American congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez returned to her restaurant roots on Friday, donning an apron and serving drinks in Manhattan in a push to raise the country's minimum wage. 

The 29-year-old New Yorker and rising political star worked as a bartender and waitress in a restaurant in her hometown before entering Congress last year.

"I was nervous that I may have lost my touch, still got it! That muscle memory doesn't quit," she wrote on Twitter after an hour taking orders and swinging a cocktail shaker at a restaurant in her Queens constituency.

Ocasio-Cortez was promoting the "One Fair Wage" campaign, which is calling for a raise to the federal hourly minimum wage to $15 for service workers.

"The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. That is unacceptable. Any job that pays $2.13 an hour is not a job. It's indentured servitude," she said behind the bar.

AFP