Pouring Passion: In Conversation With Countertop & Boilermaker Goa's Pankaj Balachandran

When I started my career with the Taj as a management trainee, I had to go through all the departments. During my interview, I was actually selected for the front office, not food and beverage. And honestly, I was quite happy about it - front office meant air conditioning, easier hours, a set nine-to-five job. But my mentor at the time encouraged me to move into food and beverage because I had a natural inclination for it.

Once I shifted into F&B, I found myself really drawn to wines. I wanted to become a sommelier, and I did - studied wines, did WSET levels 1, 2, and 3, and became a bit of a wine snob almost; selling expensive bottles and educating people about them. But I soon realized the wine market in India was quite controlled and not that widely known as a beverage, as it was quite an intimidating drink for most people. Initially, I wanted to work at Wasabi, one of the Taj’s finest restaurants, which was led by Iron Chef Morimoto, but when that shut down, I was instead put into the bar. Imagine - a wine guy suddenly working in a bar. I had to shift from selling wines to selling cocktails. What I did in that interim time was kind of, you know, I had this habit of, like, if I'm doing something, I have to be, like, really good at what I'm doing, right? With wine, I became the Indian Sommelier Champion and even represented India in Australia.

So now that I've shifted gears to beverages and bars, I kind of put my head down and said, Okay, now I have to be, like, really good at bars. So, for two years as a bar manager, I turned an underperforming bar into a successful one, all while learning how to build cocktails and understanding bartending deeply. But at the Taj, you’re rotated constantly, and soon I was moved to a fine-dining Indian restaurant, which didn’t excite me as much. So after five years, I decided to leave and got the chance to open Perch Wine and Coffee Bar.

The idea was to make wine more approachable for a larger audience, and to make coffee more geeky and fun. Within Perch, we also created a small cocktail bar called Hoots. That bar eventually made it to Asia’s 50 Best Bars. It was an intimate 20-seater bar that was very progressive in terms of the drinks programme, and running it was like relearning everything from scratch. Around the same time, I also co-founded Barback Collective, a consulting company. Through that, I worked with brands like Monkey Shoulder, Hendrick’s, and Diplomatico. It was a period of juggling multiple things - consulting, running a bar, building wine programs, and working with brands. It was intense, but one of my biggest learning experiences.

During this time, I used to frequent a Delhi bar called PCO, and one thing I noticed was that people didn’t really like Negronis, since it was bitter and had Campari. It didn’t feel like something people could sip and savour. It takes a little time to start developing a liking towards them. But I loved it, and I started creating a cult following for it, pushing people to try it until they grew to appreciate its complexity and layers, telling them that they would grow to like it. Eventually, it reached a point where if I walked into a bar, bartenders would automatically make me a Negroni. That’s really how I would say @isaynegroni as an identity was born.

Honestly, it’s about keeping myself excited and engaged. I get bored very easily if I do just one thing. I realized early on that if I only focused on one area, I’d lose interest. Doing multiple things keeps me creatively stimulated. If you run a bar, you know exactly what problems will crop up every day, and it gets repetitive. Because I handle multiple facets of different parts of business, every day is a new challenge, a new role, a new responsibility, and a new learning, obviously, because you are solving problems on a daily basis. I think something that connects all of them together is the fact that I'm making sure that I'm creatively engaged, because I don't want to have a creative block.

It does happen to bartenders and mixologists; when they continue to build only cocktails and bars, they will face a block at some point. For me, I think I'm creatively charged every single day, because there is something that is challenging every single day from one of these facets of the business, right? Whether it be building a marketing campaign for a brand, or whether it be building a new concept for a bar or building a new cocktail menu for a venue, you are always thinking about something that you can do new and different, and that kind of connects all of this together, that I'm motivated to kind of wake up and say, “Okay, what next? What's today going to be like?” I've been doing this for the last 15 to 16 years now, and I think that has kind of tied everything down to what makes it tick.

​Short Story is part of the Third Eye Distillery group, which also owns Stranger & Sons, and I came on board to build out the brand. With my background in flavor and liquid development, I worked on everything from creating the liquid to shaping the branding and launch strategy. What excited me was problem-solving. At the time, everyone was making gin, but almost 60% of cocktails globally are built with white spirits beyond gin. There was a clear gap in the market, and Short Story was designed to fill that space.

With Asia’s 50 Best, you never know the jury. They visit anonymously and judge based on their experience. But I think our approach with Boilermaker was very deliberate. After Tesouro shut down in 2022, we took two years off to understand the market and what Goa really needed. At the time, many new bars were moving away from the essence of Goa - air-conditioned, fancy, expensive spaces that didn’t feel like Goa anymore. We wanted to do the opposite. At Boilermaker, we created a bar that felt quintessentially Goan, while still maintaining high-quality service, drinks, and practices.

We also launched the brand strongly - even before opening, we built a buzz through marketing, collaborations, and guest shifts. By the time we opened, people already felt invested. Most importantly, we focused on consistency - every guest had the same experience, whether it was a regular or someone visiting for the first time.

One of my juniors, then, who heads the bar now, I should thank him, because he shared the notion of “selective hospitality” with me, that is quite prevalent - the tendency to give a little extra only to people you know if you’re an owner, bartender, or are industry friends. Everyone will get a great standard experience, but if you know someone, you always tend to get a little something more.