It is 5 pm, and Bard’s Bar is closed – the doors won’t open for another hour. The red curtains are drawn back, though, the marble counter is set, and Abraham John – AJ to everyone here – is lining up glassware while we talk. At 6 the doors open to in-house guests, and the room fills as though on cue. Within the hour, there is barely a free seat in the house.
“Six to eight is only for our in-house guests,” AJ says. For its first stretch this Hampton Court bar has kept a low profile on purpose – open by word of mouth, its cocktail list nowhere to be found online. That is changing: from 8 pm, Bard’s Bar now opens to the public, and the word is getting out.
A good part of the pull is the name behind the menu. In July, Hope & Sesame – the Guangzhou bar founded by Bastien Ciocca and Andrew Ho – was crowned the best bar in Asia at the Asia’s 50 Best Bars ceremony, held in Macao. It was the first mainland Chinese bar to reach the top of that list. The same team designed the cocktails at Bard’s Bar and, according to Ho, no other bar in Macao or Hong Kong carries a Hope & Sesame menu.
Settle onto the right bar stool and you are in decent company – AJ nods at the seat David Beckham takes when he is in town.
Hampton Court borrows its name from Henry VIII’s favourite palace. “Bard” is an old word for a poet or a teller of tales, and the most famous bard of that age was William Shakespeare. You won’t find his portrait on the wall, but “You will see Shakespeare’s spirit on the menu,” AJ says. Ten cocktails, each drawn from a line of his – classics rebuilt with modern bar technique.
The room does the rest: deep red curtains, low light, a playlist pitched for conversation rather than a dance floor. “It’s theatrical,” AJ says. “We don’t have entertainment as such. The entertainment is our bartenders and our cocktails.”
AJ leads the bar and the drinks programme at Bard’s Bar and Hampton Court. He transferred from The St. Regis Macao before Bard’s Bar opened and has been part of it since the planning stage. Years before that, he tended the bar at China Rouge.
His loyalty is on his skin. He rolls up a sleeve to show his tattoos, then points to the space he has left beside them. “HC will go here,” he says. “Hampton Court.”
Of every 100 drinks he makes, he reckons 80 come off the Hope & Sesame list; the rest are classics and off-menu requests. Keeping the signatures right, night after night, is the hard part. “Everything is the hardest,” he says, half joking. Some drinks rest for two days while an infusion or maceration comes good. “Same as food or wine. It takes time to be good.”
Every one of the ten Shakespeare cocktails is Hope & Sesame’s work. Four make up the Golden Hour selection: 288 patacas for two hours of unlimited consumption, or 98 patacas a glass – and for anyone who’s had the Hampton Court dinner buffet that day, the same 98 patacas gets two glasses.
Start where most guests do, with A Liar’s Truth. It is the lightest thing on the menu and the easiest to love – green grape rum clarified and filtered until it drinks like a Japanese green-grape soda, with fino sherry for backbone. The finish is the trick: a spritz of vetiver, the Indian perfume root more often smelled in a bottle of Jo Malone than tasted in a glass.
That layering is deliberate. Andrew Ho, who designed the menu, wanted the cocktails to reach past the obvious British references. “British culture has a deep, rich history – but also the influence of Indian and other immigrant communities,” he says. “The drinks aren’t purely British. I wanted to bring in ingredients like Indian spices, to add more layers and complexity.” The vetiver in A Liar’s Truth is one of them.
AJ picks up the thread at the bar. “We’re in Macao,” he says, “so we bring in the spices the Portuguese carried along the old maritime routes – from Goa and further afield.” It is Macao’s own culinary history, poured into a British frame.
His own favourite goes the other way: dark, smoky and not for everyone. The Walking Shadow, named for Macbeth’s famous “Life’s but a walking shadow” soliloquy, is jet black – tequila and mezcal with green Chartreuse, roasted aubergine and activated bamboo charcoal, garnished with a shard of sugared dried eggplant. “Not everybody’s cup of tea,” he says. “It’s smoky and herbal, but balanced – not too peaty.”
For the crowd, it is Heart Knows What the Heart Wants that sells best: Earl Grey gin, kaffir lime, orange blossom and a set orange jelly, clarified until it is feather-light. It is the drink to hand anyone who says they don’t usually like cocktails.
The other two of the four are just as theatrical. Timeless is a paloma reworked so the colour sits in a wobble of grapefruit jelly, with salt on only one side of the rim. Uncut Diamond layers a beetroot-and-cranberry foam over a crème brûlée base that, oddly and wonderfully, tastes of popcorn. Most of the list can be made lower in alcohol, or as a mocktail, on request.
AJ wears the Hope & Sesame connection with pride. “They deserve the spot,” he says of the award. “We’ve been part of their journey.” Since the win, he has watched a younger crowd find the room.
What does he hope you leave with? Not a single drink, he says, but the feeling of the place – the stories, the service, the small theatre of a good bar. His regulars are business travellers who drop in once a month for exactly that: a quiet chair, a short chat, a cocktail with a line of Shakespeare behind it.
The public hours begin at 8 pm. Come then, take a chair, and let AJ pour you a drink.
Where Bard’s Bar, Hampton Court, Londoner Grand, Estrada do Istmo, Cotai, Macao
Hours Daily 6 pm – 1 am; in-house guests only 6 – 8 pm, open to the public from 8 pm. Golden Hour 8:30 – 10:30 pm daily, July and August 2026 only.
Phone +853 8118 8822
Email [email protected]
Website www.londonermacao.com/macau-restaurants/hampton-court.html
