Coa

The bar is named after a harvesting knife, not a country

Coa opened in December 2017 in a narrow ground-floor unit at Shop A, LG/F, Wah Shin House, 6-10 Shin Hing Street — a short walk off Hollywood Road, on the SoHo side of Central rather than the Lan Kwai Fong side. On the wall behind the bar hangs a coa: the flat, curved blade a jimador drives into the ground to cut agave piñas free of their leaves in the fields of Jalisco and Oaxaca. It gives the bar its name, and it isn't decoration — it's the whole premise stated as an object. Founder Jay Khan, a Hong Kong bartender who had spent years working other people's bars around the city, opened Coa with one conviction: that agave spirits deserved the same seriousness this city already gave whisky and Bordeaux. Khan is still often behind the stick himself, or on the floor talking a table through what's in their glass — the intimacy of a 40-seat room where the person who built the list is frequently the one pouring from it. The bet didn't pay off immediately. Coa didn't turn a profit for its first six months; in 2017, mezcal in Hong Kong was still something drinkers ordered once, out of curiosity, and rarely again.

The spirits list runs past 40 pages, sorted by soil

What changed the trajectory was a refusal to simplify. Coa's spirits list now runs more than 40 pages and covers tequila, mezcal, raicilla and sotol — the wider agave family, not just its two famous members — organised by species and by the soil the plants grew in. The collection runs to roughly 200 bottles, and Khan built it the slow way: visiting the distilleries himself rather than ordering off an importer's sheet, which is the difference between a bar that can sell you a mezcal and a bar that can tell you which valley it came from and why that matters. It isn't a small operation dressed up as niche expertise — it's the actual depth a 40-plus-page list implies, built one relationship at a time, years before agave spirits were something Hong Kong drinkers asked for by name.

"We don't want to be too geeky or too serious," Khan has said of the approach — the same tension that runs through the menu itself, where a spirits list built for obsessives sits next to a cocktail card designed for a first-timer.

Coa held Asia's No.1 spot three years running — a run nobody has matched since

Coa's rise through Asia's 50 Best Bars was gradual before it was total. It entered the list at No.12 in 2019, climbed to No.3 in 2020 — No.8 on the World's 50 Best Bars the same year — then took the No.1 spot outright in 2021, held it again in 2022, and held it a third time in 2023: three consecutive years at the top, a run no other bar on the list has matched since. Hong Kong's Bar Leone succeeded Coa as Asia's No.1 in 2024, keeping the city on top for a fourth year running under a different name and a different address. Coa has stayed inside the list every year since its own reign ended — No.17 in 2025 (No.38 on the global World's 50 Best Bars list the same year), and No.24 on the 2026 list, published 28 July 2026 at a ceremony in Macau. The same year it collected the Rémy Martin Legend of the List Award, a prize built for a body of work rather than a single strong twelve months. Tatler named Coa among Hong Kong's Best 20 Bars in both 2025 and 2026, and placed it on the Best 100 Bars in Asia-Pacific in 2025.

The room reads Oaxaca, not Wan Chai

Coa's room seats about 40, low-lit and compact — reclaimed wood, warm brick, hand-carved details and Aztec-inspired artwork on the walls, with the coa tool itself mounted as the room's one deliberate piece of decoration. It reads like a Mexico City cantina relocated to a Central side street rather than a themed room built to chase the idea of one. Food comes through a collaboration with Chicano, a Mexican restaurant a few minutes away that's part of a small but growing wave of serious Mexican cooking in the city — built to sit next to a spirits list this deep rather than compete with it. The pairing keeps the bar from becoming a room where the only thing on offer is drinking.

The house Paloma has never left the menu

The house Paloma — La Paloma de Oaxaca, built from tequila blanco, mezcal joven, lime and grapefruit soda with a rim of worm salt — has stayed on the menu since the bar opened in 2017, and it's still what the room reaches for first when a table doesn't know where to start. The rest of the card moves with the seasons. Tatler's 2026 write-up singled out the Bloody Beef Maria, built on tomato and beef consommé for savoury depth; the Smacked Cucumber, for cooling brightness; and the Pepper Smash, built on shishito and Thai chilli. None of it reads as a novelty cocktail list. It reads as a spirits education that happens to be enjoyable to drink through.

The format has since travelled to Shanghai

Khan opened a second room in Shanghai's Jing'an district in the early 2020s — plans delayed for years by Covid-era restrictions before the doors opened. It was built across three floors, with a ground-floor bar mirroring the Hong Kong original's scale and a backbar shaped like an Aztec pyramid. A renewal project on the building forced it shut in late 2023, for what became a six-month closure; it reopened in June 2024 at a new address on Fuxing Road in Huangpu district, now spread across four floors of interconnected concepts. Khan has stayed based at the Central original throughout, visiting Shanghai monthly, with a longtime member of the Hong Kong team promoted to run it day-to-day. The room that started this — the one on Shin Hing Street — has never been the one that moved.

Six nights a week, closed Mondays

Coa is open Tuesday to Sunday from 6pm, running to midnight most nights and to 1am on Friday and Saturday. It's closed Monday. The address hasn't changed since opening day: Shop A, LG/F, Wah Shin House, 6-10 Shin Hing Street, Central — bookings run through the bar's own site or Instagram, not a third-party platform. For a bar with a three-year run at the top of a continent's best-bars list, walking in is still a strikingly unfussy thing to do.