The Decade That Shaped Southeast Asia’s Cocktail Scene

Southeast Asia's craft cocktail scene did not spring fully formed after the pandemic years. It was seeded, nurtured, and shaped by a generation of bartenders and bar owners – both local and expatriate – who were doing the work long before the region was on anyone's radar.

To understand where the scene is now, you have to understand where it came from. And to do that, we need to go back even further... to the era before craft cocktails existed here at all.

Before Craft: Hotel Bars, Pubs, and Clubs

For most of the 20th century, drinking in Southeast Asia meant one of two things: a hotel bar or a party pub chain.

Hotel bars were the de facto watering holes for business travelers, expats, and the local elite. They poured competently and priced aspirationally, but the menus were frozen in amber: Scotch and soda, gin and tonic, the occasional Singapore Sling ordered more as a souvenir than as a genuine cocktail experience.

For everyone else, there was the pub chain era: TGI Friday's, Hard Rock Cafe, Delaney's Irish pubs. These venues served their purpose: reliably cold beer, a menu of Western comfort food, and the distinct comfort of knowing what you were getting. For the younger 20-something crowd, clubbing (and dancing) was popular. These places introduced a generation to cocktails, but in the loosest sense: Long Island Iced Teas, Rum-and-Cokes, novelty shots with names that don't need repeating here.

And then there was the Long Bar at Raffles Singapore. Yes, it is the birthplace of the Singapore Sling, but it is not – and has not been for a very long time – a craft cocktail destination. The Singapore Sling served there today is made in bulk, industrially, and the appeal of the Long Bar is pageantry and heritage, not craft.

What changed everything was not a single event but a convergence: the global cocktail renaissance of the mid 2000s, the rise of social media, increasing disposable income, and a crucial catalyst – expatriates and returning locals who had drunk at Milk & Honey in New York, Pegu Club, the American Bar at The Savoy, and asked themselves: why can't we have this here?

The Timeline Tells the Cocktail Scene

Step back and look at the chronology, and the picture becomes clear.

2011: A global awakening

2011 is where cocktail craft begins in earnest, and it begins in two places at once, on opposite ends of the region, with a striking piece of shared DNA.

In Singapore, 28 HongKong Street opens in October: three American lawyers, a bar manager (Michael Callahan) fresh from San Francisco, and a mission to bring cocktail culture to a city that didn't know it needed them yet. Within a year, its reputation went global. However, it wasn't by any means Singapore's first craft cocktail bar – there was the unassuming no-menu speakeasy Bar Stories in Haji Lane back in 2010, and the now-closed Tippling Club (whose alumni went on to open award-winning bars in the region) which was known for its experimental cocktails way back in 2008.

In Manila, Blind Pig opens in Legazpi Village: a discreet door with a Braille sign, a consultant from the very same Milk & Honey, and the same conviction that great cocktails deserved a serious, quiet home. It is widely credited with igniting Manila's interest in craft cocktails and spawning the speakeasy movement that followed.

Two bars, two cities, one playbook: the American craft cocktail movement had found its Asian beachhead.

2012-2015: Second mover advantage

2012 brings Jigger & Pony to Amoy Street in Singapore, founded by Indra Kantono and Guoyi Gan, and with it a different sensibility: European classicism, hospitality, cocktails rooted in technique and taste rather than theater. Singapore, at this point, is the only city in the region that outsiders are paying attention to, but the others are moving.

The following year sees The Curator open in Manila, David Ong's coffee-shop-by-day, cocktail-bar-by-night hybrid in Makati. It will become the first Philippine bar to crack global recognition in 2016, and it remains Manila's international calling card to this day.

Meanwhile in Kuala Lumpur, Omakase + Appreciate opens with a focus on classics and a Japanese “omakase” approach to customizable drinks (it permanently closed in 2020).

2014 is a pivotal year. Vesper arrives on Convent Road in Bangkok: Choti and Debby Leenutaphong's European-inflected answer to what a serious Bangkok cocktail bar should look like. Across the border in KL, CK Kho sets up Coley's first pop-up at the back of a café in Bangsar, using craft spirits in a market that barely stocks them.

2016: The transition point

What's particularly interesting is that 2016 sits almost exactly at the transition between Southeast Asia's first cocktail boom (dominated by classic speakeasies and imported concepts) and the regional-identity era, when bars began building programs around local ingredients, local spirits, and Southeast Asian narratives.

In Singapore, we see the opening of Native, with founder Vijay Mudaliar ushering in the regional-ingredients and sustainability movement that would influence bars across Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the opening of the Singapore outpost of Employees Only helps accelerate the city's late-night, party divebar cocktail culture.

Across the border in Kuala Lumpur, Junglebird establishes itself as one of Malaysia's most internationally recognized bars (it's named after its national cocktail), helping drive the city's rum culture. Another specialty bar, Pahit, also opens this year – it focuses on gin and is an early champion of Malaysian ingredients and local storytelling. PS150, on Petaling Street, arrives as a concept-led, theatrically designed space rooted in KL's Chinese heritage.

In Thailand, we see the opening of Rabbit Hole, with its Alice in Wonderland-inspired aesthetic which helps establish Thonglor as a cocktail hood. Meanwhile, Niks Anuman's Teens of Thailand in Chinatown's Soi Nana turns a tiny shophouse into the city's first specialist gin bar (albeit slightly earlier in late 2015). ToT puts an entire neighborhood on the map, and creates the bar sticker mania – to this day, you can still see ToT's stickers plastered in bars around the globe.

Meanwhile in Ho Chi Minh City, Layla – founded by Australian bartender Jay Moir – establishes itself as a key venue for the next generation of Vietnamese bartenders. Its theme is simple: unpretentious atmosphere and botanical drinks.

In an industry where even five years can feel like a lifetime, it's extraordinary that these bars have survived a pandemic, adapted to a new era of mindful drinking, and lived to celebrate their tenth birthdays together.

Southeast Asia's Cocktail Journey Continues

Southeast Asia's bar scene no longer looks to New York or London for permission. The bartenders working today aren't asking what the rest of the world is doing and figuring out how to replicate it – they're reaching into their own pantries, their own memories, their own landscapes. Pandan and butterfly pea flower. Calamansi and kaffir lime. Arrack and lambanog and locally-distilled rum.

The early bars taught the region that craft mattered. The decade that followed taught it something more important: that Southeast Asia had its own story to tell, and that story was worth more than any borrowed playbook.