Bar Director and Co-owner, Café Lily in Decatur
For Sowmya Burugu, 34, growing up in India meant being surrounded by spices and ingredients from different regions in Asia. At Café Lily, she uses those ingredients – often unknown to American palates – to create unique and balanced cocktails.
After moving to the U.S. in 2008 to get her master’s, Sowmya worked in a California café to help pay for school, but Café Lily is her first foray into the hospitality industry. And even with no formal training, in just two short years, she has taken on the role of Bar Director and, as of January, co-owner of this Decatur restaurant, which originally opened 1999.
Interestingly, while most people in the industry are focused on one job, Sowmya divides her time between a full-time job in IT as a coder and working at the restaurant. For her, the similarity is apparent: “A perfectly executed code is like taking ingredients, combining them and coming up with an excellent cocktail.” Admittedly, she says creating cocktails is more like art, but “I just look at them as input and output in my head.”
Sowmya confesses that she didn’t even know she had a passion for cocktails but took to it immediately. Her love of food and the complexity of flavors inspires her weekly cocktail offerings – sometimes to compliment the chef’s special or as a standalone bar special – all with quirky names like ‘Feel the Bern’ and ‘Here Today, Gone Amaro’.
With each creation, Sowmya loves nothing more than seeing the expression on her customer’s faces when they taste one. “I was so happy making that cocktail and I see that momentary expression they get,” she says. “You’re giving your happiness to someone else. That’s the best part of my job.”
Read More About Our 2021 Rising Stars
Thank you to our 2021 Rising Stars sponsors!
