Andreas Sanidiotis.

The short version

Andreas began behind the bar in Nicosia in the early 2010s, working through the rooms that were trying to drag Cypriot drinking culture out of vodka-Red-Bull territory and into something the rest of the bar world might pay attention to. The work landed at Lost & Found Drinkery, a twenty-seat bar on a side street in the old town, where he was head bartender and one of the founding bar team.

In 2015, Lost & Found became the first bar in Cyprus to make the World’s 50 Best Bars list. It stayed on the list for nine consecutive years and peaked at #25 in 2018. The same year, the bar earned two Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards Top 10 nominations in a single cycle — Best International Cocktail Bar and Best International Bar Team — alongside Manhattan Bar Singapore, the Connaught, the Savoy’s American Bar, and Tippling Club. It remains the only Cypriot bar to have done either thing.

From there, the work moved outward. Tocayo in Nicosia (Best New Restaurant Cyprus, 2021). Casa de Cuba in Abu Dhabi. Diplomatico-led rum seminars across the Mediterranean. A consulting role at In Plain Sight in Austin that put it on the Spirited Awards 2023 U.S. Regional Top 10 list for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar. Along the way, a white-label bottled-cocktail facility built from scratch — recipe, sourcing, co-packer relationships, the whole stack.

The technique side runs in parallel. Andreas was quoted in Bevvy by Camper English on oil-washing fresh herbs into spirits — a small, exacting technique most bartenders learn from that article rather than from a workbook. The site’s Notes section is the same impulse: write down the methods cleanly enough that a bartender three time zones away can replicate them on a slow Tuesday.

Why New York

Most of the rooms Andreas now works with — hotel groups, restaurant groups, single-venue operators — are in New York. Drinks By Neat moved with them. The practice is small on purpose: one operator on every engagement, every menu, every prep-lab walkthrough.

How he works

Programs are built from the food and the room, not from a deck of last year’s trends. Menus are short. Prep-lab capability is treated as infrastructure rather than spectacle — the rotovap earns its keep by making the menu possible, not by being visible to guests. Training is in-person, two weeks pre-opening minimum, and the team gets called by name in the audit a year later.

If you’re opening, refreshing, or scaling a program in the next twelve months, the right next step is a twenty-minute call. The Contact page has the booking link.