Hong Kong is truly a city like no other - alive with an energy that it often unmatched. Amidst the city's ever bustling and neon-lit streets, lies a whole host of amazing and innovative cocktail bars. Whether you're looking for a cozy spot to savour Japanese shochu cocktails, or moody-intimate setting to enjoy live jazz and Mahjong based cocktails, or a friendly venue to sample the best agave-forward cocktails one can find, there's guaranteed to be a cocktail bar in Hong Kong that will make your night. 

1. Coa

Coa is perhaps a bar that needs no introduction... but we'll give one anyway! This Hong Kong bar made history as the first ever bar to retain the coveted no. 1 title as Asia's Best Bar three years in a row. Opened by Jay Khan, Coa is named after the machete-like tool that Mexican farmers used to harvest agave - which mezcal and tequila is distilled from.

Aptly so, Coa specialises in mezcal and tequila based cocktails and houses the city's largest agave collection of over 200 bottles. Signature cocktails include the Ancho Highball, a blend of tequila, salted plum, ancho chile and guava soda, as well as the La Paloma de Oaxaca, a grapefruit-spiked mezcal and tequila cocktail. 

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2. Argo

Argo is named after the ship that sailed Jason and the Argonauts to the Golden Fleece, as popularised by Greek Mythology. The bar was founded on a philosophical question: what would the world of mixology be like when the ingredients and spirits we take for granted become obsolete due to scarcity caused by the climate.

Appropriately, the bar shines on spotlight on the use of at-risk Asian ingredients with cocktails such as the BBQ & Tonic - combining gin, tonic water, fig leaf with vegan char siu pork distillate. Another interesting cocktail not to be missed in their clay-pot aged Black Dot Manhattan flight, containing cognac, whisky, fortified beer, melon and black vinegar. 

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3. Darkside

Darkside is a bar that draws inspiration from all things dark - with a focus on dark spirits, rich chocolate and luxury cigars. Relax into this moodily lit bar, complete with live jazz, and sample libations from its Mahjong-themed cocktail menu, featuring eight unique cocktails each inspired by a mahjong tile. This includes the Orchird cocktail, which draws on the use of Tequila Blanco, Mezcal, dendrobrium, chinese celery, bianco and lime and spring onion, as well as the Plum Blossom cocktail, a savoury stirred vodka-based drink with sweet undertones of tomato consomme and calendula cordial.

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4. The Aubrey

The Aubrey is an eccentric Japanese izakaya boasting expansive views of Victoria Harbour from the hotel’s 25th floor. The bar is easy on the eye too, punctuated with plush vintage furniture accented by forest green, quirky knick knacks and beautiful lamps.  The Aubrey serves up excellently crafted Japanese libations - think Japanese whiskies, awamoris and shochu to create drinks such as the bar’s rightly lauded highball Banana & Champagne with sweet potato and rice shochu, banana and champagne.

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5. Penicillin

Hong Kong bar veterans Agung Prabowo and his wife Laura leads Hong Kong’s popular ‘closed-loop’ cocktail bar, which has been a long-time champion of green practices in mixology. The bar is named after Alexander Fleming’s antibiotic penicillin and is appropriately designed with borderline-scientific interior and white-tiled aesthetic.

A slew of scientific equipment you may spot on the countertop is what the team uses to up-cycle and transform local ingredients in its cocktails. Stop by tipples like All We Can Save - combining shisho rum, oxidized wine strawberry, dates-apricot orgeat, and Circular Fashioned - a blend of leftover duck-fat applejack, butter whiskey, salted artichoke and mirin. 

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6. Quinary

Launch in 2012, Quinary is a multisensory cocktail bar that boasts an industrialist interior design and a modernist approach to mixology. Drinks are engineered to stimulate the senses, drawing on technology like rotovap distillation and centrifuges. For example, The Ruby Rouge is made with gin sous vide with oysters, sesame-infused vodka, sherry, hibiscus and pink peppercorn syrup and shallot vinegar - eliciting the sensations, smells and flavors of the seaside within the confines of the glass. 

Also not to be missed is the bar’s signature Earl Grey Caviar Martini, made with orange liqueur, citrus vodka, elderflower syrup, topped with Earl Grey caviar “air”, made through the process of spherification.

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7. Mostly Harmless

Venezuelan-born veteran bartender Ezra Star leads the team at Mostly Harmless, a bar that takes its name from the fifth and final book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Upon entering, you'll find white tiles spanning from wall-to-ceiling, on which the staff write the guests’ names and the day’s cocktail menu in magic markers.

Guests can choose from a quirky selection of cups, mugs and glasses in which their drinks are served. Every day, the team updates the revolving menu of four cocktails, which features fresh and seasonal produce sourced from Hong Kong markets and farms.

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8. The Old Man

If you're an Ernest Hemingway fan, you have to pay a visit to The Old Man. And if you're not, you should do so anyway. The Old Man is named after the author's novel The Old Man and the Sea, and uses modern culinary techniques to serve up eye-catching and often architecturally imaginative cocktails such as the Big Catch - a blend of hot sauce distilled vodka, fermented passionfruit, avocado syrup, lime caviar served in a seashell, and the Lookout Farm - made with almond panna cotta, tonka bean, white rum, black lime curd and house falernum.

Sit at their "I" shaped bar and place your cocktails on a freezing strip - served to guests in lieu of coasters - which helps to keep your drink icy cold. 

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