to add pops of flavor to the drinks. 

While in New York, the Argentine crew picked up ingredients to tinker with back home. Tonka beans, chirimoya (a cousin of soursop), Alfonso olives, and aji — all ingredients ubiquitous to Peru or Lima — were incorporated into drink experiments.

The Misticollins, a Tres Monos classic, was reimagined for Papa San by swapping housemade sake for a Japanese one, using mezcal in place of gin, and a Japanese cucumber and Alfonso olives.

Presentation

The final key to an excellent cocktail is presentation, a strength of Tres Monos. Flavored foams, food coloring, and inventive glassware are commonly found at the bar. Its Fernet con Coca is served in a glass shaped to look like the bottom of a Coke bottle. 

While the glassware is low-key to match Llama Inn’s style, the garnishes are over the top. Edible coloring tops the foam of a sour cocktail, while fluffy cotton candy provides a whimsical snack on another. 

“We don’t want cocktails only to be for Martini connoisseurs or 25-year-old single malt drinkers,” says Aguinsky. “We think cocktails should be for everyone. If someone likes a sweet refreshing cocktail like the Marxxxtini, and they want to take a picture of it because it has a pink foam, that’s amazing.”

Papa San’s customers

Equally important was to create cocktails that people would want to order. “Especially in New York, where you have lots of different offerings to the audience,” says Aguinsky. “We want cocktails to be approachable from the looks, the taste, the price point.” 

Papa San always had its audience in mind. 

Located in New York City’s Hudson Yards, a newer development with an abundance of office buildings, the group expected to see a lot of power lunches and happy hours. That influenced a focus on low-ABV drinks. The neighborhood also draws a lot of tourists and people who look to try its rising food scene. 

“In the span of 10 minutes, you can have somebody who owns some of the most expensive real estate on the planet who came from across Hudson Yards for lunch, sitting right up against a couple from the Midwest who rubbed their last two pennies together to come to New York for their first and probably only time,” says Popp. “And both of those groups of people need to have something for them on the menu.” 

The opening of Papa San

To create the final menu, the team narrowed the cocktail list down to nine standout drinks. Popp and Aguinsky agree that people stop caring at any more than 10 options. 

In addition to its internal taste tests, feedback came through avenues like popups at Bar Convent, a trade-focused conference for bar and beverage professionals, and Llama Inn’s Madrid location. The information was used to further refine the menu.

Though Papa San’s grand opening took place on February 18th, Popp, Aguinsky, and Correa have their ears perked up for additional feedback. 

“I want to be inundated with data for at least the first two or three months,” says Popp. Now that the restaurant is open, Correa says that they’ll look for anything that’s working (and what’s not), prep issues, and any general improvements they can make.

For the Tres Monos team, the opening of Papa San is especially meaningful. “We’ve had many collaborations both in Argentina and abroad, but this is the first time we’ve designed a menu in a major city like New York City,” says Aguinsky. “So we’re really excited to see how our cocktails do in probably the greatest cocktail city in the world.”

Papa San is now open at The Spiral, 501 W 34th St.