Dustin Le – Ba Nomu

My Life

I was born and raised in Bremen. After finishing secondary school, at the age of sixteen, I started a three-year apprenticeship as a hotel management student in a place called Hotel zur Post. The education was a mix of school attendance and getting to know and working in all areas of the hotel. The hotel, which back then was a four-star-plus hotel also owned the Bremer Ratskeller with a Michelin-starred restaurant called L’Orchidée and a huge wine cellar. I was very young when I started my training, and thinking back to that time, I was a very chaotic person and probably too young to be standing on my own two feet. I had two guys who acted as mentors for me and without them I probably would not have finished my education. Now I am very grateful that I did though, and with the help of these mentors I learned how to be a more responsible person. After my apprenticeship I switched to working conventions and events in a five-star hotel called Swissôtel Bremen and did that for two years.

“..but my superiors flat out told me that it would be like fitting a square into a circle”

Dustin Le

After that, my plan was to do an F&B management trainee program at the bar, but my superiors flat out told me that it would be like fitting a square into a circle—it just wasn’t a good fit. So I quit and moved to Hamburg to work at the Side Design Hotel, where I bartended for the first time. That was back in 2010. Since my apprenticeship, I had always been interested in the F&B sector. I only worked there for a year though, before moving back to Bremen and the Hotel zur Post as they had called me up to ask if I was interested in being their new man behind the bar. That is how I became a bar manager. Just eight months later, Mario Ippen from Lemon Lounge approached me and asked me to work for him as bartender. I accepted, since I was interested in getting to know something else besides a hotel bar and was also very curious about the entrepreneurial side of an independent cocktail bar. I was there for a bit more than a year. The plan was for me to move to Cologne to work at Al Salam, but a car accident changed everything.

I urgently needed money, so I decided to work on a cruise ship, first as a bartender and later as chef de rang in the restaurant. This turned into an almost two-year stint, and afterwards I could finally go to Cologne to work at Al Salam for almost two years. I then got a scholarship from Jägermeister, and they sent me to work with Marian Beke in London for six months. That was a very intense time, but lots of fun and highly educative. I moved back to Berlin after that, but it didn’t really work out for me . . . Berlin is not my city. I worked for FIFTY Cocktail Heroes while there, but soon moved to Hamburg, where I started a family business in 2017 together with my wife and my brother-in-law by opening a restaurant called Nakama. Since my wife’s family is from Vietnam, Nakama has a Vietnamese/Japanese bar/restaurant concept. Three years later, in early 2020, we opened Bento, a small Japanese izakaya style lunch restaurant. Finally, the idea for Ba Nomu, our third place, had already been born before Covid hit, so in June of 2022 I opened Ba Nomu, which is what I am spending most of my time running now.

Ba Nomu

The bar has a playful, Asian-inspired concept. Bars such as Oriole, Cahoots, Nightjar, Salmon Guru served as inspirations for the concept. When you enter the place, the cocktail menu takes you on a journey. The glasses take on an important role. At the moment we are still in our soft opening phase. Sake will definitely be added to the menu to a greater extent. We would also like to open earlier in the afternoon / early evening. For this purpose, we’ll add classics and also cocktails on tap. The bar fits thirty people and it is seating only. It is only closed on Mondays and opens from 6 pm to 1 am at the moment. We’d like for drinks to be added and taken away from the menu regularly as kind of a living concept and without fixed times for menu changes. So far, I am very happy with how the bar has started out.

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The Future

I would love for bartenders to take themselves less seriously, focus on the guest and put hospitality first. The good thing about Covid is that now guests are looking forward to coming back into bars and have a good time. The focus should be on the bar and not on who the coolest of all bartenders is. This would be my only message for the future.

Profile

Year born: 1988

Special skills: Irony and sarcasm

Free time: Spending time with my young son. He is 1.5 years old.

Bartender since: 2007

Biggest fail: I caused a car accident once, which cost me a lot of time and money.

Most significant career steps: Working together with Mohammad Nazzal at Al Salam in Cologne and Marian Beke at Gibson in London. I learned a great deal from both of them, which was extremely helpful in my career development.

Favourite cocktail: Old Fashioned. It’s just one of the most honest drinks.

Check out Dustin’s cocktail recipes: Sam’s no one and They see me riding.

Favourite bar: Old Man in Hong Kong—the drinks are absolutely awesome and on point and the hospitality is great, even if you come there as a tourist.

Hamburg: In three words, for me: wet, cold, home.

Ba Nomu Website

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Images: ©Tim Gerdts