--- description: Jimenez opened Superbueno, a Mexican American cocktail bar, in 2023 as an homage to his identity and has since won a James Beard Award. title: Bartender Ignacio 'Nacho' Jimenez Proved His Skeptics Wrong image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8eba66fd46db1993/6998c9981500fb22c1aa6941/250929LatinoLeaders_Jimenez.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Sep 16, 2025 # How Bartender Ignacio 'Nacho' Jimenez Proved His Skeptics Wrong by [Chantelle Lee](/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Reporter  Chef Ignacio "Nacho" Jimenez behind the bar at Superbueno in New York City on April 10, 2023. Chef Ignacio "Nacho" Jimenez behind the bar at Superbueno in New York City on April 10, 2023.DeSean McClinton-Holland Even as a kid growing up in León, Mexico, Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez loved food, but he didn’t really consider it a career path until he moved to the U.S. in his early 20s, first to Dallas and then to New York, and started working in restaurants. Still, as he began to navigate the industry, he found that prestigious establishments didn’t take him seriously. Part of the struggle, he says, was that he had worked only in Mexican restaurants. “Back then, working in Mexican restaurants didn’t mean a thing in terms of experience,” says Jimenez, 47\. “And I had a Mexican accent as well.” “People tend to put you in a box—you know, you’re Mexican, and you’re this way,” he continues. “I always struggled with that idea because there’s a diversity of Mexican people.” Over the years, Jimenez worked at a number of bars and restaurants in various roles—back waiter, runner, and bartender, among others. Eventually, he oversaw the bar program at The Daily, a cocktail bar in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood, and he went on to lead the bar program at Ghost Donkey, a mezcal and tequila bar in the East Village (both have since closed). “Ghost Donkey really allowed me to connect to my roots,” he says. “I hadn’t really explored that part of myself. I’d kind of been hiding it away in order for me to be accepted.” He was about to move to New Zealand to open another location of Ghost Donkey when the COVID-19 pandemic derailed his plan. After several months, he started bartending again while considering his next move, and when his now-partner—Greg Boehm, an owner of the bars Katana Kitten, Mace, and The Cabinet—approached him about managing a new place, Jimenez pitched him an idea that would allow him to further embrace his identity: a Mexican American cocktail bar. Superbueno opened in 2023, offering cocktails like vodka y soda, which contains vodka, guava, pasilla, and soda, and a green mango martini, made of blanco tequila, mango distillate, sauternes, green mango, honey, and chili oil. Its success, Jimenez says, has been “overwhelming.” In June, he won the [James Beard Award](https://www.jamesbeard.org/stories/the-2025-james-beard-award-winners "undefined") for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service, which he calls “validation” for all his years of hard work. “I always wanted to challenge the way that we looked at Mexican food, culture, the way that you think we do things, so my menu is designed with that intention,” Jimenez says. “When we’re talking about the concept of Superbueno, it’s a very specific, very particular, very personal way of looking at Mexican culture, and also paying homage to my whole journey here in the States—everything that I learned, everything that I’ve seen, everything that I get inspired by.” Jimenez is in the early stages of another project: a book on the Mexican American cocktail scene. But his main focus, he says, is bringing joy to his customers. “The purpose of Superbueno is obviously to portray and tell the world this story about our journey, about the journey of many other people,” Jimenez says, “but it’s also the purpose of creating a community of people, so we can empower more people that have the same challenges that I had.” Bartender Ignacio 'Nacho' Jimenez Proved His Skeptics Wrong ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310764/ignacio-nacho-jimenez/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310764/ignacio-nacho-jimenez/"},"headline":"Bartender Ignacio 'Nacho' Jimenez Proved His Skeptics Wrong","datePublished":"2025-09-16T11:17:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:54:21.572Z","description":"Jimenez opened Superbueno, a Mexican American cocktail bar, in 2023 as an homage to his identity and has since won a James Beard Award.","url":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310764/ignacio-nacho-jimenez/","keywords":["list","franchise","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8eba66fd46db1993/6998c9981500fb22c1aa6941/250929LatinoLeaders_Jimenez.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Chantelle Lee","jobTitle":"Reporter","url":"https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/"}],"creator":"Chantelle Lee","articleSection":"U.S.","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8eba66fd46db1993/6998c9981500fb22c1aa6941/250929LatinoLeaders_Jimenez.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/latino-leaders-2025/7310764/ignacio-nacho-jimenez/","name":"Bartender Ignacio 'Nacho' Jimenez Proved His Skeptics Wrong"}}]}] ```