Asia is one of the world’s hottest bar scenes, and Hong Kong is one of its hotspots — and home to the recently named number 1 in Asia’s Best Bars 2024. If you’re lucky enough to be staying at a hotel in the waterside Central ’hood, here’s what an epic cocktail crawl up the city’s escalators, stairs and levels might look like.

The Aubrey

The Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong houses leafy, 25th-floor The Aubrey (number 10 bar in Asia), with drool-worthy 25th-floor views of the harbour. It looks traditional but functions as a Japanese izakaya spotlighting edgy shochu cocktails and dining. Sip Cheek to Cheek (an evolved Painkiller with ream of coconut and pineapple plus rum, sherry and shochu) or a drink made with the locally distilled Mandarin 60 botanical spirit.

Artifact

In the basement of Jardin House, beyond the BaseHall food hall and hidden behind iridescent windows and unmarked white doors, find Artifact. It’s a posh hideaway for spirits nerds from Venezuelan-American bartender Ezra Star. (For more modest vibes, try her charmingly hospitable Mostly Harmless, a homey “farm-to-glass” bar where they not only know your name, they write it in marker on the white-tiled walls). The interior resembles a Gaudi building and the drinks, in a subway-themed menu, will similarly wow. You’re trying Star’s signature drink: the 1910, a bitter, dark, complex nightcap for the ages.

Argo

At the Four Seasons Hong Kong, Argo is a glassy, glittery room with an unexpectedly wild, innovative heart. Try a martini diluted not with ice but with chilled citrus or savoury hydrosols for good-to-the-last-drop flavour, or the GOAT Evolution flight of mini-manhattan riffs. The adventurous will pick their cocktail base spirit from the Argo Field Guide list, like Monker’s Garkel, the world’s first AI-created gin; or Glyph, a molecular-aged whisky.

The Green Door

The speakeasy-like entrance here is, you guessed it, an unmarked Green Door. This sexy, dim bar gives all its perfectly executed cocktails women’s names. Summery Diane is a pandan-infused gin and ginger beef highball, with a hint of cardamon and a heap of crushed ice.

The Opposites

Two Diageo World Class cocktail champs gently rival it out at newly opened The Opposites. The concept is fraternal-twin drinks riffing on the same ingredients with crazy-different results. For instance, Selling Seashells explores the savoury side of Pimm’s in a shell-shaped vessel topped with cucumber seafoam, while Son of Pimm’s is fruity and creamy. If you’re a molecular mixology fan, this place is your jam.

Lockdown and Penicillin

There are perpetual lineups for Penicillin (number 24 among Asia’s Best Bars), so think of Lockdown as a chill, steampunk-ish waiting room. Look for the toilet and ladder in the window: that’s the bar team’s cheeky way of signalling they’ve climbed out of the crappy pandemic era. Try a fennel-pollen dusted Left Bank (Port, absinthe and elderflower) or splurge on a drink made from an intriguing vintage spirits collection. Watch out for the (literally) turning tables!

COA

Named for the agave-harvesting implement, COA is a three-time former winner of Asia’s Best Bar and was number 4 this year. It’s a warm, casual tequila and mezcal den with a 40-plus page spirits list through which proprietor Jay Khan and his team will happily guide. Once you’ve tasted a flight from this back bar of fine 100 per cent agave, additive-free spirits, you’ll never go back to any other. The same team runs The Savory Project nearby (number 19 on Asia’s Best Bars 2024), home of a stunning Thai Beef Salad & Gari Gari drink complete with beefy garnish, and other culinary cocktails from the upstairs drink lab.

Kinsman

Canadian-born journalist Gavin Yeung has created an exciting new bar that, like him, has a foot in both West and East; that’s young (opened last winter) but feels like it’s been of this place forever. Think traditional Hong Kong diner crossed with an American soda fountain, as realized by Wes Anderson movie set designers. Unique Cantonese spirits that Yeung discovered during pandemic-era personal mixology create entirely new and unique drinks at Kinsman, like a Papaya Van Winkle made with papaya-wine and garnished with edible snow fungus; or a creamy-topped Kowloon Dairy made with roselle and magnolia liqueurs.

The Old Man

Named the Best Bar in Asia 2019, this still-rocking spot (named for a Hemingway novel, as all the drinks are) is now “The Old Man” in bar-years — but still delivers. Up a steep road and down some steep stairs, this tiny and always-packed space levels any barriers between bar guest and ’tender (no-back-bar is the world’s hottest trend right now), churning out an impossible volume of great drinks from a low, flat counter at the centre of a u-shaped bar.

Bar Leone

Have you just wandered into a local, circa-1960s bar in Rome’s Trastavere ’hood (think: girlie calendars, mid-century Italian film and pop-culture memorabilia) — or are you in Asia’s Best Bar 2024 and Tales of the Cocktail’s Best New International Bar 2024, Bar Leone? Storming into the top spot in its first year of business, this “cocktail popolari” bar offers laid-back, tweaked classics: get the dark-hued Negroni alongside a crispy, fatty, irresistible mortadella sammy. Don’t forget to visit the restroom-adjacent photo booth and pick up the coolest bar t-shirt of the moment before you leave!

Gokan

Following his Japanese-style bars Sober Company in Shanghai and SG (stands for Sip and Guzzle) Club in Tokyo and New York, founder Shingo Gokan has launched namesake bar Gokan, meaning “five senses” in Japanese. Aptly, the bar concentrates on great food to match memorable pan-Asian drinks like a Khun Tommy’s, a fresh margarita riff made tropical with lemongrass, coconut and pineapple.

—by Charlene Rooke