In this issue:
- The Guest Shift — Smoke & Bitters: a little of what to expect when the bar lands in Singapore next Thursday;
- The Interview — Vijay Mudaliar on why the Singapore Cocktail Crossover had to be, Native, and more;
- The Last Word — Australia’s favourite bartending exports come to Singapore, and a new world class champ is crowned.
Welcome back to Boothby’s Singapore briefing — this issue has a decidedly guest shift—takeover feel to it.
That’s because the Singapore Cocktail Crossover is set to sweep the city next week, kicking off on Tuesday 9 June. We’ve got a chat with SGCX co-founder (and Native founder) Vijay Mudaliar below, where he talks about why the event needs to exist, building community, Native, and loads more.
The quiz is back, too — do you know when Native opened? Take a look below.
This week there is no Two Drink Review, instead, we’ve got The Guest Shift, a short interview chat with Don Ranasinghe of Sri Lanka’s Smoke & Bitters — he talks about his favourite bartenders to visit, including one of Singapore’s all time greats (and how you can check out Smoke & Bitters this coming week).
And a reminder, you can access all our Singapore and Asia stories at boothby.asia, along with each edition of this email briefing. In the meantime, do give us a follow on Instagram at @boothbydrinks, and send any tips, intel, or feedback to me direct at sam@boothby.com.au. I’d love to hear from you.
Okay, let’s get into it.
The guest shift: Don Ranasinghe, Smoke & Bitters, Sri Lanka
You walk into a venue, you walk into the chaos, in a bar, in a club, in a restaurant... and then you feel at home.
Here’s a man who is no stranger to a guest shift. Don Ranasinghe is the co-owner of Sri Lankan bar, Smoke & Bitters and who, incidentally, will also be in town for the Singapore Cocktail Crossover next week. You’ll be able to catch Smoke & Bitters at Sago House as part of SGCX on Thursday 11 June at 9pm.
We caught up with Don back in April during the Maybe Cocktail Festival in Sydney, and got his thoughts on guest shifts, what Smoke & Bitters is all about, and who his favourite bartenders to visit are.
BOOTHBY: How do you describe Smoke & Bitters to people who haven’t been?
DON RANASINGHE: It’s a smokehouse and a cocktail bar. It’s owned by me and my best friend of almost 25 years, who’s the chef. I work on the drinks. We’re on the very southern tip of Sri Lanka, in a surf town called Hiriketiya. It’s about three hours drive from the capital, so we’re a little bit away from civilisation.
BOOTHBY: What makes a great bar?
DON RANASINGHE: It’s just somewhere where you feel welcome, somewhere where you feel at home, but also where you have moments, right? And they can be the smallest things like a moment with a friend, a laugh, a joke, or something even more important than that. Great bars, great venues, that’s what they do — they set the stage for you to have these incredible times and these incredible memories.
BOOTHBY: Why do you do what you do?
DON RANASINGHE: I was never good at anything else. A lot of us in hospitality, a lot of us as bartenders, you never maybe quite fit in into into what you were doing before. A lot of us are not very professionally qualified. And then finally, you walk into a venue, you walk into the chaos, in a bar, in a club, in a restaurant or wherever you might be working and then you feel at home. I finally found something that I’m good at and as hard as it is, it’s a very rewarding thing.
BOOTHBY: Are there too many guest shifts?
DON RANASINGHE: No, I don’t think so. If you see the map of the globe and you see dotted around all these different bars from all these different places here at Maybe Cocktail Festival, [Maybe Sammy owner] Stef Catino was definitely right — it’s bringing the world closer together.
BOOTHBY: Who’s your favourite bartender to visit anywhere in the world?
DON RANASINGHE: Honestly, Nico Di Soto — I’m a bit of a fanboy of the guy. I think he does some amazing things. But there’s a few, bro — there’s Ryan Chetiyawardana [of London-based but global group, Mr Lyan], who’s also a Sri Lankan, right? The man’s done some amazing things. He’s someone else that’s really important to us as well.
And Aki Eguchi from Jigger & Pony in Singapore is another legend who’s not out there so much, but man, he does a lot.
The Interview
Vijay Mudaliar, co-founder of Singapore Cocktail Crossover and founder of Native.
“When you have caviar everyday, it becomes basic,” says Vijay Mudaliar, bartender and owner of Native and one part of the quartet behind the upcoming Singapore Cocktail Crossover. Taking place from the 9th to the 14th of June, Mudaliar and Peter Chua (Nighthawk), Caryn Cheah, and Henry Stonham (ex-Bar Convent Singapore) are wanting to push past the standard guest shift model and bring in different disciplines to complement the entire experience, and along the way, give Singapore’s bar scene a much-needed shot in the arm.
Here, Mudaliar talks to us about the state of the bar business in Singapore right now, why guests are finding comfort in bars that have stood the test of time and not chasing what is shiny and new, and the idea behind Singapore Cocktail Crossover that makes it unique.
BOOTHBY: You have had Native for some time now, right?
