Feeling Lucky? A New Cocktail Bar Opens in Tongli Studios

The renascent Sanlitun Houjie area gets another fillip this month with a new opening. This time, it’s a noisy neighbor moving into the transient Tongli Studios complex.

With the menu still very much in its nascent stages (meaning that all cocktails are currently RMB 30 during the by-now-obligatory “soft opening” period), only one thing is for sure: They’re serious about cocktails at Lucky Bar. The provisional menu reads like a list of every cocktail ever conceived. And on a slow Sunday night, there was time for Kevin, the bar manager, to show me videos of his head barman's flairing skills as he whittled a slab of ice into eight perfect ice spheres in a matter of moments.

Relying solely on your eyes, you could almost convince yourself you were in a cocktail bar: it’s intimate and dusky-lit, there are red brick walls and a beaded alcove replete with leather sofas, the waiters are well-dressed and attentive. The giveaway comes when your ears begin to bleed from the drum-ripping dance pop standards blaring throughout the small space. This is the point at which you might remember you’re deep inside teen territory and that the thunderous audio blur is Kai Bar and Baby Oh! down below going like-for-like with the Carly Rae Jepsen.

Understandably, at this juncture, the ambience is a tad muddled. Perhaps by the time you read this, Lucky Bar will have settled on whether it follows suit with its Tongli brethren or bucks the trend and opts to be something else entirely.

Also try: Bar Blu, Kai Bar

Lucky Bar. 4/F, Tongli Studio, Sanlitun Houjie, Chaoyang District 朝阳区三里屯后街同里4层

By subway: 900m northwest of Tuanjiehu station (Line 10)

Photo: Mitchell Pe Masilun