Singapore is very, very good at serious bars. You know the ones: an earnest bartender on one side, forever tweezing a micro-herb; you on the other, frantically Googling the ingredients under the table.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a well-made drink and a little glamour. In fact, after spending the last couple of weeks eating and drinking my way through Southeast Asia’s Lion City, I’d send anyone visiting Singapore for the first time straight to Atlas for a martini and a bit of Gatsby-esque theatre. But sometimes you want a little less polish, a lot less garnish, and a bit more personality: somewhere the drinks are just as good, but the laughs are louder, and, if you’re me, you can accidentally spill something on yourself without feeling judged.
So while the usual Where to Drink in Singapore lists have the big names covered, these are the places I’d actually add to yours.
Players Table
Like me, Marcus Liow has a particular beef with garnish, specifically the kind he says he was continuously made to add because drinks needed to look better “for content.” At Players Table, the tiny cocktail room Liow opened in Singapore’s Kampong Glam district with Jasper Tan in April, he’s taken the perfect revenge.
Each signature drink brings together two lead flavours and little else: pandan and coconut, bell pepper and melon, espresso and Guinness. No garnish, no problem.
It might sound like a gimmick, but the work’s all there; it’s just out of sight. Infusions and clarifications take care of depth and flavour behind the scenes, which means the bar itself gets to stay minimal, easygoing, and refreshingly fuss-free.
Hup San Social Club
Hup San Social Club sits down a flight of stairs behind Club Street Laundry's kitchen, through a beaded curtain, and into a room of charmingly wonky chairs.
The name comes from Hup San Laundry, the building's former occupant, and nods to the Chinese social clubs that once gave Club Street its name. Behind the bar, owner June Baek has organised her menu, Do What Brings You Joy, around feelings rather than flavour notes, and with only 12 seats, it runs more like a chef's counter than a bar, with Baek enthusiastically talking you through every drink.
Try the “Cold Soup” for a hit of boozy wellness: soju, kelp dashi, cucumber, sesame, and apple vinegar. It’s a riff on the Korean chilled cucumber soup oi naengguk.
Your Mother’s House
Opened in late August, Your Mother’s House may have a name that invites a bad joke, but Shaheera Rahman and Bryan Bonifacio have put real thought into making the place somewhere you’ll want to stay.
The former Employees Only pair took over the old No Sleep Club space on Keong Saik Road, replaced the usual wall of bottles with kitsch cabinets and knick-knacks, and made the seating communal. It’s got real Sonny in Hobart energy, with stools too close to stay strangers for long.
The cocktails have the same easygoing feel, mostly riffs on classics the pair actually like drinking. “Gary’s Balding” is their take on a Garibaldi, with Campari and a cloud of orange, and there’s a generous plate of Indomie goreng with jammy fried eggs if you’re settling in for the night.
Bartenders of Pony (BOP)
BOP is the first independent venture from Uno Jang, the Korean-born creative director of the Jigger & Pony group, whose flagship Jigger & Pony came in at No. 9 on this year's list of Asia’s best bars.
It's Korean, but not in the usual way of a few gochujang cocktails. It's less a pantry of ingredients than a social concept, built around how Koreans actually drink: rounds, somaek, and plenty of food on the table so nobody goes home early.
The bar lists its values as kki (craft), jeong (warmth), and heung (joyful energy), and nothing brings on joyful energy quite like spotting a $16 drink. At a time when a cocktail in Singapore can easily cost double that, the price says plenty. Sit near Uno's record collection and order a BOP Martini, made with soju, gin, seaweed and takju (and a delicious soy-pickled olive); it’s a deeply savoury delight.
Offtrack
An oldie, but a goodie, Offtrack opened back in 2022 when Dean Chew of Darker Than Wax and Daniel O'Connor of Ice Cream Sundays built an acoustically treated room around a pair of restored Klipsch La Scala speakers, the same DJ David Mancuso used at his invite-only Loft parties in 1960s New York.
Today they hand the decks to local and regional DJs spinning excellent records you definitely wouldn't have found yourself. Grab a chilli-spiked Paloma, sourdough roti with dashi mascarpone, and see where the music goes.
Le Bon Funk
And then there are the places I always end up. The freshly reno’ed Le Bon Funk on Club Street is loud, unpretentious and almost always full. The list leans natural and changes constantly, so it pays to ask rather than hunt for a bottle you recognise.
What really sets it apart from the usual natty wine bars is the kitchen: generous produce-led sharing plates that are as addictive as the list is interesting replace the usual selection of bread and tinned fish. It's not a place for a single glass; find some friends, order a bottle, settle in and let the plates pile up.
Live Twice
My other constant is Live Twice in Bukit Pasoh. It's from the same group as BOP, but where BOP is a party, this is where you go to disappear for a while.
It's named after Bond’s You Only Live Twice, and yes, it absolutely feels like somewhere 007 might recline with a drink in hand: vintage armchairs, low lights, an inexplicable urge to whisper.
It definitely leans more serious – the signature Mizuwari is essentially whisky and water, except here three whiskies and Hokkaido “soft water” spend days “maturing together” in a ceramic tsubo urn – but what makes it special is the room itself, a dark, intimate little world that’s very hard to leave.
Fura
Ok, I’m cheating with this last one, but I'd make time for Fura too. In just a few years, it's gone from buzzy eco-experiment to, as of July, the Spirited Awards' World's Best Bar.
It's almost certainly the most tweezer-heavy bar on this list, but I think given the philosophy (and the creds) we can make an exception. Co-founders Sasha Wijidessa and Christina Rasmussen (a former head forager at Noma) build the menu around ingredients that are abundant or invasive.
Their thinking is simple: if something is overrunning an ecosystem, we might as well learn to eat it. Hence the Jellyfish Martini. Revenge has rarely tasted this good.
So yes, Singapore is very, very good at serious bars. It just so happens some of them are very, very good fun too.