Is The Savory Project Hong Kong’s next Coa? Ajit Gurung and Jay Khan, masterminds behind the two-time No 1 cocktail bar on Asia’s 50 Best Bars, team up to cook up new ‘food-centric’ cocktails
- This is Khan’s first new concept since his agave-drenched debut on Shin Hing Street, developed in partnership with Ajit Gurung, also of Coa and previously of Stockton and Lily & Bloom
- The Thai Beef Salad uses a mix of beef, peanut, coconut, chilli, kaffir lime and rum, while other drinks include shiitake mushrooms and leeks
When Coa opened in 2017, I was tasked with writing a review for my then-employer. The bar was almost empty when I visited in the first couple of weeks after its opening, which wasn’t uncommon for new bars back then. The drinks were excellent and the staff supremely helpful, guiding me through a menu, loosely bound like a book, of mescals and tequilas that was almost encyclopedic in its detail. We sipped some spirits from a selection of tiny gourd cups.
My review contains possibly one of the most inaccurate F&B predictions in Hong Kong history. Yes, Coa is great, I said, and what a shame that it’s unlikely to remain open for more than a year since Hongkongers probably aren’t ready for this kind of intense, agave-focused concept.
It didn’t seem a wild prophecy at the time. Neo, Coa’s predecessor in the same location, had opened and shut after little more than a year. And few now remember the brief existence of Mezcalito or Los Sotano, those other agave bars that opened in Central around the same time as Coa.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. After six years, numerous awards, and two years and counting at the top of Asia’s 50 Best Bars list, Coa is Hong Kong’s most celebrated bar, a place where the only reason not to visit is the concern about how long you might have to wait to get in.
The halo that now surrounds Coa means expectations are sky high for The Savory Project, co-founder Jay Khan’s first new concept since his agave-drenched debut on Shin Hing Street. His right-hand man these days, and instrumental in the founding of The Savory Project, is Ajit Gurung, another veteran of the local scene who previously worked at the likes of Stockton and Lily & Bloom.
“We want to surprise people,” says Khan of the new concept. “We want things to be completely different from what we’d done before.”
When what came before was a success as monumental as Coa, is trying something new a bold endeavour to be applauded, or a recklessness to be avoided?
