AY GUEY! | Our Story
Two immigrants, one cantina
¡Ay Güey! was built by two people who had no business being in the restaurant industry — and changed it anyway. A barback from Oaxaca, a lawyer from Sinaloa, and one cantina in Woodside, Queens.
From Oaxaca to Pegu Club
In 2005, Artemio Vasquez landed in New York with almost nothing and took the only job on offer: washing glasses behind the bar at the legendary Pegu Club. Most people would have kept their head down. He paid attention. Night after night, he studied the technique, the balance, and the discipline of some of the finest bartenders in the world, and quietly taught himself their craft.
The barback who made history
In 2007, Pegu Club founder Audrey Saunders broke her own rule and invited Artemio, still a barback, into a master course that had never once opened its doors to anyone below bartender. He earned it. By 2010, his recipes were printed in The PDT Cocktail Book beside Jim Meehan and Sasha Petraske. More than 25 years later, that same obsession with getting every detail right is behind every cocktail poured at ¡Ay Güey!
Chef América's three words
In 2017, a lawyer named América Rodríguez spotted a restaurant under construction in Jackson Heights and walked in to ask three words: "Do you need help?" She carried no culinary résumé — only the coastal Sinaloan recipes of El Rosario encoded in her hands.
Where the cantina came to life
World-class cocktail craft and the soul food of Sinaloa's coast found their home in Woodside, Queens — where immigrants live, dream, and eat well. The murals, the !ART GÜEY! Gallery, the mezcal flights, the aguachiles: a declaration that Queens deserves a destination.
No one walks in invisible
Artemio's guiding principle has always been this: no one who walks into his cantina should ever feel unseen. Every raised glass at ¡Ay Güey! is a toast to that belief — and to the courage it takes to build something that belongs entirely to you.
