John deBary

John deBary is a New York City bartender, writer and consultant with more than a decade of experience working in award-winning bars and restaurants. He writes for Liquor.com and other leading publications. 

Experience

deBary began bartending in 2008 at the James Beard Award-winning cocktail bar PDT, and later became the bar director for Momofuku, where he worked from 2009 to 2018. While there, he trained countless bartenders and servers and helped to open 10 restaurants, each with its own unique bar program.

In addition to writing for Liquor.com, his work has appeared in Bloomberg Pursuits, GQ, Munchies, and Thrillist. John is the CEO and founder of Proteau, a line of zero-proof botanical drinks. He also published his first book, "Drink What You Want: The Subjective Guide to Objectively Delicious Cocktails" in June of 2020. John is also the co-founder and board president of Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation, an advocacy and grantmaking organization dedicated to improving quality of life for workers in the hospitality industry.

Awards and Publications

• Author of Drink What You Want: The Subjective Guide to Objectively Delicious Cocktails

Education

deBary has a bachelor’s degree in East Asian languages, literature and linguistics from Columbia College at Columbia University. 

About Liquor.com

Liquor.com is dedicated to good drinking and great living. We inspire, entertain and educate anyone—and everyone—interested in what happens in the glass and out of it.

For more than 20 years, Dotdash brands have been helping people find answers, solve problems, and get inspired. We are one of the top-20 largest content publishers on the Internet according to comScore, a leading Internet measurement company, and reach more than 30% of the U.S. population every month. Our brands collectively have won more than 20 industry awards in the last year alone and, most recently, Dotdash was named Publisher of the Year by Digiday, a leading industry publication.