One man, one bar no longer: Shawn Chong on expanding Bar Mizukami

Before he was a bartender, Chong started in hospitality, and even worked in fine dining. Mixing drinks was a hobby, but while working at Hilton, his manager saw his potential in bartending, transferring him from the restaurant to the lobby bar. 

During this time, Chong entered and won the Diageo World Class Bartender Championship Malaysia 2009 (he would later go on to win this competition two more times), travelling across Asia for guest shifts in Singapore, Thailand, Jakarta, and more. After a short stint working at a restaurant, lecturing, and freelancing, he opened Omakase + Appreciate in 2013 in the space that Bar Mizukami now occupies. 

“As cliché as it sounds, the space found me,” Chong says. “I wasn’t actively looking, but a family friend told me they had an empty lot downstairs in a building they owned.” With the speakeasy trend picking up in other markets Chong had visited, he felt it was a good opportunity to open the bar alongside fellow bartender Karl Too. 

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While now closed, with Chong and Too deciding they wanted to pursue something new, Omakase + Appreciate undoubtedly became a beacon in the Malaysian bar scene during that time. The 10th Best Bar in Asia in 2016, it was the first bar of its kind at the time that concentrated on a cocktail programme. “Our objective was to inspire the industry, and we definitely achieved that as three years later, many new bars opened and new suppliers entered the market,” says Chong. 

The Mizukami Collective began at the end of 2020, in the heat of the pandemic. “I looked at my strengths—I am Malaysian, and my bartending style is Japanese, and I thought of building a brand based around this,” he says. “Mizu means water, while Kami means God in Japanese and us in Malay, so it carries a dual meaning.” 

During this time, executive chef Takashi Kimura of Cilantro Restaurant & Wine Bar presented Chong with the opportunity to develop a trolley cocktail service for the restaurant. Subsequently, with its success, Chong was also asked to take over the underutilised bar and restaurant within the same compound. “Mizukami is an overarching brand tied to different concepts to create that sense of consistency,” he explains. “In the case of Micasa Hotel, I developed a highball concept for easy and casual drinking.”

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A few months later, the second Mizukami was born when The Chow Kit Hotel reached out to Chong to develop a bar programme. “The brand embodies the way I think about business, going with the flow, and how I can adapt to each venue,” he continues.

In this case, this came in the form of tapping into the Malaysian identity—the first menu included local ingredients such as kaffir lime and bunga kantan, while the second menu was inspired by childhood flavours such as vitagen, orange sherbet, and ribena. “All these projects helped me to grow and tap into my creativity as a bartender,” Chong enthuses.

The third Mizukami was at Curious Gardener, a small speakeasy within The Farm Restaurant in Bangsar South, and the fourth was at Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur. “This last collaboration coincided with the most exciting part, which was opening Bar Mizukami, my own space,” he smiles. 

While discussions started in mid-2020, the bar only started being built two years later, in January 2022, when restrictions were loosened. “The skeleton was designed by me, the aesthetics by Port 25, and the kitchen equipment was set up by Kitchen Inc,” he says. The bar concept is inspired by Netflix’s Midnight Diner, which Chong watched during the pandemic. “The show features one chef who runs a 12-seat diner, and he was happy doing so—I wanted to recreate that in a bar setting,” he says.

Chong explains that he designed the bar during a dark period of his life. “I needed to deal with my mental health, and I approached this by minimising stress,” he opens up. “The main stressor in F&B is humans, those working above you, with you, or below you, and I felt it would be beneficial to remove these aspects.”

Having worked solo for a year and a half, he feels reprogrammed as an individual, business owner, and bartender, ready to tackle the next phase of Bar Mizukami. “Going back to Mizukami’s roots, I feel I should not stagnate but rather keep pushing on and trying things that are new,” he ends. 

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