House of Fine Cocktails in House of Ill Repute
IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR COZY AMBIANCE WITH UNIQUE COCKTAILS, NATURAL WINES AND A HISTORY, DAVID BOWDEN RECOMMENDS YOU CHECK OUT BOTAKLIQUOR IN KUALA LUMPUR’S CHINATOWN.
Tucked away in the former Mah Lian Hotel, which provided accommodation in the front and a house of ill repute out the back, Botakliquor injects new life and energy into Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown. The bar features its original heritage setting, minimalist design, lush tropical plants and creative cocktails. Maintaining most of the layout of the old building, architect Shin Chang preserved much of its soul and added a contemporary ambiance in creating a homely bar.
CLEAR SPIRITS
Each cocktail contains ingredients that are either home grown or locally produced and farmed. Rick Joore, who hails from Holland, uses Malaysian botanicals with the focus on clear spirits in the cocktails he serves. In one of his more experimental menu creations, Rick combines funky ingredients not usually found in a cocktail. He prefers the flavours of the ingredients to be more important than the spirits used in each beverage.
Cocktails have simple names based upon an ingredient in the mix with Rambutan being similar to a pisco sour but flavoured with local laksa leaf, calamansi and rambutans, finished with a dusting of Sarawak pepper and a rambutan on the glass rim. Lebah cocktail is a gin-based beverage that combines Malaysian Trigona honey, bee pollen and apple blossom and prepared like a dry martini. It is artfully decorated with bee pollen on the outside of the glass and is decorated with colourful garden flowers.
The bungka kantan and pumpkin cocktail contains a flower from Shin’s farm made into a soda with pumpkin seed-infused vodka.
MOMENTO MORI
A compact but exciting range of wines is also available with natural and orange wines featured. Botakliquor is the only bar in Malaysia serving the hard-to-find wines of Momento Mori from Gippsland in Victoria. Enjoy a bottle of ‘Fistful of Flowers’ made from organically-grown Moscato Gallo and Vermentino grapes. The bar, surrounded by a mélange of cosy chairs, is sunken and framed by an abundance of low-hanging tropical foliage.