Bar Stories

Gerard Ward tries out a no-menu cocktail bar tucked away in Haji Lane.

‘Are you into sweet flavours, or perhaps something spicy?’ you’ll be asked this as you sit in the cosy second-floor cocktail bar along Haji Lane. Nowadays you’ll find smaller bars are aiming to get their patrons to explore drinks outside of a standard menu – not allocating names to concoctions, but rather encouraging you to follow your preferences instead.

Hearing ‘spicy’ as a suggested flavour, I asked the bartender to whip something up, and what returned was a lemongrass and chilli cocktail ($22) with a bit of nuttiness and a spicy kick I hadn’t tasted in a cocktail before.

The second challenge for the mixologist would be to use ginger. The result was ginger, gula melaka sugar and Gosling’s black rum – with grated lime zest on the top for a little sour. Sitting atop the drink was a spirit cocooned by half of a passionfruit shell, lit on fire for dramatic effect. I begged the mixologist for a name for the concoction that he served, and he eventually came out with the name ‘GGG’ ($22). Drink prices range from $22-$28.