Hongkonger wins Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2025 Bartenders’ Bartender Award. We catch up with him When Hong Kong native and bartender Andrew Ho co-founded the speakeasy Hope & Sesame in Guangzhou, in China’s Guangdong province, in 2016, he saw the bar landscape in mainland China as more focused on trying to catch up with global trends than on honing hospitality and service. He sought to break that mould. Break it he did. And after nine years of perseverance, his efforts have resulted in him receiving the 2025 Bartenders’ Bartender Award, the only category in the Asia’s 50 Best Bars awards voted for by bartenders from respected establishments. “It’s important to be recognised by your peers, who are at the top of their game. I’m very honoured.” Ho graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the EHL Hospitality Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, the oldest hospitality management school in the world. He returned to Hong Kong in 2006 and interned at the modern French restaurant Amber, which now has three Michelin stars, in The Landmark Mandarin Oriental in Central. He then spent a decade working his way up from trainee at The Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong to assistant manager of food and beverage (F&B) at the Grand Hyatt hotels in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, during which he realised that F&B was where his passion truly lay. In 2015, after spending almost four years in Guangzhou, he decided to open his own establishment in the city. While Hong Kong is his home, he recognised that opening an establishment there would be much more expensive than opening one in Guangzhou, where he also saw more space for young businesses to grow. He teamed up with Bastien Ciocca, whom he met at university in Switzerland. Hope & Sesame opened in 2016. The speakeasy concept was new to Guangzhou, so the bar’s location – behind a traditional Cantonese store in Dongshankou, an older part of town not too far from the central business district – saw it widely considered to be the first speakeasy in the city. “It was always about creativity and hospitality,” Ho says. “We’re both very, very passionate about food and beverage and love making drinks, creating new recipes and hosting people. We like to think that, sometimes, the experience is more important than anything else. “We try to give all our guests a different experience every time. The bar has evolved tremendously over the nine years, but I think, to this day, if you walked in, you’d still feel the soul of the founders.” Ho says Hope & Sesame does not have a set theme but is “an expression of the founders”. Every year, it has a new menu and concept, which “gives us a huge opportunity to reinvent ourselves”. In 2020, the duo opened a second location, in Shenzhen. In 2023, they opened a concept bar called DSK Cocktail Club in Guangzhou. Ho is especially proud that he and Ciocca own all the bars 100 per cent, growing organically, with no pressure to bow to investors. As for Hope & Sesame, it placed 14th on the 2024 Asia’s 50 Best Bars list, after debuting at 35th in 2019. These days, instead of working behind the bar, Ho spends much of his time conceptualising projects for Spirits Architects, a F&B consultancy he co-founded in 2018. “For me, everything intertwines – creating a drink, training, designing the space and music, maintenance, creating the best ambient toilet, working with the team, marketing plans – everything contributes to the business,” he says. “We create recipes and operate venues for our clients. We come up with maybe 500 cocktails a year, and when we have so many projects, we have to find inspiration from anywhere. We also have to quantify creativity and try to have a system to create things. “One of my proudest moments is creating multiple venues per year. Creativity may one day run out, but luckily, we’re still creating.” Asia’s 50 Best Bars cites his “leadership, mentorship and enduring influence on mainland China’s modern cocktail culture” as the reasons he was selected by other acclaimed industry professionals. “Winning this award is definitely the crème de la crème of bartending milestones,” Ho says. “I have huge respect for our colleagues and peers in the 50 Best and bartending communities, and for them to think so highly of me and hold me in such high regard is incredible.” https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3315638/hongkonger-wins-asias-50-best-bars-2025-bartenders-bartender-award-we-catch-him (ICE HONG KONG)

Fonte notizia: South China Morning Post