Erguotou Gets a Serious Upgrade at Beijing's Priciest New Cocktail Bar
Even though erguotou – the cheap and abrasively strong working Beijinger's liquor – is not what one might expect to find in a cocktail at the capital’s fanciest new hotel lounge, the barkeeps at Mo Bar are keen to subvert your expectations. Yes, bartender Guo "T" Bin, an alum of Beijing cocktail crown jewel Janes and Hooch, certainly wants to go bold at this glitzy lounge in Wangfujing's new Mandarin Oriental hotel.
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Foreigners who dismiss erguotou and other types of baijiu as unpalatable should keep an open mind. By adding this spirit from the capital's long-running Jing Ye distillery, T and his team ensure their Eurasian cocktail is potent enough to make you purse your lips after a single sip. However, the inclusion of local Beijing white pear and lemon juices and fennel-infused Mancino Bianco Ambrato temper the baijiu and D1 potato vodka booze, ushering in sweet and savory flavors that make for a complex mix. It amounts to one of the more distinctive drinks we've tried in Beijing, and T's efforts to incorporate a local ingredient, a very polarizing one to boot, are laudable in a cocktail scene saturated with same-y negronis and overly safe variations on whiskey sours.
At RMB 128, the price is undeniably too steep for a typical night out, however plenty of other Beijing bars, from Emotion House and the Park Hyatt's China Bar to the now-shuttered Good Bait, have been guilty of slinging equally expensive drinks, without the level of drink recipe imagination that T employs.
The Mandarin Oriental's glamorous trappings don't hurt either. The cafe lounge in the second-floor corridor on the way to the bar, for instance, boast intimately soft lighting and dark woodgrain, and with wall tiles that evoke china tableware. The high ceilings are matched by equally high shelves stacked with scrolls, brushes and ink paintings, giving the hotel a truly oriental ambiance. Mo lounge's lighting is even more subdued than that of the rest of the hotel, and instead of regular shelving behind its black marble bar, the wall is inset with deep cubbies for the bottles, which are divided by wooden tiles and panes of blue stained glass.
Menu highlights include the more reasonably priced (at least by Beijing cocktail standards, or compared to the aforementioned Eurasian) RMB 108 Time Lapse cocktail. Consisting of Earl Grey washed baijiu, honey, clarified lemon juice, and Jenever juniper flavored gin this cocktail is tongue tinglingly bitter. Then there's the RMB 108 Mint Condition, made with mint and Varlhona redistilled Amaro, Lillet Blanc, and thyme oil for a light and refreshing combination. Fans of fruitier cocktails can instead try the RMB 118 Test of Time, which is made with 12-year-old Chivas Regal, jujube, osmanthus, glutinous rice, and a splash of red wine. Patrons will also enjoy the brief menu spiels and eye-catching photos of the Beijing spots that inspired each drink, such as the Forbidden City for the Test of Time, the Jing Ye Distillery for the Eurasian, 798 for Time Lapse and so on.
While's it's certainly too rich for many a Beijinger, the luxurious ambiance and boundary-pushing combinations of the accomplished cocktails make Mo bar a good place to treat your special someone on a very special occasion. But to splurge this much, you might need to save up by restricting yourself to pocket change priced erguotou for a few weekends before seeing how T and his team fancify the bargain Beijing spirit.
Mo Bar
Daily, 5pm-1am. 2/F, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Wangfu Central East Block, 269 Wangfujing Street, Dongcheng District (8509 8850)
王府井大街269号王府中环东座五层501
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Photos: Courtesy of Mo, Freddy Dodwell
