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Gina Chersevani
Bartender / bar director
- Discipline
- Other
i. Biography
Gina Chersevani’s work tracks the modern cocktail renaissance through rooms, roles, and increasingly exacting forms of service. The craft moves from mixing drinks in New York City and Washington, DC in 2002 to designing the beverage program at 15 Ria in 2003, then through consulting at Poste Moderne Brasserie through 2006 and serving as master mixologist at Rasika in 2006. Taken together, the dates show progression; the bars, menus, and glassware show a bartender turning from service into program design, with cocktails built for invention, precision, and clarity.
The Path
University of Maryland provided Gina Chersevani’s formal education before she entered mixed drinks in New York City and Washington, DC (from 2002), where shaking, stirring, and reading a room became the base skills for the work ahead. The sequence that followed shows a career moving from execution to authorship. As bartender at Penang in Washington, DC, then as the person who designed the beverage program at 15 Ria (from 2003), she shifted from making drinks to shaping the way a place drinks. At Poste Moderne Brasserie, she consulted through 2006; at Rasika, she served as master mixologist in 2006. Those roles pushed the work beyond technique alone and into composition and point of view. By 2008, as bar chef at Neighborhood Group, and in 2009 as cocktail-culinary collaborator at PS7's, the overlap between bar and kitchen had become central to the practice. Today, Gina is founder and owner of Buffalo & Bergen, a name tied to a cocktail approach that favors invention, play, and flavor-led construction.
The Work Today
Buffalo & Bergen (Capitol Hill) is where Gina Chersevani’s name is linked to cocktails built with range rather than repetition. The program there makes room for surprise, texture, and savory edges. In 2022, she introduced The Conscience at the Capitol Hill location, a drink built with VSOP Brandy, Lemon, Dehydrated Meatball, Brown Sugar, and Bacon-Cured Crickets. The composition reads as both provocation and structure, a clear example of how she uses ingredients to test the frame of a cocktail. Molly Malone followed in 2022, made with gin infused with thyme, vermouth, cockles, capers, and salted cockles-infused olive oil. The build leans into briny depth and herbal lift, using layering rather than excess to create contrast. Also in 2022, Rising Peacock debuted at Buffalo & Bergen as a limited savory cocktail series, extending the same line of inquiry between cocktail and dish, refreshment and appetite.
Signature
Gina's signature dishes include The Conscience, Molly Malone, Rising Peacock, and cucumber martinis. The set points to a style built on range: bracing, savory, unexpected, and attentive to contrast.
In Their Words “I entered this competition without any expectations. But, I know food and I know flavor. The whole experience was one awesome blur – I can’t believe I won. My only hope was to do my best and make the team proud.”
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Gina
Where did Gina Chersevani train or study?
Gina Chersevani trained at University of Maryland.
What recognition has Gina Chersevani received?
RAMW Award for Best Beverage Program (2010).
