A tiny Durham cocktail bar is up for a huge James Beard award. Take a look inside
One of the Triangle’s tiniest, most tucked-away bars is up for one of the biggest prizes in the food world.
The Bar Beej, the sister cocktail bar to Durham’s acclaimed Cheeni restaurant, is a semifinalist for one of the James Beard Foundation’s national chef and restaurant awards — Best New Bar in the Country.
Open less than a year, slinging drinks in a darkened, narrow strip of a space, The Bar Beej is relishing the spotlight.
“We were not expecting it at all,” beverage director Amy Waas said. “Post-James Beard, even a semifinalist here, does a lot for a really small business. But because we’re so new, it was just incredibly surprising. We were so honored and also pretty shell-shocked.”
The bar is not a secret and it’s not a speakeasy, but the Bar Beej is fairly unassuming, even in the middle of downtown Durham. There is no sign for the bar, beyond its name scrawled in chalk on a door beside the entrance to Cheeni. There is no Instagram and there is no separate website with the bar’s cocktail list beamed out into the universe.
To get to know The Bar Beej, you’ve got to meet it on its terms, which means simply walking through the door.
Preeti Waas moved her restaurant Cheeni to Durham at the very end of 2023, taking over the former Jack Tar diner space. With that also came a narrow cocktail bar next door, formerly known as The Colonel’s Daughter, a black box of bar stools and a ledge along the wall.
To give the bar space a new identity, Preeti Waas handed the reins to her daughter, Amy, who considered the possibility of tiny beginnings.
“The name ‘Beej’ refers to the word ‘seed’ in Sanskrit, but it also has a few different meanings,” Amy Waas said. “It’s rooted in divine femininity. It’s also rooted in nature and growth and sort of like, a more natural kind of aesthetic. But it also means, kind of colloquially, the start of something new.”
Beej has black walls and small crystal chandeliers. The main art is a series of vintage Bollywood movie posters. There’s a television bordered by gold velvet curtains that shows old Bollywood movies, a through-line to the soundtracks from the 1970s and ’80s often played at Cheeni.
“If it’s going to be an overtly Indian bar, the cocktails ought to match,” Amy Waas said. “So new and old school (cocktail) classics maybe didn’t have as much of a place....This is an extension of Cheeni, but still very distinct and very different.”
The changing Bar Beej cocktail menu
As an extension of the restaurant on the other side of the wall, Beej finds inventive ways to deal with the leftovers and surplus of Cheeni. This is perhaps where Beej finds its genius.
Of the two-dozen or so cocktails on the list, many find their origins in the restaurant’s pantry.
“It’s really great so that there’s no kind of creative burnout in coming up with new drinks,” Waas said. “Oftentimes a drink will be influenced or inspired by something that we know we need to use in the kitchen.”
“The Green Bean Gimlet” is more than just a pretty name, it’s a delight born out of bounty, with a simple syrup made from green beans, playing on their natural sweetness, balancing the gin and tartness of lime juice.
Or one of the Beej signatures, “I Could Drink This,” a pea-green mojito with a soul of mint chutney. It’s salty, savory, sweet, with a punch of real heat.
“This is what happens when you have mint that oxidizes just a little bit. It doesn’t mean it’s not delicious,” Waas said. “It definitely doesn’t look as green and pretty on a plate, so you have to think of how you can use that in something that’s going to still taste absolutely delicious.
“We all love a mojito, but if I could swap the acidity and salinity and the mint, but with equal specs of mint chutney, it kind of keeps everything vaguely familiar, but is a totally different mouth feel,” Waas said.
The Beej cocktail list is always in motion, but is generally offering Indian versions of classic cocktails.
The Old Fashioned features ghee-washed whiskey. The espresso martini is replaced by a version with housemade chai. There are lychee popping candies, pink peppercorns and coconut milk adding touches to cocktails.
“So our general rule is, if there’s not at least one Indian ingredient in it that comes from a kitchen, it’s probably not going to make its way onto the menu,” Waas said.
As for that menu, it will likely stay offline for the foreseeable future.
“What not having our menu online does is, I think it allows bartenders flexibility, and it also prevents a lot of outside criticism from ruining some of that creative process in its earliest stage,” Waas said. “It’s the curiosity factor. If, people are so interested, they will come out of their way just to check it out.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 2:05 PM with the headline "A tiny Durham cocktail bar is up for a huge James Beard award. Take a look inside."
