A month after opening Bar Leone, Lorenzo Antinori’s first independent venue, 50 Best catches up with the Roman bartender to see why he’s going back to his roots and switching his focus from extravagant serves to classic cocktails
The defining concept behind Bar Leone is ‘cocktail popolari’, an Italian phrase that, in essence, means ‘cocktails for the people’. Or at least that’s how Lorenzo Antinori, owner of the freshly minted Hong Kong neighbourhood bar, interprets the tagline of his first solo venture.
It’s a conceptual departure from his previous role running the show at Argo in Four Seasons Hong Kong, No.28 on the list of The World’s 50 Best Bars 2022. But Antinori isn’t looking to replicate the success he garnered through high-concept equipment, hifalutin production processes and bespoke distillates. He is, instead, taking it back to basics.
Bar Leone is about classic cocktails and approachability, stripping back the smoke and mirrors to focus on providing guests with a memorable experience. It’s an homage to the local, traditional Roman bars that form the cornerstone of his home city’s neighbourhoods. To deliver his vision for Bar Leone, Antinori has pulled inspiration from the amalgamation of experiences he’s garnered throughout his career working in some of the world’s finest hostelries.
Swapping the courtroom for cocktails
As is the case with many hospitality professionals, bartending was never Plan A for Antinori. In his youth, he studied law in Italy. He retired from training after his third year of law school and took a year off to travel Australia. It was here that he found himself behind the stick for the first time, putting in shifts at a club. He never looked back.
Antinori received his first taste of world-leading cocktails and hospitality working at the American Bar at The Savoy under industry veteran Erik Lorincz
“Once I returned to Italy, I just realised how much more fun bartending was than law, so I decided to pursue it as a career,” says Antinori. “I remember that I used to watch bartending videos on YouTube when I was learning the craft, and I specifically recall watching the ones of Erik Lorincz when he won an international bartending competition while working at the American Bar at The Savoy. It was these videos that inspired me to move to London in 2011.”
With only a year’s worth of bar experience under his belt, Antinori arrived in the UK. He landed his first bar back job in the city at the American Bar, working with Lorincz. “If I look back, it was all pretty wild,” says Antinori. “Erik had a spare room and I needed a place to live, so I went from watching his videos and admiring his technique to living with him.”
After spending four years at The Savoy, building his foundational knowledge of classics and five-star hotel service – experiences that influence Bar Leone today – Antinori took the opportunity to become head bartender at Ryan Chetiyawardana’s Dandelyan, which was named The World’s Best Bar in 2018. Here, his creativity flourished. He and the team developed some of the most ground-breaking cocktails served anywhere in the world at the time in terms of flavour profile and the methods used to extract flavour from raw ingredients.
Moving away from London, Antinori spent two years at Charles H in Seoul before relocating to Hong Kong to become the beverage ambassador at Argo
Soon after, the opportunity arose for Antinori to work for the Four Seasons group in Asia. After spending two years curating the beverage programme at Charles H in Seoul with success that saw the bar make the list of Asia’s 50 Best Bars for the first time, Antinori moved to Hong Kong to open Argo. And after four years building Argo and navigating the multiple lockdowns Hong Kong faced during the pandemic, Antinori had the opportunity to open his own concept.
“Before Bar Leone, leaving Hong Kong crossed my mind,” Antinori says. “But when an opportunity to open my own bar came along, I realised that these opportunities don’t come around very often, so I decided to stay.”
A taste of Italy
With one of the bar industry’s most impressive CVs, Antinori had a wealth of knowledge to pull from while designing the concept for his first bar. Instead of taking the high-concept route that many contemporary cocktail bars lean into, Antinori embraced a more irreverent and casual approach to Bar Leone’s cocktails, design, service and hospitality.
“I was listening to an interview by Arrigo Cipriani of Harry’s Bar in Venice and he said something that really stuck with me,” says Antinori. “He said ‘simplicity, when it’s done with a lot of detail, is an extraordinary thing.’ This is what we’re trying to do at Bar Leone: offer simple things with lots of attention to detail… Everything we do needs to be approachable, but also very curated with strong storytelling behind it.”
Bar Leone’s cocktail programme mostly ditches house-made ingredients in favour of ingredients found on the back bar – a decision that keeps prep for service straightforward and the focus on hospitality instead of the liquid in the glass. Garnishes are classic-oriented and minimal: finely manicured citrus peels and quality olives, say, and cocktails are subtle twists on classics.
“I actually believe it’s harder to build a drinks programme that’s based around classic cocktails,” says Antinori. “When I worked at Argo, my budget for the drinks programme was massive. I could buy a rotovap and distil weird ingredients from around the world. At Bar Leone, we want to flip the business model on its head because we believe that we can deliver the same quality cocktails, if not even better, by cutting down certain steps and really focusing on the service and the knowledge and education of our staff and the service for our guests.”
Bar Leone's classic cocktail programme is worlds away from the complex and tech-driven drinks Antinori created at Argo
One of the bar’s signature serves is the Leone Martini, a pre-diluted wet Martini served straight from a bottle in the freezer into a chilled glass and presented on a custom wood and brass tray made by a local craftsman. The sophisticated cocktail is made with an Italian gin, marsala, a touch of orange blossom water and is garnished with an almond-stuffed olive. It’s a cocktail that Antinori crafted as an homage to his Italian roots and is a drink that he believes fully embodies what the bar is all about. It’s served quickly, consistently, and, most importantly, “it’s delicious,” he notes.
“In places like New York and major cities around Europe, it’s common to go into a cocktail bar and order classics and modern classics, such as the Penicillin, but that’s not the case in Hong Kong where classic cocktail culture isn’t as prominent,” says Antinori. “We see this as an opportunity, especially in our neighbourhood, to offer something that’s more low key where guests can come back time and time again. You can have a glass of wine, a Negroni, or a Whisky Sour, and it’s not too expensive and the vibe is good.”
With the eclectic soundtrack of ‘Italo disco’ playing in the background and curated décor highlighted by vintage football shirts and photos of Italian icons hung around the bar, Bar Leone assures its guests the venue is as much about light-hearted fun as it is about five-star service – a juxtaposition effortlessly exhibited by the spiffy bartenders outfitted in white jackets and chinos, perhaps another nod to London’s American Bar.
“It is a bar for our guests, for the people,” says Antinori. “Our drinks don’t require the need of a dictionary; they’re simply made with good-quality ingredients. Every experience in my career has helped shape what, hopefully, Bar Leone will be recognised for.”
Bar Leone was not eligible for voting in the upcoming Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2023 awards as it opened after the voting period.
Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2023, sponsored by Perrier, will be revealed at an event in Hong Kong on 18th July at 8.30pm local time. The ceremony will be livestreamed on 50 Best Bars TV YouTube channel and 50 Best Bars Facebook page. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to stay up to date with all the news and announcements.
