Also in late June, airport bar concept Intervals heralded a serious cocktail experience based around the rhythm of travel. The innovative menu is built around drinks that can be enjoyed individually or in suggested timed flights of 15, 30 or 45 minutes—ensuring you can still make it to your flight. Check out the Fruiting Flight, which comprises four cocktails bringing you from a Green cocktail to start, incorporating a perk-me-up of green grapes, grappa and chartreuse, and Fallen to end, a winsome and soothing nightcap of bourbon, treacle, overripe banana and mole bitters. Their interpretation of bar snacks such as HK prawn toast and Spanish style pinchos round off the offerings. With its prime plane runway views, the bar at the Sky Bridge of the Hong Kong International Airport was developed by Plaza Premium Group in partnership with creative director Victoria Chow, founder of The Woods. 

April 2023 saw the reveal of the “surreal subterranean space odyssey” Artifact Bar, coming from the powerhouse trio of co-directors Beckaly Franks (winner of the Asia’s 50 Best Bars’ Bartender’s Bartender Award 2023), Ezra Star and Michael Larkin. The stunning design of the bar, hidden in a basement food hall, draws on retro-futuristic aesthetics to elongate the tiny space and to create nooks for different moods. Don’t forget the menu though, which tells the stories of brown spirits, and how these are affected by ageing and the hand of man. The signatures here are the bespoke highballs served tableside, and the Bread and Butter milk punch, which as they describe, comprises a total of 14 ingredients emphasising the stars of  brioche bread and brown butter to evoke the essence of drinking French toast. 

Ezra Star, who got married to Franks during the pandemic, also got busy opening Mostly Harmless in April 2022. The unassumingly unadorned space hews to a vision of a neighbourhood bar she has had since 2013, to use local ingredients and connect people, as she describes disarmingly. Mostly Harmless serves only four drinks a day, changing daily depending on the ingredients from local farms, and utilises a slew of techniques to best bring out the essence of the ingredients. The name itself is a droll giveaway for fans of Douglas Adams, referencing the last book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Star was previously from the pioneering Drink bar in Boston and no stranger to awards, but even this industry veteran was delighted at the bar’s new entry at No. 33 at Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2023.

You can count Desiree Jane Silva, co-founder of Sago House, as a fan of both of Star’s bars, especially after celebrating the after-party at Artifact, where she considers the caviar martini a highlight. At Mostly Harmless, she delighted in the way names are written on the walls and how the Farm to Glass menu changes daily: “I felt right at home, it actually reminded me of Sago House,” she shares. 
 
The Aubrey rises above at its 25th storey perch at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, where it debuted at No. 38 last year and reached No. 17 this year. Headed by the charismatic Devender Sehgal, the bar offers a core selection of highballs and chu hai (shochu highballs), and seasonal menus centred around Japanese craft shochu and awamori, the oldest distilled alcoholic spirit in Japan, with a history of 500 years. Sehgal could wax lyrical on the Mori all day, a margarita variation which uses mezcal and awamori, harmonised with a delicate pear liqueur from Kamamoto. 

Vijay Mudaliar, founder of Native and Analogue, is good friends with Sehgal, and is a big fan of Aubrey’s concept, hailing the cocktails as “fresh, well balanced and with good profiles.” They haven’t collaborated—yet. 

Still Going Strong

Coa leads the pack as Asia’s top bar for three years running. Opened in 2017, the independent bar by HK-born and bred bartender Jay Khan espouses the joys of agave-based spirits in unexpected creations such as the Bloody Beef Maria that uses Sichuan pepper and morita chilli peppers. Coa has collaborated with Manhattan bar in Singapore, so Rusty Cerven and new head bartender Zana Mohlmann headed over for a guest shift to return the favour on the Sunday before A50BB2023.They were greeted by “palpable excitement”, with over 50 in the queue at 6pm. Cerven describes Coa’s appeal: “An unbeatable combination of the tastiest drinks with exceptional hospitality. The place might be small in space, but the experience at Coa is always bigger than life.”    

Penicillin, which opened in late 2020, is a sustainable closed-loop effort by Agung Prabowo and Roman Ghale, the forces behind The Old Man Hong Kong (No. 1, Asia’s Best Bars 2019). They’re not too shabby at No. 26 on the list. Their closed-loop operations strive to minimise pollution, conserve energy and work with local producers in tandem with producing tasty drinks that upcycle as many ingredients as possible. Dive into their (what else) Penicillins menu, inspired by the original cocktail, where creative variations such as Something Clear are composed of goat milk whiskey, clarified citrus, ginger honey wine and smoky flame.

At 11 years old, Quinary can’t be overlooked, climbing up to No. 31 on the Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2023 list. Proprietor Antonio Lai’s Earl Grey Caviar Martini, made with citrus vodka and topped with earl grey caviar “air”, exemplifies their molecular approach that made them famous. Incidentally, Shelley Tai from Nutmeg and Clove got her start here, and considers Quinary her “second home” in Hong Kong, making it a point to do a guest shift while she was in town.

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