Patina Hong Kong founders on three bars under one roof in Central

Arbuthnot Road is quiet and a little tucked away in Hong Kong’s Central district, so the lit shopfront at number 4, with people inside and a line at the door, stands out. This is Patina, which opened on 23 October. On opening night, the line kept clearing as guests headed upstairs when the ground floor filled.

The building holds three bars in sequence: Iron on the ground floor, Copper upstairs, and a hidden room called Patina, on the same floor as Copper, that is only open to guests who have been through the first two.

Behind it are Andrea Mak, who previously worked for a robotics company, and Richard, a former consultant. They also run The Holywell’s, a speakeasy tucked behind Mrs. H’s Coffee House in Sheung Wan, and Through the Grapevine, a wine-inspired cocktail lounge in Soho. They spoke to The Bay before opening.

A night in three stages

The night is meant to run in order, the founders say. Guests start with professionally made drinks at Iron, move to Copper to dance, and finish with a nightcap in the Patina room.

Iron is the casual one, with metallic surfaces, big glass windows and 12 clarified cocktails served in thin highball glasses alongside Japanese bites. When The Bay visited on opening night, guests gathered in a central area, and the side tables facing the wall had a mirror in front, so anyone sitting there could still watch the room behind them. The music was good and quiet enough to talk over.

Copper, up the stairs, was less crowded than Iron when The Bay visited, a more open space with a DJ playing and room for dancing. The founders describe it as louder and a little heavier, built around music and mixology.

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The Patina room sits on the same floor as Copper, next to the staircase. The place is hidden behind velvet curtains, in teal and jade tones with low lighting, and Tam says it is the most secluded of the three. Its menu centres on tableside martinis and a whisky list of independent and branded labels. Mak says the glasses change with the rooms, from thin highballs to crystal and heavy whisky tumblers, and the spirits darken from white to brown as guests move through them.

A star on each door marks where guests are, Mak says: one for Iron, two for Copper and three for the Patina room. The rooms hold about 60, 150 to 180 and 45 guests. Prices climb from room to room, the founders say: about HK$98 to HK$128 (US$13 to US$16) a drink in Iron, about HK$138 in Copper and from HK$228 in the Patina room.

The Bay arrived around 9 pm on opening night, a Friday, and was seated immediately. A line formed later, but it moved quickly, with waits that looked to be no more than about 15 minutes as staff sorted out tables.

Drinks, including an espresso martini and a Jasmine guava float that also appears on The Holywell’s menu, ran about HK$120 to HK$150 each. Food included beef shisho rolls at HK$118 for three pieces, a wagyu sandwich at HK$288 and handrolls, all in bar-bite sizes. With roughly three drinks between two people, the bill came to about HK$500 a head.

Why build three rooms in one building?

Hong Kong already has plenty of good food and drink, Mak says, so another good bar was never the point. The gap “wasn’t really in F&B”, she says, but in an experience guests can “interact with”. In the week they decided to quit their jobs, the founders say, they were walking the streets of Hong Kong, looking for gaps in the market.

That means sticking with the theme even when guests do not get it at first, Mak says.

“To achieve the thematic experience, we just got to commit to it. Even if there’s resistance and misunderstanding at the beginning where guests don’t get it, we just got to commit to it and have the audience adapt to the theme for them to get it and then start to enjoy it. If we compromise and give way to what customers are used to, then it will become quite a commercial and standard space.”

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The multi-space idea came from Mak, says Tam, built around progression. Patina, after all, is the character an object develops as it ages.

The practical case came from the queue outside The Holywell’s, Tam says, where some guests were willing to brave Hong Kong’s summer heat to bar hop. Patina is meant to offer that variety without a taxi between bars, Mak says, or having to “queue up again, sweat again.”

The rooms are also kept deliberately different. All three sit in Central, and “you don’t want your own venues to have such a similar experience that you’re competing within yourself,” Mak says. The aim is for one customer to spend a whole night across all three.

What the first two bars taught them

The Holywell’s opened in April 2024 behind a yellow door on Hollywood Road, where guests knock to get in. Mak says it was inspired by her and Tam’s former home in England.

Through the Grapevine, which opened in May 2025, came from the edgier London wine bars they liked and could not find in Hong Kong, where wine bars tend to be more rustic.

Speaking to AFoodieWorld last year, they said the risk and reward of opening an F&B venue in Hong Kong is “highly unfavourable,” but that compared with a corporate job it is “more fun.”

Both bars now feed into Patina. The Patina room borrows The Holywell’s approach to service and menu introductions, while Iron borrows from Through the Grapevine, where fast turnover means guests expect “a vodka soda and a gin tonic within 30 seconds”.

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The bigger lesson was project management. They were far more clueless when they opened Mrs. H’s and The Holywell’s, Mak says, and now know when to bring in stakeholders, branding, interiors and the food and drinks programme.

They have split the work cleanly. Mak handles operations, the beverage programme, bartenders and design, while Tam handles finance, suppliers, legal and licensing. Six months into The Holywell’s they thought they could rest, until Through the Grapevine began, and Patina followed once that had settled.

“Everything that you see is what I do. Everything you don’t see is what he does,” Mak says.

Scaling up and what comes next

The crowd will be wider too, with different tastes and conflicting expectations. The founders recall that when The Holywell’s opened, everyone came to tick it off a checklist, and the guests who stayed became its most loyal regulars. At Patina, they are open to everyone and expect the crowd to sort itself out, though they describe their usual guests as young professionals of any nationality.

Mak also expects corporate bookings, such as Christmas parties and team cocktail workshops, to matter more at this size, since few venues in Central have this much space without being a nightclub.

In five years, Mak says, they want to move beyond food and beverage while staying in hospitality, possibly outside bars and restaurants and possibly outside Hong Kong, once they have recovered from “this Patina madness.” The upsizing “only shows how much faith we have in Hong Kong’s economy and their drinking appetite,” she adds.

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For Tam, success is that people like the concept and the work behind it, and that a group of regulars appreciates the details. “It’s impossible to please everybody, but as long as we have a group of people that like the venue, that’s good enough,” he says.

The location helps. Arbuthnot Road is central but off the usual routes, and Tam sees the trip between venues as part of the draw. “Part of the fun of the night is the travel to these venues. Say you bring someone on a date, to go on an interesting path, to go to a different venue. I think that’s kind of exciting,” he says.

Patina is open daily from 5 pm to 2 am at 4 Arbuthnot Road, Central, Hong Kong. The founders say a SevenRooms booking feature is coming soon, and updates are on its Instagram.