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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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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