Where exactly is SoHo?

It's the stretch of Central above Queen's Road, organised around the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator, with Staunton Street and Elgin Street as its spine and Peel, Shelley and Graham cross-cutting. 'SoHo' is South of Hollywood Road — that's the anchor line to keep you oriented.

When's the best time to go?

Come earlier than you would for a club night. SoHo hits its stride over the after-work-into-dinner window and the hours just past it, when the pavements fill and the upstairs rooms are still easy to walk into. It's a place to start an evening rather than to close one.

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SoHo

The Central–Mid-Levels Escalator only runs one direction at a time, and from mid-morning on it climbs. Ride it up and you've been handed the shape of the evening: SoHo is a night you walk downhill.

Fact-checked 11 October 2026

The escalator sets the route

SoHo grew up along the escalator, on the cross streets it cuts through — Staunton and Elgin above all, with Peel and Shelley feeding in. The whole quarter tilts. That's the first thing to know, and the thing every guide that opens with a list of bars misses. You don't hop between rooms here so much as descend through them. We tell first-timers to take the escalator to the top of the strip and drink their way back down toward Central, because the hill does the walking for you on the way home and the cabs are easier to find at the bottom.

Street level, and the rooms one flight up

Look up. Half of SoHo isn't at street level — it's a floor or two above a doorway you'd walk straight past, up a tiled staircase with a menu taped to the wall. The ground floor is where you spill onto the pavement with a glass; the room upstairs is where you sit down and the night gets quieter and better. A good SoHo evening uses both: a stand-up drink on Elgin while you decide, then somewhere with a door that closes when you want the volume down. Don't judge the street by its shopfronts.

What it's for

SoHo is the district for the early part of the night and the conversation you actually want to have. It's walkable, it's dense, and nothing is far from the next thing, so it forgives indecision — you can change your mind three times inside one block. It's less about a single destination and more about the drift. If you want one room to commit to for the whole night, you'll likely move on afterward; if you want three or four short chapters before deciding whether to push on, this is the one.

Frequently asked

Where exactly is SoHo?: It's the stretch of Central above Queen's Road, organised around the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator, with Staunton Street and Elgin Street as its spine and Peel, Shelley and Graham cross-cutting. 'SoHo' is South of Hollywood Road — that's the anchor line to keep you oriented.
When's the best time to go?: Come earlier than you would for a club night. SoHo hits its stride over the after-work-into-dinner window and the hours just past it, when the pavements fill and the upstairs rooms are still easy to walk into. It's a place to start an evening rather than to close one.

The Old Man

Three bartenders with no financial backer built a room out of wood, brass and pineapple lamps on a SoHo side street in 2017. Two years later it was named the best bar in Asia. Nine years on, under new hands, it is still pouring.

Socio

A ground-level cocktail bar on Staunton Street that builds its list from what the neighbourhood throws away — oyster shell into vodka, banana peel into a whiskey highball — one Asia-Pacific country per drink.

The Savory Project

Four Staunton Street builds cocktails the way a kitchen builds a dish — beef stock, miso, MSG, Sichuan peppercorn — and the bar built on that idea has now ranked on Asia's 50 Best Bars for three years running, landing at No.60 on the 2026 extended list.

Montana

Lorenzo Antinori's follow-up to Bar Leone trades Rome for 1970s Havana — and landed at #47 on Asia's 50 Best Bars 2026 inside a year of opening.