The Long Game
Argo, a bold new bar serving forwardthinking cocktails by Lorenzo Antinori, opens, with a focus on how modern life is changing the way we drink
After a challenging year, Hong Kong’s bar scene is back in full swing, with perhaps no better sign of its recovery than the muchawaited arrival of Argo. Replacing the Blue Bar at Four Seasons Hong Kong, Argo is a bold new venue that aims to bolster the 16-year-old hotel’s drinking and dining credentials in the region. Conceived as a cocktail bar that explores the modern world, the 70-seat establishment takes its name from the Greek fable of Jason and the Argonauts, and their quest for the mythical Golden Fleece.
The design of the venue by Hong Kong-based studio AB
Concept is certainly of fantastical proportions, with a double-height ceiling and a central focal point of a tree-like column, lined with noteworthy spirits. The prodigious use of chrome-plated furnishings mixed with bold-hued upholstery evokes the retro-futuristic vibes of the mid 20th century, in a playful nod to the cocktail programme’s future-forward ethos.
Central to the bar’s philosophy is honouring some of the commonplace ingredients we know today that are liable to become scarce in the near future due to climate change. The six
staples are honey, cacao, vanilla, coffee, rice, and apples, all threatened by the massive change that global warming will have on their ideal growing conditions.
The task of ideating recipes to capture this unique concept fell to Lorenzo Antinori, beverage manager at Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, whose creations for the launch menu—titled Here Today, Gone Tomorrow—seek to turn current cocktail conventions on their head. These include the Single Origin Negroni, which ages a mix of St George Terroir gin, cascara vermouth, Campari and smoked jalapeño not in a barrel, but in a single-origin Hulu Gali cacao pod sourced from Malaysian chocolatier Chocolate Concierge; meanwhile, the Bark, Leaf & Love cocktail uses mono-floral lychee and longan honey sourced from Argo’s own beehive at HK Raw Honey to create a deliciously fruity, cognac-based drink.
True to its mission of celebrating innovation in the world of fine drinking, Argo has compiled its own directory, Field Guide to the
World’s Innovative Spirits, a tome of cutting-edge spirits that break the rules. Divided into five categories, half of the 54 liquors in the pages are available for the very first time in Hong Kong. While the guide makes for fascinating reading, even more enjoyable is actually experiencing them, as part of a tasting flight, or as the base to a classic cocktail.
Among the collection is Argo Gin, a proprietary spirit made for the bar by South Australian company Never Never Distilling, and designed specifically for inclusion in the eponymous Argo Martini. It rubs shoulders with the likes of Monker’s Garkel Gin from Britain’s Circumstance Distillery, which has the distinct accolade of being the world’s first Ai-created gin.
“Innovation these days is really about how we look at things from a different angle and from a different point of view,” explains Antinori. “Argo is a bar that isn’t related to a story or a time and place—it’s just in the now.”
With an eye towards an uncertain, ever-changing future, Argo is a blueprint for the evolution of mixology as ingredients become increasingly rare. Yet with its focus on bringing together like-minded makers and drinkers of cocktails and spirits, the bar also promises to be a sturdy ship in stormy waters. As Zeus intones in the 1963 cinematic adaptation of Jason and
the Argonauts: “For the moment, let them enjoy a calm sea, a fresh breeze and each other. Let us continue the game another day.”