Montana brings Cuban cocktail magic to Hong Kong's Hollywood Road
Montana takes its name from an obscure drink in the Club de Cantineros repertoire, the bartending guild that shaped Havana's hedonistic heyday.
'American cocktail history is very important, but what's unknown yet equally important is Cuban cocktail history,' says
Simone Caporale , co-founder of Barcelona's Sips (World's Best Bar 2023) and co-owner of Boadas, the Spanish city's oldest cocktail bar, founded by a Cuba-trained bartender in the 1930s.
Montana, on Hollywood Road, is a tribute to Cuba's cocktail heritage. Photo: Jocelyn Tam
Lorenzo Antinori adds: 'All these wealthy or hedonistic Americans were flying to Cuba, and that's when the strength and the awareness of the Cuban school of classic cocktails really took hold and began to spread all over the world.'
And the duo's combined areas of expertise are on full display in the new space. Antinori is best known for
Bar Leone in Central, twice named Asia's Best Bar , and he designed the opening menu for
Argo at the Four Seasons Hong Kong . Caporale's Sips is renowned for its boundary-breaking mixology. Both bartenders have an abiding love for classic cocktails, evinced by back-to-basics menus at Boadas and Bar Leone. Here's how their newest venture came together.
How did you two meet?
Lorenzo Antinori: In 2011, Simone was working at the Artesian (in London) and was already one of the top names in the industry. I was just a barback, so I would go there to admire his work. After our shifts we would bump into each other and have a few drinks. But the fun times eventually happened when I left London and we found ourselves at the same events around the world. One of those events was 50 Best Bars in Madrid last year, where we definitely had more than one tequila, and that's when we planted the seed for Montana.
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