Christopher Marty

Career Christopher Marty, bartender and co-owner of Best Intentions in Chicago, is read through the room he helps shape: quick on its feet, loose in its welcome, and exacting in the glass. The work suggests a kind of bar-side inheritance, where comfort and speed land like ingrained habits and ambitious technique sits inside an easygoing pour. At Best Intentions, that balance is the brief. The room may be unpretentious, but the thinking behind it is not casual.

The Training The discipline at Best Intentions is practical and generous. Drinks are built for comfort and speed, a deceptively difficult brief in which the cocktail has to arrive without fuss and still carry the structure, intention, and polish of something far more involved. In that sense, the bar’s charm is tied to its rigor. The point is not to show off complexity, but to make it feel seamless. That philosophy is echoed in the way Marty speaks about taste. His palate tilts savory, toward the damp, wooded register of the forest floor, and he describes it with an offhand line that opens onto a wider sensory world: “I grew up eating it, still love it, but I gravitate towards things that taste like sticks and leaves.” Memory and appetite sit side by side there, along with a taste for the strange and the earthy, for flavors that feel grounded without becoming plain. Comfort, in his hands, is never bland.

The Lineage Not every idea arrives easily, and Marty does not pretend otherwise. “It was not a fun developmental process.” The sentence gives the finished work more weight. What may read as effortless in service has clearly been earned elsewhere, through the slow friction of testing, adjusting, and refining until the result can move with ease. A relaxed room, after all, is often the product of exacting labor.

The Table At Best Intentions, the drinks work as atmosphere as much as recipe. The Angostura Flip is a special cocktail at the bar that uses Angostura bitters on draft, an idea that feels playful and careful, novelty folded into precision. Wondermint Malted moves in another direction, suggesting a different register of cool, creaminess, and lift. Then there is the line that seems to unlock the whole scene: “Who doesn’t want to sit back by the fake fireplace and sip their libation from a silver chalice?” It is humorous, yes, but also revealing. The luxury here is not about distance or ceremony for its own sake; it is about permission, about letting a guest settle into the room’s small theatrical pleasures without pretense. Taken together, these drinks show how Marty’s work at Best Intentions treats the cocktail as a gathering point. A soup memory, bitters on draft, a frozen Wondermint build, a silver chalice by a fake fireplace: the playful, tactile, and quietly exacting, bound by a single idea that hospitality can be warm, whimsical, and exact all at once.

Signature

Christopher's signature cocktails include The Thank You, Angostura Flip, Wondermint Malted, and AB Negative.

In Their Words “I grew up eating it, still love it, but I gravitate towards things that taste like sticks and leaves.” “Who doesn’t want to sit back by the fake fireplace and sip their libation from a silver chalice?”

FAQ What is Christopher Marty's current role? Christopher Marty is Bartender and Co-owner. What is Christopher Marty known for? Inventive cocktails at Best Intentions. What recognition has Christopher Marty received? James Beard Awards — Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service (2026 nominee).