Dai Bing, a cool new Hong Kong bar where ice is integral to the drinks and the design
Hugh Zimmern, architect and owner of Ping Pong Gintoneria, talks about creating Dai Bing, his new venture in Sheung Wan
“From the beginning, my business partner, Juan Martínez Gregorio, and I knew that for our second venture we wanted to make ice. We spent five years trying to find an interesting space. If we’d done anything right at Ping Pong, it was to create a bar that was sympathetic to the area, that wasn’t overdesigned or conceptualised but was relaxed, where people could just chill. We wanted to do something similar with Dai Bing. The name means ‘big ice’.”
Interpretation
“From the outside, the bar’s like a little two-storey, high-ceilinged house, slap-bang in the middle of Sheung Wan’s dried-seafood area. We added nods to the location, with ombré green tiles, aluminium doors and windows, a parquet floor, rattan furniture, clashing metal mixes of shiny stainless steel, copper and brass, and an assortment of odd plants in odd pots.
“Dai Bing is all about our in-house, artisanal ice, which is completely clear – no fissures, no air bubbles, flawless. It’s not just pretty. Because the ice is in a single shard, it’s more dense so it melts very slowly and keeps drinks colder for longer. As the ice is the main feature, we added a large freezer behind the bar. It has windows, so it’s like an ice room; you can look into it and get a sense of production while sipping your long drinks.”
Challenges
“The space is narrow and tall so there was a danger it could look like a wind tunnel. Painting the bar black had the effect of blurring the room’s edges and making it look more spacious. We picked out the artworks – including a Danh Vo sculpture, We The People, part of a replica of the Statue of Liberty – with mini profile lights.
“But the biggest challenge was lighting the ice room. We wanted the ice to sparkle through the freezer windows, like diamonds in a De Beers vault, but ended up with a brightly lit freezer, dull ice and barmen silhouetted against all that light from behind. Since no one had done anything like this before, it took countless trials before we discovered LED car brake lights. These are powerful, narrow-beamed, come in strips and don’t heat up.
“The other thing we learned was that ice sparkles more when stored at an angle and the ice-room interior needed to be painted black.”