Cocktails in the East often come with stories of characters from the West—movie or literary legends who famously downed their favorite drinks in their adopted homeland. Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Noel Coward—if you find a place they once stayed, the bar is likely to serve a common drink named in their honor. For example, author Graham Greene’s preference for daiquiris is memorialized at the legendary Hotel Metropole in Hanoi. Clark Gable once taught the bartender at The Peninsula Hong Kong how to make a screwdriver.
With all the exotic appeal of Asia, however, why should the bar menu be so mundane?