VIJAY MUDALIAR: 10 years. But we had Analogue Initiative, [closed it] and we want to reopen it. We’re ready, but it’s just too scary to do it now. We have the funds, we have the equipment, everything brought over. But rents are not going down, manpower, all these issues — I’m anxious and I want to do it. And people keep asking me to do it.
BOOTHBY: You want everything to be right before doing it though.
VIJAY MUDALIAR: Yeah. A lot of customers came back here [to Native], so we have a little boost. I’m in no rush. I need to remind myself of that, because when we go out for drinks and people say Analogue is my favourite? It’s like, fuck it, let’s go find a place! Let’s go. Then the next day I’m like, calm down.
BOOTHBY: Did you find with Analogue, did it sort of cannibalise native a bit? That people would go there instead of Native?
VIJAY MUDALIAR: I would say 10 to 15 percent. But in this market now, a return of 10 to 15 percent [of guests] means a lot because we 60 seats. And that means on any given day I’m getting 10 to 12 more customers. And we got lucky, last year we started to see a trend that consumers went back to old school, OG bars like Jigger & Pony, Nutmeg & Clove, instead of new bars. I think people are like, okay, everything is expensive and I want a sure experience.
BOOTHBY: You want to know that when you’re spending $28 on a drink that it’s going to be good.
VIJAY MUDALIAR: Yeah, you don’t want hit or miss. So we got a bit lucky there.
BOOTHBY: That’s good though, that rewards being around for a while. And really, that should be the way, but I guess people don’t have so much time, and everyone always likes what’s shiny and new, right?
VIJAY MUDALIAR: So right now people are not going to shiny and new because it’s just too much of a risk. [In Singapore] we’ve had so many concepts over the years that it’s just this weird, forced concept of needing to come out with something creative and it’s like — what is this? People can’t link it. It’s a weird time.
BOOTHBY: Let’s talk about the Singapore Cocktail Crossover. What’s the big idea behind this?
VIJAY MUDALIAR: Singapore was one of the cities in Asia to kickstart a whole cocktail week. And it’s been great. And over the last five, six years, we’ve seen the rest of the region really grow.
BOOTHBY: There’s a cocktail week everywhere.
VIJAY MUDALIAR: Yeah, and we’re very happy to see that a lot of the other parts of Asia are doing well. Because we’re very close with the other communities.
But the thing is that we haven’t had a cocktail week or a cocktail experience in the last two years in Singapore. And budgets are really tight. So me and Peter Chua, obviously we grew up in the scene and we wanted to do something this year that would be a little bit more interesting. And like you said, every city has a cocktail week, and brands and consumers are very tired of this guest shift galore. Singapore has one of the highest guest-shift ratios. For consumers, at first it was very exciting. But you know when you have caviar every day? Then you don’t appreciate it anymore, it becomes basic.
So right now, guest shifts are not even filling up, and you could have like a really reputable bartender. People just find it boring.
In Singapore, a lot of crafts have seen a big slow down. So we’re like, we have similar audiences, or we could reach out to each other’s audiences and do something interesting instead of just a guest shift.
What we’ve done is a crossover. Every guest shift event that happens is a crossover with a different craft. So for example, Dry Wave Cocktail Studio in Bangkok, they do cocktails based on different sound waves. So we have a DJ that’s a sound engineer who is going to do sounds for the night to pair with the menu.
BOOTHBY: That’s something unique.
VIJAY MUDALIAR: Or Tax Bar in Bangkok, they do a lot of insect-based drinks. We’re going to be bringing Ultimate Nutrition in Singapore, which finds other ways of nutrition and protein, we’re going to pair them with Tax Bar and a bar in Singapore. It is an event based on insects, cocktails, and also educational.
And then we have a very exciting event at Stay Gold Flamingo which is going to be paired with Soka and a perfumery based in Singapore called Rahasya Fragrances. They’re going to be pairing cocktails based on perfume. So each event, outside of the guest shift bar, there will be a crowd.
BOOTHBY: So you’re also bringing the audience that those crafts have, their consumers and their customers. You’re introducing them to something else as well. I guess that’s the crossover — it exposes the bars to people who might not go there otherwise, right?
VIJAY MUDALIAR: Yeah, you create a whole different experience.
Then on June 8th, we’re having the Singapore Bar Awards, Colin Chia is organising it, because he did the Bangkok Bar Awards. Me and Pete really want as many people in the Singapore community to have their thumbprint on Singapore Cocktail Crossover.
We’re bar owners. When it comes to events, it’s tricky and working with community, it’s tricky as well. We’re not making much money out of this. In fact, we’ve invested some of our own money. Hopefully we get it back. We’re trying to tell the community it’s time for us to really work together, instead of having that hierarchy based thing.
Me and Pete, when we started in the cocktail scene, we were young, we were 23, 24 — now we’re 37. So we’ve seen how Singapore’s first 10 years of the scene was a great community. Obviously after Covid, a lot of these good people moved, they left the industry. So there’s a lot of new players who came in based on what Singapore was, right? So it’s going to pull everybody back to go back to the roots.
