Tony Pescatory did not learn flavour behind a bar counter. He learned it in the fields of rural Italy, where fennel grew wild, chicory was boiled for dinner, and fruit was picked straight from the orchard. That relationship with soil, season, and plants would later become the foundation of Noble Roots, the Belgrade-based cocktail bar that is quietly redefining how the world thinks about drinking.

At Noble Roots, Tony Pescatory has created a place where cocktails begin not with spirits, but with farming, foraging, and fermentation. Lemons and limes are replaced with raw quince and local vinegars. Herbs are distilled into hydrolates. Flowers are preserved at peak season and turned into liquid memory. The result is a menu that tastes deeply local yet feels globally relevant.

This is not about rejecting tradition. It is about reconnecting drinks to the land they come from — and few bars embody that idea as fully as Noble Roots.

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Your childhood in rural Italy and the time you spent working the land clearly shape your drinks. Can you walk me through the first memory of a taste, plant, or ingredient that made you want to build cocktails around terroir rather than spirits alone?

I grew up in rural Italy, in a village where life was dictated by the soil. My earliest memories are not of spirits or bars but of smells: the sharp, almost licorice note of wild fennel picked from the roadside, the aromatic sweetness released when you rub tomato leaves between your fingers, the bitterness of chicory we foraged and boiled for dinner. Eggs came from the neighbor, fruit from the orchard, and everything was immediate and unprocessed. That gave me a vocabulary of flavor before I even knew the word “cocktail.”

Later, when I stepped behind the bar, I realized what drew me in wasn’t alcohol itself but the way flavors could be layered, transformed, and given new life. Terroir, to me, is not a concept or a marketing tool — it’s the truth of where I come from. That’s why at Noble Roots, drinks start with plants, soil, and seasons first. Spirits are just one instrument in a much larger orchestra.

You moved to London at 18 and eventually became Bar Manager at Nightjar. What specific lessons from Nightjar’s culture and service model have stuck with you, and how did they influence the way you run teams now?

Moving to London at 16 was like stepping into another world. At Nightjar, where I eventually became Bar Manager, I learned lessons that will stay with me forever. The first was discipline: nothing was left to chance. Every garnish, every cube of ice, every note of service was rehearsed until it seemed effortless. The second was storytelling: cocktails weren’t simply liquids in a glass, they carried mood, music, and imagination. A drink could transport you.

Those lessons shaped how I run teams today. Hospitality is theater, yes, but theater built on precision. Discipline is non-negotiable. Service must feel like a performance where the guest is the star, not the bartender. And the third lesson, perhaps the most important, was mentorship. At Nightjar I saw how knowledge was passed down with rigor. I carry that into my leadership — because building the next generation is as essential as building the next menu.

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Alma and Nightjar are very different projects. What pushed you to open Alma in London, and what did you try to do differently there compared with your Nightjar years? 

Nightjar was opulent, almost mythical — a place of spectacle. Alma was my rebellion against that. After years in London’s cocktail temples, I wanted something more human-scale, closer to the trattoria culture I grew up with in Italy. Alma was about intimacy: big flavors, wild fermentations, impeccable service and vibe, but without the over-theatricality. It was a living-room bar where stories and drinks flowed naturally.

The goal was to reconnect cocktails to culture — to food, music, community — rather than isolate them as high art. At Nightjar, I learned how to build magic; at Alma, I learned how to strip magic back until it felt natural again. Service was still king, but warmth mattered as much as technique. Later, we took the same DNA to Dubai and built a venue with the largest agave selection in the region, fusing hospitality, terroir, and precision in a completely different cultural context.

Noble Roots places farming, foraging, and an in-house lab at the centre of the bar. Practically speaking, how do you balance seasonal, hyper-local sourcing with guest expectations (e.g., people who still want ‘familiar’ citrus-based classics)?

At Noble Roots, the challenge is always expectation. Guests come in asking for classics — and in their mind, classics mean lime, lemon, cucumber, passionfruit. We don’t ban citrus, I’m not a purist. We’ll bring in lemons from Greece and use them where tradition demands it. But mostly we reframe. A daiquiri at Noble Roots will still taste balanced, fresh, alive — but the acidity might come from fermented green plums, raw quince juice or  local monastery apple vinegar.

The guest recognizes the structure, even if the bricks are different. That’s how you bridge familiarity and terroir. And we’re transparent — we tell people why we don’t fly in crates of limes from halfway across the world, and why acidity lives here in Serbia in more sustainable, surprising forms. People leave excited that “local” can also be universal.

You collaborate with botanists, chemists, and the University of Belgrade. Can you give one example of a scientific technique you adopted that fundamentally changed a cocktail on your menu?

One of the biggest changes came from adopting hydrolates and absolutes through the Air Still. We own a Rotovap, one of only a few bars in Serbia to have one, but the Air Still is the real game-changer: affordable, consistent, and able to create stable, intense ingredients. It allows us to build an encyclopedia of flavor — hydrolates of seasonal herbs, absolutes of flowers — and catalog them for year-round use.

