About CTK
Collaborate. Refine. Elevate.
CTK is a neighborhood cocktail bar in Hell’s Kitchen.
Whether you live here, you’re visiting, or you want to talk about your beverage program, come say hello. We’d love to pour you a drink.
Come in for a drink.
We’re open Tuesday through Saturday, 5:00 PM to midnight. Perfect for drinks and snacks during happy hour, pre-theater, post-theater and anywhere in between. Expect great cocktails, good company, and what we’d argue are the best pizza bagels in New York. Some say we reinvented the tater tot. More days and hours are coming this fall and winter.
More than a bar.
CTK isn’t your typical bar. It’s also a working cocktail R&D lab. Cocktail Test Kitchen is a partnership with Innovative Beverage Strategies, a consulting firm dedicated to pairing the art of beverage with the business of restaurants. We’re always trying and testing new ideas for both guests and clients. If you’re an owner or operator in need of an elevated cocktail or wine program, reach out.
Who we are
James Kaspari
James Kaspari is a bartender and beverage operator who has made a career out of opening some of New York’s most celebrated bars. He brings more than a decade of opening experience and high-volume cocktail service to CTK, where he runs the bar day to day.
James was part of the original opening teams at Carbone, ZZ’s Clam Bar and Dirty French, where he helped build bar programs from day one and keep them performing as each became a fixture of the city’s dining scene. He tended bar at Carbone from 2013 to 2021, giving him years of hands-on experience delivering precise, consistent cocktails at the pace of a packed dining room.
In 2021, James joined the opening team at THE GRILL to reopen the historic Seagram Building, serving as head bartender across THE GRILL, THE POOL and The Lobster Club. Running three distinct bar programs under one roof sharpened his strengths in execution at scale: building specs that hold up on a busy night, keeping teams aligned on standards, and making every guest’s drink land the way it was designed.
Few people know better what it takes to get a bar right from the first night. At CTK, James is where the R&D meets the guest. He turns the cocktails developed through Cocktail Test Kitchen into consistent nightly service, then brings real guest feedback back into the process.
Brad Nugent
Brad Nugent is a hospitality leader and beverage strategist with more than 20 years of experience building some of the most successful beverage programs in the country. He is a self-taught operator who has spent his entire career in restaurants: on the floor, behind the bar and in the wine cellar.
Brad has led multi-million-dollar beverage programs, most recently for Major Food Group’s flagship Northeast properties, including Carbone, Torrisi, THE GRILL and ZZ’s Members Club. His expertise in curation, pricing, inventory control, wine education, sales training and team development has consistently delivered double-digit growth in revenue and profit.
As founder of Innovative Beverage Strategies, Brad partners with restaurants to make beverage the most profitable part of their business. At CTK, he puts that approach to work every night, combining operational precision with creative, guest-focused hospitality. You’ll often find him at the bar, making sure the drinks work in the books, on the floor and in the minds of guests long after they’ve left.
Patrick Wert
Patrick Wert is a hospitality operator and beverage strategist focused on building the systems that let great beverage programs scale. His background spans elite New York dining rooms and high-volume luxury restaurants, and his specialty is turning creative beverage ideas into structured, repeatable performance on the floor.
A graduate of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration, Patrick trained at Eleven Madison Park during a formative era of precision and systems-driven excellence. He went on to work with Major Food Group in New York and Florida and was part of the opening team at THE GRILL, where he gained firsthand experience running complex, high-revenue beverage programs.
Patrick is known for turning vision into infrastructure: pricing models, sales frameworks, training systems and workflows that help programs perform consistently across teams and markets. As co-founder of Innovative Beverage Strategies, he brings that same structure to CTK. From Oklahoma City, he shapes the business behind the bar and helps steer Cocktail Test Kitchen’s work with restaurants, making sure every idea that comes out of the lab works in practice.