Upscale highballs are Hong Kong’s newest drinks craze – right in time for summer
- The old-fashioned drink is taking over local bars like TheThirty Six and Ronin, with mixologists stirring innovation into the mix
The highball is one of the most misunderstood of cocktails. And not even in the “shaken, not stirred” manner that surrounds how best to serve a martini. Fact is, people often drink a highball without even realising it. Technically, it is any cocktail made with a base spirit that is topped with a larger proportion of a non-alcoholic drink and served in a large glass with ice. That means every gin and tonic, whisky soda, and rum and Coke you have ever had has been a highball.
Like when you’re on Lantau [Island] and it begins to rain. You sense more, right? Because the water increases the aromas – of the grass, the trees, the fruits. With the whisky and soda in the Donto, it’s the same
These days, though, when people think of a highball, they tend to imagine the kind served in a Japanese izakaya alongside yakitori skewers and bowls of edamame: a pint-sized mug filled to the brim with cheap Suntory whisky bludgeoned with soda and ice. It’s a cheap drink and, until recently, not the kind Hong Kong’s master mixologists, with their centrifuges and other medical-grade equipment, bothered about.
All that is changing, though. Suddenly, upscale highballs – the whisky variety, in particular – are one of the hottest trends in the drinks world. And it’s no longer big only in Japan. When Kinfolk 90, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, took delivery of New York’s first highball-making machine in 2017, even The Wall Street Journal felt compelled to report on it.
It’s a trend that has caught on in Hong Kong.
“Cool, tall, refreshing. Those are our keywords,” says Philippe Ngyuen, the founder of The ThirtySix, a new bar on Hollywood Road dedicated to this style of cocktail. The menu features a range of highballs, from the straightforward Highlander, a smooth mix of BenRiach 10-year whisky and soda, to the more exotic Sakura Highball, where Tried & True Vodka is topped up with a sakura-flavoured Mancino vermouth, pickle juice, vanilla cordial and soda water.
