Meet Courtney
Location | Boston, MA
There are people you meet in this industry who just get it — who understand that what happens behind a bar is so much more than mixing drinks. Courtney is one of those people, and the moment I came across her work via Instagram, I knew she needed to be featured on TFLUXÈ. She is a Boston bartender, creative, and the founder of Good Neighbor. What she’s building is deeply personal and unapologetically her own, and I am so honored she took the time to share her story with me.
Hospitality has always lived somewhere deep in Courtney’s bones.
Her family once had roots in the restaurant industry, and even long after they stepped away from it, she felt the quiet yet persistent pull. She describes herself as someone who has always been creative with her hands, and when she eventually found her way into the world of beverage, everything clicked into place. Bartending, she discovered, was the perfect intersection of art, romance, and the kind of conversation that lingers long after the glass is empty.
Her journey, however, didn’t begin behind a bar. Her very first hospitality job was working front of house for the legendary Joanne Chang at Flour Bakery & Cafe. She loved it, but quickly realized the AM life wasn’t exactly her calling. A brief chapter in freelance graphic design followed before she landed a role as an ambassador with the CitizenM hotel group and it was there, almost unexpectedly, that she learned to bartend. She fell in love with it immediately and never looked back.
Today, Courtney channels that love into Good Neighbor, a Cantonese inspired cocktail pop-up rooted in her passion for bringing people together. Mischief and romance, she’ll tell you, are always stirred into everything she makes.
A walk down memory lane.
Some of her most cherished memories are of standing beside her mother and grandmother, listening to their stories while the familiar flavors of her Chinese heritage filled the room. Growing up in Boston in a Cantonese household, those flavor profiles became a language that she carried with her everywhere. She pours from those memories. She always has.
That deep connection to her roots is precisely what makes Good Neighbor so singular. Courtney honors her culture not with nostalgia alone, but with intention. She puts ingredients on the menu that she has never seen on a cocktail menu before, ingredients that are woven into the fabric of her upbringing, and in doing so, she creates space for others to feel seen, too.
One moment, in particular, has stayed with her since her earliest pop-up days. She crafted a drink named after a Teresa Teng love song, incorporating nin jiom herbal syrup — also known as Pei Pa Koa, a traditional Chinese honey and loquat syrup that has lived in the medicine cabinets and kitchen shelves of Asian households for generations. She put it on the menu because she had never seen it in a cocktail before, and because both the song and the syrup were deeply nostalgic to her heart. On the day of the pop-up, something beautiful happened: Asian women came to the bar, one after another, specifically to order that drink. It became a shared moment of pure joy and recognition, proof that a single ingredient, chosen with love and memory, can reach right into someone’s chest and remind them of home.
That, to Courtney, is what hospitality is really about.
Speaking of hospitality…she has something to say about it.
There is an enormous amount of hard work and invisible consideration that goes into ensuring every guest has the best possible experience. The people behind the bar show up every day for one another and for their guests, consistently putting others before themselves. What’s happening behind the scenes on any given shift is something the guest may never know and that’s exactly why she asks for one simple thing in return: kindness. Come in with an open heart. Come in with curiosity.
She always tries to do the same.
When the season turns and the air gets crisp, Courtney reaches for a whisky highball.
Right now, her pour of choice is Nikka Days — chilled. She loves when bars take the extra step of freezing their Nikka Days before pouring it with soda water, creating that perfect carbonation and chill. It’s effortless. It’s precise. It’s exactly her.
And in her kitchen? Two things are always within reach: white pepper and MSG — classic Chinese cooking staples that she keeps close and champions proudly. She’s all for debunking the myths around MSG and making it the celebrated, beloved ingredient it has always deserved to be.
The TFLUXÈ dinner table is set and Courtney’s vision for it is everything.
The guest list is intimate and sacred: her sisters, her mother, and herself. Four women. The people who matter most. The setting? Guangzhou, China which is her mother’s hometown, a place that holds the deepest roots of who she is and where she comes from. The occasion? An afternoon affair filled with tea, gossip, and mahjong, unhurried and full of laughter.
On the table: dim sum, served by all of her favorite Hong Kong, Chinese, and Korean actors, the ones she and her family had enormous crushes on growing up. And filling the room, softly but joyfully, would be the Canto pop and Mando pop she grew up loving. No grand occasion. No dress code. Just the women who shaped her, the city that made her mother, the food that tastes like memory, and the music that sounds like home.
That’s the table Courtney would set. And honestly — we’d all be lucky to pull up a chair.
Find Courtney at @goodneighborboston and @_courtneymoy
xoxo,
Ty-Juana L. Flores