How this bartender is bringing traditional Chinese medicine to cocktails in Hong Kong
The West has been supping its medicinal liqueurs for fun for centuries: now, Dennis Mak has teamed up with a Chinese medicine doctor to turn Hong Kong on to the delights of TCM tipples
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a Chinese medicine doctor walks into a bar, where he spots an old acquaintance behind the counter, an investment banker-turned-bartender, and he says to the guy …
Yeah, you probably haven’t. But anyway, that night in 2019, at the Little Lab bar in Central, the doctor had already had a hot toddy at another spot nearby, and as his buddy was mixing him an old fashioned, he was reminded that such cocktails had doubled as health remedies for centuries. The hot toddy, featuring hot whisky, honey, lemon and spice, had been a popular recipe to treat colds in Britain for about three centuries. Bitters, like the ones being mixed for the old fashioned, on the other hand, were believed to cure upset stomachs and had been added to old fashioneds since the 1800s.
In that dimly lit bar, after much deliberation – and a few choice libations – Chinese medicine practitioner James Ting and bartender Dennis Mak mused over the fact that Chinese doctors have always been looking for ways to innovate TCM, to integrate the ancient practice into a modern lifestyle. So the question became: why not try bringing such traditions into Hong Kong’s cocktail scene?
“There is an old saying,” says Mak, “that alcohol is the elder of a hundred medicines, meaning alcohol is always a very important element in Chinese medicine.”