This came from working with chemists, my co-owner Tasya, and from collaborations with the University of Belgrade on foraging and terroir. It reinforced something I’d already known from childhood: a product harvested in season, from local soil, will always be more powerful than something shipped across the world and artificially ripened. It’s the difference between eating a mango under the sun in India and one picked unripe, shipped to Europe and speed-ripened with Ethylene gas. That’s why Noble Roots drinks taste so bright and immediate — because they carry the intensity of place. Our approach is underpinned by symbiotic agroforestry, which teaches us that diversity in the field creates depth in the glass.

You’ve said you replace some ‘global’ ingredients (like lime) with ultra-local acidity. What has been the most surprising local substitute you’ve developed, and how did you test and validate it for service? 

The most surprising substitution we’ve developed is raw quince juice in place of lime. Quince is grown in Serbia for rakija, but when juiced raw it gives a sharp, clean acidity and slight astringency that mirrors citrus perfectly. We tested it relentlessly: blind tastings with staff, friends, and then guests. When people didn’t miss lime, we knew we had it.

Now quince is not just a substitute, it’s a signature. It embodies Noble Roots — using what grows here, proving that terroir can replace global imports without compromise. And because we stockpile flowers and fruit at peak season, freezing or distilling them when quality is highest and prices lowest, we can respect both seasonality and sustainability while still delivering consistent flavor year-round.

You’ve worked across ~40 countries. Which region or single trip rewired the way you think about flavour combinations, and did that trip lead to any signature drinks now served at Noble Roots?

Several countries rewired me. Mexico taught me layering: smoke, spice, fruit, fermentation — flavors that aren’t just combinations but cultural memory. India showed me how fermentation and spice can be daily rituals, not just special processes. The Philippines revealed how sweetness, umami and acidity can dance together in tropical balance.

But what tied it all together was realizing that many traditional cultures use the same techniques under different names. Indian koozh and Turkish boza both rely on millet and lactic fermentation. Kimchi and Serbian paprika can follow the same path: lactic fermentation transforming them into something new, which we can then distill into liquid form. Once you unlock those ancestral techniques, you see terroir differently. It’s not just about ingredients — it’s about processes passed down for centuries that you can re-root into any landscape. That mindset is everywhere in our Noble Roots drinks.

Noble Roots is as much a farm and lab as it is a bar. What are the biggest operational headaches (seasonality, regulations, supply chain, training staff to respect the philosophy) and how do you solve them?

Noble Roots is not just a bar; it’s a farm, a lab, and a hospitality space all in one. Seasonality is the first headache: one week you drown in strawberries, the next there’s none. Our answer is preservation. We ferment, dry, distill, or pickle everything we can. Nothing leaves the kitchen unused.

Regulations are another challenge. There is no playbook in Serbia for a bar running distillation, fermentation, and laboratory techniques. We write our own rules, adapting constantly. Staff training might be the hardest of all. It’s not just about teaching recipes but instilling philosophy: respect for the land, zero waste, patience with fermentation. Not every bartender wants to spend the afternoon cleaning carrots or juicing quince, but those who embrace it become true disciples of the concept. Those are the people who stay long-term and grow with us.

You do guest shifts and masterclasses internationally (India and elsewhere). When you teach, what’s the single most important skill or mindset you try to instil in bartenders who want to adopt a botanical, regenerative approach?

When I travel for guest shifts or masterclasses, I try to instill two things. The first is humility toward ingredients. Too many bartenders — myself included when I was younger — chase exotic imports because they look impressive. My message is: stop copying, start thinking. Look around you, understand your terroir, learn the chemistry of your local plants, and build from there. The skill that matters most is balance. Once you can create acidity, bitterness, aroma, and sweetness without leaning on imports, you are free.

The second is emotional intelligence. A bartender is not only a technician but a human connection. I focus on helping younger bartenders gain confidence, interact meaningfully with guests, and leave each person with a memory. That is as important as the drink itself. Botanical bartending is not just technique — it’s philosophy, mindset, and human touch.

Looking ahead: do you see Noble Roots as a place-based concept (tied to Belgrade’s landscape) or as a scalable model you’d like to take elsewhere? If you were to export the model, what would you refuse to compromise on?

Noble Roots was born in Belgrade, rooted in Serbian soil and shaped by its landscape. It will always belong here. But the model is scalable because the philosophy is universal. Wherever you go in the world, there is terroir — soil, plants, traditional processes, ancestral knowledge.

If we take Noble Roots abroad, the non-negotiables are clear: no gimmicks, no crates of imported exotic fruit, no disrespect for local farmers. The bar must mirror the land it stands on. Design, menu, even drinks can adapt — but terroir-driven hospitality is the soul. That is what makes Noble Roots Noble Roots, and that is what I refuse to compromise on.

Through Noble Roots, Tony Pescatory has built more than a cocktail bar. He has built a living ecosystem where agriculture, science, and hospitality exist side by side. Every ferment, distillation, and seasonal harvest becomes part of the guest experience.

What makes Tony Pescatory’s work so powerful is its honesty. Instead of importing flavour from across the world, Noble Roots looks inward — to Serbian orchards, wild herbs, and forgotten fruits — and turns them into something extraordinary.

As the global bar industry searches for more sustainable and meaningful ways to serve drinks, Noble Roots stands as a quiet blueprint for the future. Rooted in place. Led by craft. And guided by the belief that great cocktails should always begin in the soil.