AARON J. FEDER

Beverage and Bars Manager, Kimpton Maa-lai Bangkok

Aaron Feder grew up in Boston, where his F&B career path began at the tender age of 15 after he was kicked out of high school and ended up getting a job as dishwasher at a respected French restaurant in town. He worked his way up to the prep kitchen and was cooking by the time he turned 16. He continued as a cook for the next five years, then switched to waiting tables, and later took on managerial duties. In time he got married, moved to San Francisco, left the restaurant game to become a hotel concierge, worked briefly at Lucasarts testing video games, divorced, and then made his way back to his hometown around 2008. “That’s kind of where I discovered craft cocktails,” he admits, adding that he honed his skills working at Backbar, Boston’s legendary craft cocktail haunt.

He was later invited to relocate to Taipei, to work at Ounce (still open to this day), which was followed by a move to Shanghai as part of the team behind El Ocho. But it was Candor, his very own Shanghai venue, that he calls his baby. “It was a craft cocktail burlesque bar, very vaudeville. We had drag and cabaret shows, and the cocktails were extremely grandiose.”

In mid-2019 he made the move to Bangkok, where he did guest shifts with J.boroski and some moonlighting at the now defunct Ivy 47 restaurant. These days you’ll find him working his selfconfessed “dream job” as the beverage and bars manager at the Kimpton Maa-lai Bangkok hotel, overseeing things at Craft, the main floor gin bar and café, Bar.yard, the colourful rooftop tiki spot, and the soon to open Ms. Jigger cocktail bar.