Cover Bartender of the year, Jay Khan on how he sees Coa's awards as both a blessing and a curse (Photo: courtesy of Coa)
Bartender of the year, Jay Khan on how he sees Coa's awards as both a blessing and a curse (Photo: courtesy of Coa)
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Tatler+
The awards just keep on coming, but Tatler Dining’s Bartender of the Year isn’t dwelling too hard or too long on the shiny stuff
On any given evening, just like clockwork, a quiet queue staggers into place along the steps of Shin Hing Street. On some nights, the procession even spills onto the edges of Hollywood Road, long before service begins at six. The reason is Coa, the enthusiastically awarded agave bar helmed by our Bartender of the Year, Jay Khan. And he knows what you’re thinking about those queues.
“Well, it’s a blessing and a curse,” he says, “because Coa has always been a neighbourhood bar.” However, the clientele at Coa has slowly but surely shifted this past calendar year, and is now mostly composed of tourists bar-hopping through Asia’s Bests who don’t mind waiting—and less of neighbourhood regulars who’d rather not.
When the Sheung Wan mainstay first opened at the tail end of 2017, it barely hung on. “We didn’t make money for an entire year,” says Khan. “We struggled. There were so many issues, staffing issues, the finance…” Although being named Tatler Dining’s Bartender of the Year and having Coa place a historic first as Asia’s Best Bar for the third time this past summer are accolades Khan is immensely, earnestly, undeniably grateful for, none, he thinks, compares to the gratification of that surprise 12th place back in 2019.
Above Bartender of the Year, Jay Khan (Photo: courtesy of Coa)
Bartender of the Year, Jay Khan (Photo: courtesy of Coa)
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“It was the first time our name came up on Asia’s 50 Best,” he remembers, “and we were the highest new entry. When we won, after pushing through that first year, it was very, very satisfying.”
These days, the awards are piling up, but it’s not something Khan ever candidly speaks about. “To be honest, I thought my time was gone. I’m old now. And [before Tatler Dining’s Bar Awards ceremony] I thought maybe someone younger would win,” he says. “We’ve never actually spoken about awards within the team, ever. I think we’re just focused on everything else: the service, the drinks.”
It’s this laser focus on the work and nothing else that took him back to Mexico this year with his team in tow; for a lot of them, it was their first time in the country. And on January 1, Khan’s team will be getting the keys to Coa Shanghai’s brand-new location, having been made to move—alongside the rest of their block—from their current Jing’an District location because of a government renewal project. It’s another blessing in disguise. The new Coa Shanghai, with a tentative opening date of April, is going to be bigger and better, in a four-storey space, four times the size of Hong Kong’s. “Each floor will be a different concept,” he says, “and we have some really good ideas. I’ll be very busy going back and forth.”
It’s this whirlwind of precise tweaks that colour the hours of Khan’s days, between the opening-then-relocation of Coa Shanghai—where the guests, he says, are especially serious about their drinks; the exciting launch of The Savory Project, alongside co-founder Ajit Gurung (the first bar of its kind, with a focus on the deliciously umami); and those damn queues at Coa Hong Kong.
“Actually, we had a friend develop an app for that,” he says. It’s called Nota Q and, with the scan of a QR code, it allows guests to join an online queue, sending them a push notification when their table is just about to be ready. “This way, it’s better for the guests, so they can plan their night better.”
Problem solved. And onto the next.
