Cover Ezra Star, founder of Mostly Harmless, originally studied biochemistry and public health

Hong Kong's newest cocktail omakase bar demonstrates how to ditch the menu and have fun in the process

What's a cocktail bar without a menu? Well, it would look something like Mostly Harmless, the latest project of accomplished bartender Ezra Star. Having moved to Hong Kong just over a year ago, Star (who also happens to be the wife of The Pontiac and Quality Goods Club co-founder, Beckaly Franks) jumped into the deep end of the city's foodscape, opening Mostly Harmless as a bar where she serves a four-drink tasting menu almost entirely made using locally sourced ingredients.

Here, the menu changes daily according to what produce Star is able to procure from the harvest of the previous few days. On the surface, the finished products seem straightforward and are often served sans garnish, although the first sip immediately betrays such notions—indeed, some drinks include incredibly complex components, such as a strawberry molé made using a whopping 37 different ingredients and incorporating a science textbook's worth of techniques over a month-long production process.

Elsewhere, a dirty martini might use a housemade tomato vermouth; while a cocktail simply titled "Rose" will incorporate everything from koji-fermented Lantau beet to amchur (a spice powder made from locally grown unripe mangoes). At every turn, Star approaches mixology with an eye for the multitudinous possibilities of every ingredient—all made with an obsession with hyper-locality.

Despite being a newcomer to Hong Kong, Star is certainly well-equipped for a concept of such complexity. Hailing from Venezuela, she studied biochemistry and public health; while in school, she took up bartending at age 18 to pay the bills, but after working for several years as a biochemist, the pull of hospitality proved to be irresistible. Beginning as a barback at Boston's Drink, Star eventually became its general manager, then a partner, during which time the bar—which too had no cocktail menu or backbar—won awards from World's 50 Best Bars and Tales of the Cocktail.

Now plying her craft out of the white-tiled upstairs omakase bar at the former Okra, we paid Star a visit before service to get the lowdown on what you gain when you ditch the menu.

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Tatler Asia
Above Assembling a dirty martini made using a housemade tomato vermouth

Describe your bar concept and how you decided upon it.

At Mostly Harmless we make drinks based on what inspires us. The real concept is taking care of people, the excuse is the drinks. The drinks are taking all of the techniques and tools available to us now and imagining how they would have been used a couple hundred years ago, but with a strong focus on working locally. One of the tools I use to facilitate this is a four-drink tasting which people often mistake for our "menu"—but in reality it's just four things I know I have enough of to let multiple people enjoy a journey.

How would you describe your own style of cocktails?

Everything I do is based on what's come before, so I would say there is a strong influence from the classics (the question is what do you consider a classic). I worked as a bartender for over 20 years; more specifically 11 of those years were spent working without a cocktail menu or a backbar, making about 600 cocktails a night while focusing on consistency and classics—so a lot of that comes through in the drinks that I make.

I am also a trained chef so that is in there as well. I went to school for chemistry so some say the molecular aspect is also an influence—but you wouldn't know it sitting at the bar, and that's the point. I distill, infuse, and ferment; use classic bar techniques, modern ones, culinary techniques, and sometimes just pour stuff. 

How often are you looking to change your menu?

Because I am working so locally, the menu changes almost every day. I am working with some local farms for my produce so when they have stuff, I make things with it; and when they don't, I look in other directions. There also isn't really a menu. I put a list of four things on the wall that I have been playing around with and go with that.

As the restrictions begin to lift, those will be more of a playground, but as we have been constrained fiscally I have been using the list as a tool to keep the budget in line. Currently the "menu" is designed as a tasting menu; even as the restrictions lift I will keep the four-drink tasting in place, mainly because it's just a good excuse to hangout for a couple of hours and put your taste buds into someone else's hands. 

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Tatler Asia
Above Star's cocktails look simple but can include incredibly complex components

What are your biggest sources of inspiration?

My biggest source of inspiration is people. In terms of putting things together for drinks, I let my tongue guide the way. What do I taste in something? What would bring out something unexpected? Where would this thing exist if it was somewhere else? All of that is in my head when I look at a piece of fruit or a bottle of liquor. I think people often forget that that bottle of booze on the back bar is really an agricultural product, and by extension, just another type of food. 

Is it important for you to tell a story through your menu? How do you structure the order of the drinks if so?

With drinks as with food, it's not the drink or dish you're paying for; its the story that made it real. The "menu" as we have it at the moment is consistent and I use pieces of each to make the other, but that's more out of necessity and just playing around—the stories come from how I ended up where I began. If you have a really great ingredient you can talk about the people who grew it, the technique you used to change it, how it might have something to do with a classic cocktail.

The stories are all there in every drink—it's just understanding how that story might connect a guest to the experience they are having. After all, by them enjoying the drink they are creating yet another story, right there in that moment, and often that story takes more precedence. I think many bartenders get so excited in sharing a story that they lose sight of that part. The stories are always there. 

How do you strike a balance between easy drinking and spirit-forward, long and short drinks, etc? What informs these decisions?

I think a good cocktail will always strike a balance between easy drinking, spirit-forward and short drinks. One of our current drinks is a variation on the Toronto that uses beets and bourbon. When you taste it, the first time you think 'wow, the beet is there, but its also very minty'. As you take a couple more sips, you start to realise, 'oh wait, this has bourbon'. So it's spirit-forward, but the way I put it together takes that expectation away from you and makes you rethink the category, when at it's very core it is essentially an Old Fashioned with fernet and beets. 

How much of current trends do you incorporate into your menu?

Current trends are hard to define because drinking culture in the world is different in what is required and what is wanted. I'm never looking at trends because quite honestly, most of what might be a trend today, I've already played around with years ago, and I'm bored with it and want to move on. I'm a part-owner of a non-alcoholic beverage brand based in the UK, so low-proof has always been on my mind. What I focus on when it comes to the "menu" is, would I want to drink all of these things one after another? The "menu" is four drinks in succession; do I want to drink the second one after the first one? If so, it goes there; if not, maybe I try again next week or do it as a little surprise at the end.

Mostly Harmless
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1/F, 110 Queen’s Road West, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong

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Gavin Yeung/Tatler Dining

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