Sydney’s Chinatown has welcomed its first ever cocktail bar with the recent opening of Bancho Bar.
Located at 10 Thomas Lane, Haymarket in the Ultimo Hotel building, Banchō Bar is a 100-seat laneway small bar from the team behind Tokyo Bird and Osaka Trading Co. Pronounced barn-chor, the name translates from Japanese as ‘the leader of a group of delinquents’.
Spread over two levels, the bar area is a welcoming space with a high ceiling, a marble top bar, repurposed tree trunks as benches and comfortable seating around the bar. The mezzanine level with Chesterfield lounges houses 38 bottle lockers in which regulars can keep their unfinished bottles of whisky, baijiu Chinese liquor or other spirits for future visits.
Drawing inspiration from its Chinatown location and the Asian melting pot of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai offerings, the bar has a solid focus on cocktails and whisky. While Tokyo Bird draws heavily on Japanese whisky, Bancho Bar veers towards Scotch whisky and other world whiskies including Australian, American, Canadian and Taiwanese as well as independent bottlings.
With a solid focus on cocktails, the 28-strong list is divided into five sections. Market Store features cocktails that are driven by the markets across the road and seasonality. Such an example is the crimson-coloured Dragon’s Breath, with dragon fruit infused gin, shochu, raspberry, lemon and basil seeds. The cocktail seeks to replicate the look of a dragon fruit by soaking basil seeds in water which causes them to swell then using them when making ice cubes (see photo on the following pages).
Featured Classics cater for those who like cocktails such as the White Lady and Manhattan while Light and Refreshing offers low ABV options and lighter style of drinks that suit Asian palates such as the Sakura Martini with Roku Gin, sake and salted sakura.
Moving up in flavour, Sour and Tropics includes sour style drinks and rum-based cocktails. With its blood-like aesthetics, the Hong Kong Sour combines delicious spicy notes from a five spice red wine reduction with a classic rye-based sour drink. Decadent and Spirit Forward caters for those looking for a boozier alternative such as Lion’s Mane which marries Nikka from the Barrel whisky with Asian citrus and lingers beautifully with the spice notes from pimento dram.
Whisky Highballs are also on offer where guests can choose their whisky and match it to a highball flavour.
The team from Tokyo Bird (Jason Ang, Yoshi Onishi, Tina Wing Kee and Luke Hanzlicek) along with Bar Manager Chad Choulai (ex Lobo Plantation) are keen to focus on the premium experience and grow their version of bottle service. “Guests can expect a level of education about the product in a comfortable setting while keeping it a casual Tokyo Bird-esque vibe,” says Yoshi Onishi.
Bancho Bar is open from 4pm till late with a 2am licence on Friday and Saturday.
Click through the following pages for a first look at Bancho Bar and cocktails from the opening menu.
