Hong Kong bar The Old Man channels spirit of Hemingway to reach world top 10

Ranked No 10 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list, the Central drinking hole is a tribute to its bartender’s favourite author, who loved a tipple or two

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Agung Prabowo mixes a Hemingway daiquiri at The Old Man, in Central. Picture: Antony Dickson

Published: 8:00pm, 14 Mar 2019Updated: 8:00pm, 14 Mar 2019

In cocktail lore there are certain iconic figures who are famous primarily for doing something other than bartending. None looms larger than the American journalist and novelist Ernest Hemingway.

“Papa”, as he was nicknamed, earned this special status by both championing his favourite tipples in print and popularising them in the bars he frequented during his extensive travels.

He was not much of an originator of drinks – although he probably did play a role in the creation of at least one enduring formula. In 1935, he contributed a simple recipe for a combination of champagne and absinthe to an anthology of drink recommendations submitted by prominent writers. The book was called So Red the Nose, or Breath in the Afternoon – the subtitle being a tip of the hat from the editors to Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway’s 1932 treatise on bullfighting.

Ever the self-publicist, he underlined the allusion by calling the drink Death in the Afternoon as well, and it acquired a new lease of life during the 1990s, when absinthe – albeit in a less potent form – again became legally available in countries that had banned it for decades because of its supposed hallucinogenic properties.

Harry’s New York Bar, in Paris. Photo: Alamy

As a habitué of Harry’s New York Bar, in Paris, France, Hemingway was also an ambassador for the Bloody Mary, which originated there. He is believed to have introduced it to this city, at the bar of the old Hongkong Hotel, when he visited in 1941 with his new bride, fellow American journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn, according to whom he “took to Hong Kong at once”.