It’s a dream enough to be a bartender, but what more to be a bartenders’ bartender at the world’s second best bar, based on the Perrier-sponsored World’s 50 Best Bars, which was revealed recently in Singapore, the first time the unveiling was held outside of Europe since it started in 2009?

GN Chan is the man. He won the coveted Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award 2023, and you can just imagine whom he was up against, no less than the world’s best bartenders, from Barcelona to Lima, from Shanghai to Mexico City, from Athens to Bangkok, from Sydney to Buenos Aires.

But, yes, this year, GN Chan topped them all. The bar he co-founded, Double Chicken Please, in New York is also the second in the World’s 50 Best Bars 2023, next only to Barcelona’s Sips, whose founders, highly acclaimed mixologists Simone Caporale and Marc Alvarez, are intoxicating names in the international bar scene.

This year, Simone and Marc have the number one spot on the bar list of William Reed’s World’s 50 Best, but GN is on top of the world as the bartenders’ bartender. He was chosen by the most exacting of judges—his peers. His fellow bartenders across the planet on the 50 Best 2023 list were asked to put forward the name of the one bartender who pushed the limits of what it meant to be a great bartender and his was the name they pushed. I’d bet you a dirty martini that Marc and Simone were among them.

The Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award, according to a press statement, “goes to a personality who made a significant impact in the global bar sector over the voting period and recognizes their commitment to the international community in that time.”

GN Chan’s approach to crafting cocktails has been described as refreshing, his dedication to his vision unwavering, and his personal warmth infectious. “He has established Double Chicken Please as one of the most exciting bar concepts in the world,” says William Drew, director of content for The World’s 50 Best Bars. “It is no surprise that his peers have selected him as the winner of this award, as his spirit and dedication exemplify the fundamentals of what defines the Altos Bartenders’ Bartender.”

No surprise, indeed! GN majored in industrial design in college. But in his early years, when a business deal went kaput, he took to the streets, where he worked as a magician. His turn on the road was sparked by a chance encounter with a flair bartender while he was doing his magic gigs on the streets. Mixology to him was an accidental affair, to which he surrendered boldly, leaving his native Taiwan in 2011—he was born in Tainan City as Chia-An Chan—for New York. His mission: to learn the craft of mixing drinks, in which he had zero knowledge and much less experience. 

Such boldness, needless to say, has paid off as he honed his skills and emboldened his creativity and imagination and, in the process, earned himself recognition and accolades, as well as a friend and business partner in fellow Taiwanese Faye Chen, with whom, back in 2017, he ventured on the idea of cocktails on the road, serving up unique cocktail and dining experiences in a yellow vintage VW camper van that he and Faye drove across the US. 

In 2020, after having made a currency of their clever, innovative, and fun take on both cuisine and mixology, GN and Faye settled in the Lower East Side of New York, where they set up Double Chicken Please.

It’s been a journey, long and hard, but now here he is—Altos Bartenders’ Bartender, his bar number two in the World’s 50 Best Bars—but not before earlier wins, such as the Disaronno Highest New Entry Award Double Chicken Please won in 2022 as a result of storming into the list of the World’s 50 Best Bars at number six. Apart from the latest in a string of recognitions, Double Chicken Please has also been named the best bar in the 2023 edition of North America’s 50 Best Bars.

“I am extremely humbled and grateful. I would like to dedicate this recognition to Team DCP (Double Chicken Please), who I work and hustle with day to day,” says GN Chan. “It is only together that we have achieved many things we never thought we would be able to, daring to dream big and bigger every day. This recognition serves as motivation, driving our determination to continue progressing and fuelling our enthusiasm to share and expand within our beloved community. I have nothing but gratitude from receiving this honor from my peers. Thank you for being the giants, and for letting us stand on your shoulders.”