In this briefing:
- Cat Bite Club owner Gabriel Lowe on what makes the bar unique (and how they got there);
- The commonalities between each spirit category (and how they lay out the list);
- and your chance to catch Tokyo Confidential in Singapore.
Welcome back to Boothby’s Singapore briefing, where this week we’re talking to Gabriel Lowe, co-owner of rice and agave spirits joint Cat Bite Club in Duxton.
Also in this briefing: a new menu drop, and a visit to Gibson from Tokyo Confidential’s Wakana Murata.
Let’s get into it.
Gabriel Lowe is the owner, along with Jesse Vida and Lauren Sosnowsky, of Singapore’s Cat Bite Club. In this little room, sat behind a coffee shop that runs during the day, you’ll find classic-inspired cocktails, as well as rice and agave spirit drinks the likes of which you’ll be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
Below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, Lowe talks to us about the journey of two childhood friends from San Francisco opening a bar in Asia, why they chose to pair agave and rice spirits as a central plank of their concept, and what makes a great bar.
BOOTHBY: What got you opening a bar in Singapore?
GABRIEL LOWE: Myself and Jesse Vida, we’ve known each other since we were five years old. We grew up together. Started working together in cafes when we were in our teens, which quickly developed and turned into working in bars. We used to work at a couple places together in San Francisco. The idea has really always been to open a bar. We never knew exactly where or when. We were just continuing through our separate career paths in our 30s. After Jesse landed in Singapore I visited and I thought, wow, drinks here are really cool. The community’s cool. It’s great as a showcase market for Asia. After probably my first day around here bar hopping in 2019, I decided that I wanted to move to Asia.
I didn’t zero in on Singapore. I looked around a couple different countries and I ended up taking a job in Bangkok.
But it was delayed because of Covid.
BOOTHBY: Covid ruined it for everyone.
GABRIEL LOWE: For Jesse and I Covid was a bit of a blessing in disguise, because we had both been managing bars and consulting and being just really, really busy. Covid gave us extra days off so we could actually decide what we wanted to do in terms of opening a bar. We identified Singapore as the target. We said, okay, well, when? And we started working backwards. What are the preliminary things we need to put together in terms of the concept, the brand? As soon as the borders opened back up in 2022 I moved over.
BOOTHBY: What’s the go with the name — what is the Cat Bite Club?
GABRIEL LOWE: Ah, we love and hate this question. The cat’s like the spirit of the place, you know, we want you to feel kind of mischievous, playful, curious, sexy when you’re in the bar. We want you to be curious because we have a very cool spirits collection. And we believe that you’ll get bitten with that curiosity, especially when people discover something like mezcal, and they keep on exploring with us. And it’s a club because a club is where you find yourself sitting around likeminded people, whether it be a chess club or a book club.
BOOTHBY: What brought about the combination of agave spirits and rice spirits?
GABRIEL LOWE: Agave is where we came from in terms of geography and our careers. We started bartending in California. We had very early access to things like mezcal that weren’t really prevalent in many other cocktail communities in 2007 and 2008.
BOOTHBY: It was non-existent basically.
GABRIEL LOWE: We had the opportunity to give people their first pour of mezcal and have people be shocked or intrigued or disgusted — whatever it was, there is a reaction when you drink mezcal for the first time.
BOOTHBY: No one’s on the fence, right?
GABRIEL LOWE: One way or the other. We learned to really appreciate it because of how different it is, how it can be used in cocktails, which ties into the rice spirits; when you talk about what’s consumed most in the world by volume, it’s rice spirits — It’s soju, it’s baijiu. But you don’t really see them in the modern cocktail scene. We thought, hey, we live in Asia now. This is where they’re consuming a lot of these spirits. Why don’t we pay a little homage to where we are? And jump ahead of a trend that we see is definitely going to emerge because these spirits are cool and delicious and versatile. We learned very quickly on one of the first guest shifts we did in Seoul, and we got to go and see where they were growing the rice for soju and we’re like, oh this is a field to glass kind of a spirit. It’s terroir-driven. It’s unaged, these unique qualities that exist are because of where they were grown, how they were grown, and how they were processed. So we saw there’s a huge parallel there to agave spirits.
BOOTHBY: How was that first year when you opened? Were there many mezcal bars around?
GABRIEL LOWE: At that time, we did our research — there were a few places that called themselves tequila or agave bars. Not to be rude, but we were very unimpressed by the selection they had; even the places that had a nice selection couldn’t talk to you about the bottles. Our angle was always not just to have a bunch of bottles, but let’s have bottles we can discuss, that we can use intelligently in different cocktails. We use a lot of different varietals of mezcal in different cocktails. We use different types of shochu, baijiu in cocktails. Like hey, we love the flavours around this sweet potato shochu — let’s make a cocktail built around that earthiness, that fruity quality that’s in this product.
BOOTHBY: Has it been hard to source agave spirits?
GABRIEL LOWE: I would say compared to other countries in Asia, we get a pretty good selection available here. When it comes to mezcal and tequila there’s at least 70 to 80 SKUs that are on the market. We don’t carry all of that. We only carry the stuff we really like, on our back bar, about 80 percent of that is hand-carried — we have such a unique collection because anytime we travel to a different market where different things are available, we grab a bottle or two.
BOOTHBY: Your cocktail list is structured between agave drinks on one page, and rice on the other page.
GABRIEL LOWE: We’ve just separated the agave and rice cocktails to separate pages because we find most people are looking for one of those.
BOOTHBY: I like you can get a little sidecar of the spirit from the cocktail on the side. I haven’t seen that often before.
GABRIEL LOWE: A fun feature. Education through libation. Because that’s the only fun kind. On the menu it’s called a little extra bite, you get a 20ml pour of whatever the base spirit is of that cocktail.
BOOTHBY: How much of opening this bar is opening a bar that you want to drink at yourself, and how much of it is tailoring it to the guests?
GABRIEL LOWE: It has to be somewhere where I want to hang out. Because I hang out here all the time. You’re gonna be here all the time.
I think we have a good perspective working in bars, hotels, restaurants, on how to make the space viable in terms of the guest space versus the workspace, so that everything can flow smoothly, you have enough space to work, people get their drinks on time and are also comfortable in their seats.
BOOTHBY: What in your professional opinion do you think makes a great bar?
GABRIEL LOWE: What makes a good bar is, like any F&B business, I think it comes down to the hospitality.
What does hospitality mean though? It’s treating people like they’re guests in your house. It’s genuinely being happy that someone’s there, because you should be, because that’s why you’re employed or why your bar is open. Show proper appreciation, show respect, anticipate needs — don’t make people be unsure about when they’re getting their drinks. Just be honest — honest hospitality is what we practise here.
Follow Cat Bite Club on Instagram (@catbiteclub) and visit them seven days a week, from 5pm to midnight, at 75 Duxton Road, Singapore.
The Last Word
Manhattan has launched their latest cocktail list, Circle of Celebration, and inspired by American drinking rituals. Follow them on @manhattan_sg.
Gibson plays host to Waka Murata from Japan bar Tokyo Confidential this Sunday night — the guest shift kicks off at 8pm and runs until midnight.
Got a new bar, menu, or guest shift happening in Singapore? Let us know here: tips@boothby.com.au.
