Penicillin

Penicillin turns a neighbour's kitchen scraps into a cocktail

Walk down Hollywood Road from the escalator and the restaurants outnumber the bars. Penicillin treats that density as a supply line rather than competition: avocado stones bound for a neighbour's bin get folded into One Penicillin, One Tree, a cocktail built on white chocolate-infused whisky, strawberry brine and coconut kefir. Every sale funds a Mallotus muticus tree planted in Kalimantan National Park through a partnership with EcoSpirits and Green Steps Group — a tree the bar says sequesters roughly 4,400kg of CO2 over its lifetime. We'd call that the more interesting number on the menu, not the ABV.

The bar runs its own fermentation chamber instead of buying in mixers

Penicillin opened in 2020 calling itself Hong Kong's first closed-loop bar, and the interior still reads that way — a research-lab front section in white tile and glassware, opening onto an industrial-materials bar built from reclaimed street signs and typhoon-felled wood. Co-founder Agung Prabowo runs ten seasonal cocktails organised around five elements, made with centrifuging, infusion, fermentation and redistillation rather than store-bought syrups. The on-site fermentation chamber is where that starts: organic ferments built from live bacteria and enzymes, mixed in before a drink reaches the pass.

Penicillin has ranked on Asia's 50 Best Bars in 2024 and 2026

The bar placed #24 on Asia's 50 Best Bars in 2024 and #49 in 2026, a move worth naming rather than skipping past — the list shifted; that's not the same as the bar changing. It sits at L/G, Amber Lodge, 23 Hollywood Road, open Monday to Saturday 5pm to 2am and Sunday 5pm to 1am. Book if you want the fermentation chamber explained at the bar rather than read off a menu card.