Sebastian Atienza on kokum, cocktails & cross-cultural bar hopping

Punk rock, good drinks and zero interest in taking themselves too seriously. That’s Tres Monos for you.

Born in Buenos Aires in 2019, the multi-award-winning bar, studio and beverage consultancy has built its reputation on doing things its own way. You’ll find classic cocktails without much shindig and serious craft with a gist of fun. Its commitment to local ingredients and sustainability is just as integral to the experience.

Now ranked No. 7 on The World’s 50 Best Bars and named South America’s Best Bar, Tres Monos brought its distinctly Buenos Aires drinking culture to Bengaluru for a special takeover at Uno Izakaya, JW Marriott Hotel Bengaluru.

LuxeBook caught up with Sebastian Atienza, founder and director of Tres Monos, to talk punk-rock hospitality, the obsession with cocktail theatre, Buenos Aires’ social drinking culture, experimenting with Indian ingredients like kokum, and what excites him about the future of India’s bar scene.

LuxeBook: Tres Monos has a very punk-rock, irreverent personality, but the hospitality is famously warm and inclusive. How do you balance that rebellious spirit with making every guest feel at home?

Sebastian Atienza: For us, the two things have always gone hand in hand. The punk-rock attitude is really about questioning conventions and not taking ourselves too seriously, while hospitality is about making people feel comfortable enough to be themselves. You can have loud music, unconventional cocktails and a little chaos behind the bar, but if the guest doesn’t feel welcome, none of it matters. We want people to feel like they’ve walked into a friend’s bar, just one where the drinks happen to be very good.

LuxeBook: Do you think the spirits industry has become too obsessed with perfection and theatre?

Sebastian Atienza: Sometimes, yes. There’s a lot of value in technique and presentation, but hospitality shouldn’t become a performance where the guest feels like they’re watching rather than participating. For us, the best drinks are the ones that make you want another sip, not necessarily the ones that take the longest to explain. There should be craft, but there should also be spontaneity, personality and room for mistakes.

LuxeBook: What does “fun” mean to you behind a bar?

Sebastian Atienza: Fun is energy. It’s the music, the conversations, the team messing around between services, a guest ordering something completely unexpected, or a bartender getting genuinely excited about a drink they’ve just made. We don’t believe fun has to mean being gimmicky. It’s more about creating an environment where everyone; the team and the guests, can let their guard down.

LuxeBook: Buenos Aires has developed such a distinctive cocktail identity. What do you think the city gets right about drinking culture that the rest of the world could learn from?

Sebastian Atienza: Buenos Aires understands that drinking is fundamentally social. You don’t necessarily go out just to drink; you go out to spend time with people, eat something, talk, argue, laugh and stay much longer than you planned. There’s also a beautiful lack of urgency around it. A bar can be sophisticated without feeling formal, and a great cocktail can sit comfortably alongside a plate of food and a long conversation. That balance is something we think the rest of the world can learn from.

LuxeBook: India has an incredibly diverse pantry of spices, fruits, herbs and regional ingredients. Is there an Indian ingredient you’ve been particularly excited to experiment with, for this pop-up?

Sebastian Atienza: India is an incredibly exciting place to work with because the ingredients already have so much personality. We’ve been particularly interested in exploring kokum; its acidity, fruitiness and slightly tannic character make it incredibly versatile in cocktails. What’s exciting is not simply taking an Indian ingredient and putting it into a drink, but understanding how it can interact with the techniques and flavours we already work with at Tres Monos.

It’s also collaborations like this, and platforms such as JW Marriott Hotel Bengaluru, that give bartenders from different drinking cultures an opportunity to exchange ideas rather than simply export a concept from one city to another.

LuxeBook: What do you think the next big shift in the country’s drinking culture will be?

Sebastian Atienza: We think India is moving towards a much more curious and informed drinking culture. People are increasingly interested in why something tastes the way it does, where an ingredient comes from, how a drink is made and what the story behind it is. At the same time, there’s a growing appreciation for local ingredients and Indian-made spirits. The exciting part is that India doesn’t have to copy an established cocktail culture; it has the ingredients, history and creativity to build its own.

LuxeBook: What does genuinely sustainable bartending look like when you’re operating at this scale?

Sebastian Atienza: It starts with making sustainability part of the everyday operation rather than treating it as a separate initiative. Using ingredients completely, reducing waste, preserving surplus produce, being thoughtful about ice and water consumption, and designing cocktails around what is available are all small decisions that add up. At our scale, the biggest responsibility is making those practices repeatable, sustainability has to work during a busy Saturday night, not just look good on paper.

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