A Taiwanese native, Faye Chen turns gastronomic memories into drinks at the helm of Double Chicken Please: a bar born out of a pop-up in a yellow Volkswagen, now No. 1 in North America's 50 Best Bars 2023 and No. 14 in the world 2024 thanks to cult creations such as Cold Pizza.
Trained at nineteen in Taoyuan, Chen discovered the allure of flair bartending and studied acrobatic gestures as much as aromatic extractions. Together with GN Chan, whom she met behind a counter in Taipei, she moved to Shanghai in 2014 to join mentor Shingo Gokan in opening Speak Low, learning to integrate Japanese technique and street conviviality. Three years later, the two partners left Asia with a visa, little savings, and an idea: to explore the United States by van, serving traveling cocktails to “understand the American palate.”
From the tour comes the intuition for a dual-concept bar: Free Range in front, with on tap drinks as quick as a soda; The Coop in back, a lounge where “foodified” cocktails evoke iconic dishes. In November 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Double Chicken Please opened on the Lower East Side: less than three years later, it flew to the top of the continental rankings and reached the global top 20. Chen, a general manager as well as a bartender, organizes flows of 600 cocktails a night thanks to batch recipes, milk clarifications, and carbonation systems that reduce time without sacrificing finesse.
Her philosophy starts with food: “Many drinks are born from a dish; it takes two or three days of preparation in the kitchen,” she says, emphasizing how cuts, infusions, and clarifications determine flavor structure. From the Margarita-Margherita “Cold Pizza” to the “Thai Curry Highball,” each blend seeks balance between aroma, memory and drinkability, removing the harshness of the solid matter to leave only the evocative notes.
When she is not at the bar, Chen cultivates relationships with local farmers and craft distillers to ensure transparent supply chains; during Lunar New Year 2025, he created an Oolong Highball dedicated to the Taiwanese diaspora, emphasizing how hospitality means “warming the nostalgia of those who live far from home.”
Recognized as a Rising Star Bartender by StarChefs in 2023, Chen animates international talks on bar design and female mentorship, promoting “kitchen-inspired mixology” practice in the younger generation. “Treat the bar as a career, not a job,” she advises, reiterating the centrality of daily training.
