Alongside her partner Agung, Laura Prabowo opens her latest bar LOCKDOWN, championing a drinking culture dating 100 years ago during the Prohibition era
A white toilet bowl and decrepit brown ladder stand encased within a glass container outside a bar in Soho; no discernible logo or branding is advertised outside.
Hong Kong’s speakeasies and secret bars are increasingly employing new strategies to promote mystery, and this place is no exception.
With a long queue circling the block every weekend, Hong Kong’s new bar LOCKDOWN opened officially at the end of January. From the creators of The Old Man, Penicillin, and DEAD&, Indonesian mixologist couple Laura and Agung Prabowo are back again, now telling a drinks story dating back 100 years.
LOCKDOWN tells the tales of a parallel between Hong Kong’s debilitated 2020s and the Prohibition era of the USA from 1920 to 1933, two historical periods both fraught with drinking bans and the perilous closures of bars.
Two years ago, Laura and Agung’s bars faced temporary closures. “The toilet represents the s**t times we and Hong Kong faced for three years. The ladder tells us that we either had to go up or down in life [during the 2020s],” Laura says in an interview.
Up they went, scouring for the lease of an available space opposite Penicillin in Soho. At first, they conceptualised a waiting room for those eager to get seated at one of Asia’s 50 Best Bars instead of sweating or shivering outside in the queue. The idea was scrapped to craft a concept reminiscent of “the light at the end of the tunnel” for bartenders and bar owners in times of grief set 100 years apart.
Laura and Agung opened LOCKDOWN to preseve the moment of relief and happiness felt as daunting drinking restrictions at bars were lifted in both 1933 and 2023.
Alas, the pandemic has become shunned from a collective Hong Kong memory, and Laura recognises that, saying, “[2020] was the year that people want to forget completely, yet some take a lesson from the 2020s. It signified clandestine gatherings and a dark period of isolation. The lockdowns were a spark to revive what we love in Hong Kong: to drink.”
Beyond the toilet and ladder, and the hench security guard manning the line, LOCKDOWN skips over 2020s Hong Kong and chucks you into a dark and oaky room, pickled with nostalgia and romance dating 100 years in the past.
“Thirteen years – they couldn’t drink for 13 years!” Laura decries for the drinkers during the Prohibition era. “We had only three years, and that was suffering! The Americans during Prohibition created speakeasy bars because people still needed a drink to relieve stress.”
Designed and constructed over summer 2023, LOCKDOWN soft-opened in November last year, taking on the vibrant exoticism of 1920s America through its sharp design.
The interior is dressed in brown and grey tones, boosting the industrial profile of the bar and its historical foundation. The liquor bar and tables are illuminated with orange neon lighting, and metal motifs are found throughout the space, suggestive of the hard-core period of misery when legal drinking was shunned.
“Part of the DNA in the Prohibition era is the design. We have kept it bland yet industrial to keep within the identity. All the visual elements of LOCKDOWN are similar to the style of a hotel bar. We sell vintage-spirit cocktails, we dress the bar up very fancy, and our cocktail menu is very sophisticated.”
The hotel bar experience in Hong Kong, as Laura points out, is premium and begs a certain style, service, and price point to befit its prestige. Soho does not have a large corporate hotel chain in the area and equally lacks a hotel bar. LOCKDOWN was born to offer this experience.
“We want to bring that hotel bar outside the hotel to the street with an independent bar that you can dress well in and enjoy a nice drink, yet still maintain a comfortable price for cocktails.” All cocktails on LOCKDOWN’s Remastered Forgotten Classics menu are priced at HKD120 and “served with the same famous Penicillin hospitality”.
Laura suggests a first-time visitor to LOCKDOWN should savour Blood Meridian, which promises a salty and bitter hit to the orange-juice-mixed Campari cocktail, Deconstructed Clover Club, a marvel of the Prabowos’ rendering process that cures gin liquor to harbour a moreish flavour paired with raspberry sorbet, and Grasshopper, a 1950s classic that sparks the palate with a strong pistachio flavour alongside notes of cacao, mint, and absinthe.
Research for the Prabowo couple began with pouring over recipes from Ted Haigh’s 2009 recipe book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails and Cocktails by Jimmy guide. Whereas Penicillin cocktails are scenes of experimentation, the cocktails at LOCKDOWN are historically placed and accurate to a 20th-century taste.
“People can finish the whole menu of cocktails in an hour. They are very easy to drink, and they want to know what the flavour of each drink hides. Penicillin cocktails are discovered layer by layer, sometimes four layers deep in the cocktail. At LOCKDOWN, we are more direct with cocktails that follow one direction of either sweet, sour, umami, or savoury.”
Where the splendour of LOCKDOWN’s bravado and interior meets cocktails is in the bar’s secondary menu, Vintage & Antique Cocktails. Laura and Agung have crafted five cocktails made from rare spirits, “bottles of history” imported from Old World European distilleries, auction houses, and premium distributors. Each cocktail costs HKD400.
With the help of a friend operating a rare spirits import business in Paris, Laura and Agung imported a box of 11 rare bottles of spirits back to Hong Kong to construct the menu, including a 1950s London dry gin and a 1970s Rémy Martin VSOP cognac. Laura shares that each one of the bottles can be “purchased for thousands of dollars”.
The new, pricey menu befits LOCKDOWN, with customers seeking a sophisticated vintage cocktail experience at a hotel-bar-esque drinkery. The full menu was released alongside Penicllin’s new spring and summer menus.
Now operating this third bar under Laura and Agung’s leadership, as a woman and Indonesian representing drinks in Hong Kong, Laura finds it “empowering to showcase the diversity and cultural richness through my craft. I am truly contributing to Hong Kong’s reputation as a hub for great cocktails!”
“I am not only celebrating my Indonesian heritage, but expanding the narrative of who can excel in the world of mixology.”
Find yourself inside Hong Kong’s bona fide Prohibition-era bar LOCKDOWN today and sip a piece of history dating back 100 years.
