The Old Man

Lower ground floor, five steps down from the Aberdeen Street pavement in SoHo: wood, brass and white marble, and a scatter of pineapple lamps over a bar that took its three founders the better part of a year to design before they poured a single drink. The Old Man opened in August 2017, self-funded by three hotel-trained bartenders who could not find anyone to bankroll a room named after a Cuban fisherman. Within two years it was named the best bar in Asia. Five months after that, it placed among the ten best on the planet.

The Hemingway portrait behind the bar is built from construction waste, not paint

Above the counter hangs a mosaic portrait of Hemingway, artfully assembled from construction waste rather than painted or printed — the kind of detail a first-time visitor spots on the second look, not the first. The bar itself is built like a teppanyaki counter, with a metal chiller strip running down the middle to keep drinks cold without extra dilution, and bottles and books share shelving on either side, the effect closer to a library than a cocktail bar. Guests are free to walk around and watch a drink get built rather than stay pinned to their side of the counter — a house habit that has survived three ownership changes and nine years.

Three bartenders with no backer built it themselves, and ran it themselves for the first year

Agung Prabowo, James Tamang and Roman Ghale had all worked hotel bar programmes across Asia before they pooled their own money to open The Old Man — no investor, no group behind them. The design alone took close to a year: a room the founders described as aiming for the feel of "no less than a grand hotel bar," built in wood, brass and white marble, with pineapple motifs running through the paintings and light fixtures. To keep the business alive without hiring, the three of them worked every shift themselves for the first year — bartending, hosting and running the room end to end. They also set an unusually generous pour: cocktail costs ran at roughly 40–45% of the sale price, against an industry standard closer to 20%, a deliberate bet on value over margin in the room's first year.

Every cocktail on the menu is tied to a specific piece of Hemingway's writing, not just his name

The bar takes its name from The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway's 1952 novella about a Cuban fisherman, and its drinks list is built the same way: Agung Prabowo has said he reads through Hemingway's novels and short stories to build each cocktail, then serves it with the piece of history behind it, rather than naming a drink after the author and stopping there. Techniques leaned modern from day one — centrifuges and rotary evaporators — turned toward Hong Kong and Asian ingredients rather than the classic Western bar canon the source material would suggest. When it was profiled for its 2019 Asia's 50 Best Bars win, the room sat around 25 seats, small enough that guests were routinely seated shoulder to shoulder with strangers at the communal counter.

The Old Man went from a debut at No. 5 to Asia's No. 1 bar within twelve months

The bar's first entry on Asia's 50 Best Bars came in March 2018, when it debuted at No. 5 — a higher first placing than any Hong Kong bar had managed the year before. Fourteen months later, at the Capitol Theatre in Singapore on 9 May 2019, The Old Man was named Asia's Best Bar, the No. 1 spot on that year's list.

"It was always the dream, but we never thought we'd make it. We are so happy — not only for our bar, but for the Hong Kong scene overall." — Agung Prabowo, co-founder, on winning Asia's Best Bar, 9 May 2019

Five months later, it placed No. 9 on the World's 50 Best Bars list

The global list followed that October. At the ceremony in London on 3 October 2019, The Old Man placed No. 9 on the World's 50 Best Bars — a Hong Kong bar, two years old, ranked among the ten best rooms on earth by a panel of international judges. It was the high-water mark of the bar's original run: Asia's top spot in May, a global top ten in October, both in the same calendar year the founders had opened with nothing but their own savings.

The founders who built it left in 2020 — and handed daily running to their wives

In September 2020, Agung Prabowo and Roman Ghale announced they were stepping back, saying "the time has come to part ways with our shareholders and work on two new and very different concepts." Laura Prabowo, Agung's wife, took over daily operations at The Old Man; Katy Ghale, Roman's wife, worked behind the scenes. Agung and Roman moved into consulting roles and, working with designer Betty Ng and her Collective Studio, opened two new bars that autumn: Penicillin, an eco-conscious, closed-loop cocktail bar in the former Buddha Lounge space, and Dead &, a dive bar near the Lan Kwai Fong amphitheatre. The Old Man itself did not close — it kept its address, its name and its Hemingway concept, and kept pouring under its new day-to-day leadership.

Nine years on, the room is still open — and still convening Hong Kong's other bars

The bar today is run under Nikita Matveev, a Russian-born mixologist the bar's own site names as its bar manager, and the current menu still carries Hemingway-referencing names — Handshake, For A Moment Only, Like-Minded Creatures among them. The Old Man has been named to Tatler's Best 20 Bars Hong Kong list in both 2025 and 2026 and to Tatler's Best Asia 100 Bars in 2024. Its ranking on Asia's 50 Best Bars has settled well below its 2019 peak — No. 47 in 2023, No. 71 in 2024 — but it remains one of a hundred bars named across the continent, nine years after opening with three bartenders and no investor. On 21 July 2026, the bar marked its anniversary with a seven-hour relay: seven other Hong Kong bars — Quinary, The Opposites, Montana, Artifact, The Savory Project, Honky Tonks and Socio — each took the counter for an hour, pouring a signature cocktail and a daiquiri variation, walk-in only, free to enter.

Eight years of menus later, the price has moved but the format hasn't

The seventh menu, titled "Relations," launched in October 2025 and still runs on the same idea — but cocktails now start at HK$125, up from the HK$90-plus-service the bar charged when it opened in 2017. Rather than his fiction, this menu works through Hemingway's personal connections: Handshake nods to his friendship with poet Ezra Pound, For A Moment Only references his unrequited love for the much younger Adriana Ivancich, and Paradox draws on his relationship with his mother. Eight years of menus in, the format hasn't changed — a story first, a drink built to match it second — even as the price of a glass has climbed by close to 40%.