Finally, an eco-friendly hotel bar in Shanghai

The ZUK Bar is not your everyday hotel bar – that’s for sure. Located on the ground floor of the newly opened Sukhothai Shanghai, a contemporary lifestyle hotel hailing from Hong Kong, it is sleek, minimalistic and above all, eco-friendly. 

Echoing the hotel’s concept of “urban oasis”, the walls and the floor of The ZUK Bar are covered by custom-made leaf mosaic tiles, while Designers Neri & Hu have given much else a connection to nature. The furniture is dominated by wood and leather, while the cover of the menu is soft leather imprinted with a shaker and strainer pattern.

“We want to connect urban people to nature through cocktails,” says bar manager Vincenzo Pagliara, who worked at the legendary Claridge’s Hotel and The Connaught Bar in London before joining The Sukhothai Shanghai five months ago. His 16 signature cocktails are divided into four sections according to flavour profile – Rocks, Flora, Water and Oak, elements “you can find in the woods”. 

A quick look at the menu also reveals the bar’s extensive use of homemade ingredients. As a matter of fact, the team here make most of the products from scratch apart from spirits, tonic water and soda water. “We try not to buy pre-made things,” says Vincenzo. “We make most of our bitters, and we don’t use refined sugar for our syrups – instead we use agave, stevia, honey, to name a few.” 

And not surprisingly, recycling is another big theme here. “We try to be eco-friendly. No plastic straws. And we utilize ingredients from the kitchen,” Vincenzo explains. For example, he collects all the leftover purple potatoes from the kitchen and makes a pink powder out of them as the garnish for Tropical Rain (rum, coconut and banana tea soda, lime, ¥110). For Ossidiana (oxidated vermouth, Campari, balsamic mango vinegar, ¥122), he infuses the drink in a clay pot with fresh passion fruit first, then keeps their seeds after straining to make a passion fruit paper for the garnish.

The inner half of the bar table is called the “Mixology Table” because this is where the guests can sample some of the homemade ingredients Vincenzo and his team are experimenting with. They use a rotary evaporator to distill and reduce different ingredients before putting them into small bottles with labels. “Maybe we’ll use them for our next menu,” Vincenzo says. “But if a guest wants to try something new, something not on the menu, we can make a drink with them as a special treat.”

Vincenzo employs a streamlined process to make and serve drinks at The ZUK Bar. All the drinks are prebatched in the morning without adding fresh fruit and stored in the same dark bottles. After one guest orders a drink at night, one bartender will collect the ticket, one bartender will build up the drink and another senior bartender or himself will taste, add the garnish and serve. “It’s almost like the bar works as a kitchen. This way, we can have more time to talk to the guest and make them smile,” he says.

Because of its location in Tai Koo Hui, The ZUK Bar has been attracting a younger crowd from the fashion, design or media industry since its opening. The bar itself can only host around 30 people, but the terrace facing Weihai Lu can seat another 45 people. Guests can get to the bar from the hotel lobby, but they’re probably more likely to walk in through the terrace because it’s much more accessible. 

As for prices, The ZUK Bar also wants to keep a reasonable ceiling on the menu’s upper limits. Aperitifs like Campari and Cocchi Vermouth start from ¥75 and the most expensive scotch on the menu is Lagavulin 1997 Distillery Edition (¥192/glass). “We don’t want to charge people crazy money for cocktails, you know. That’s also the purpose to be eco-friendly. You can save a lot of cost,” Vincenzo muses. “If you think of hotels, most of them waste a lot of things, like the buffet. But our hotel doesn’t even have a buffet. We save a lot of fruit, a lot of vegetables. You can control the cost even if you’re a hotel bar.”

The ZUK Bar, 380 Weihai Lu, Jing’an district, Shanghai, 021 5237 8888.

---

 In case you missed it: