Gordon Lee runs his Instagram page Drinking Gordon documenting the best of cocktails and bars in Hong Kong with videos shared weekly.
Take a stroll through Hong Kong Instagramland and you’ll find yourself deep in a world of ‘hidden gems,’ ‘must-try bites,’ and ‘affordable dinners.’
Many city-strolling restaurant-hunting foodies have found themselves enthralled with the advent of Instagram fame, launching accounts to expose the great food and drinks in Hong Kong.
Gordon Lee, a Hong Kong-based UX-UI designer, started his online journey in 2021, recording not visits to newly opened dining concepts, nor latest menus arriving at legacy restaurants, but scoping out every hot bar found in Hong Kong. He goes by the moniker Drinking Gordon online.
“I like drinking a lot, but I was not into cocktails at the time,” Gordon tells Foodie on his journey with his bar and cocktail reporting. Starting in 2020, like many drinkers and bars, Hong Kong’s cocktail world saw signs of an imminent explosion in popularity.
The product designer joined a friend at a cocktail workshop and later professional cocktail course to find a new hobby during the early months of the pandemic. The pair learnt about spirits, techniques, and flare – this sparked a new passion for libations. “I began to appreciate more about cocktails and started going out to cocktail bars to learn more.”
In March 2022, Gordon opened an account on Xiaohongshu to document his life in Hong Kong, another pandemic-era hobby to fill up his time. Fashion, camping, scuba diving, sailing, and shopping vlogs trended well, but he saw the greatest traffic on the Chinese app when documenting Hong Kong’s cocktail scenes. He created an Instagram account eight months later to mirror his content and relate to a Hong Kong audience.
“I began going out almost every day to cocktail bars to shoot videos.” His videos typically sees Gordon cheersing the camera – a classic move of his – and touring his audience around to explore the vibe, atmosphere, flair, and aura of a bar.
He prefers to zero in on the theatrics of a bar rather than focussing on the intricacies of cocktail production.
“Personally, I find the aesthetic style of drinks content on Instagram boring. I wanted to show that drinking should be about [being] happy. My videos show the energy of a bar, the vibe that I wanted to express online.”
Gordon began ingratiating himself within the city’s cocktail scene – centred around Soho and Central but holding capillary hot zones in Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui, and Causeway Bay – and came to appreciate the bartenders preparing and designing cocktails. “People started to come up to me for advice on which places are good drinks or best for certain occasions.”
After a Reel covering Causeway Bay’s SKYE rooftop bar went viral in March 2023, Gordon rocketed to Instagram fame and shifted his efforts to the app. Today, Gordon covers the bar scene in three weekly Reels under his series ‘Drinking Gordon’s drunk daily life.’
He visits new bar openings, restaurants with exciting drinks programmes, cafes that turn alcoholic at night, boozy brunches, and bar collaborations to present the top of drinking in Hong Kong.
“In the beginning, it was trial and error,” he says on how to perfect his formula. “Not every bar I go to I enjoy, but I am always on the search for bars that are exciting or comfortable and casual. I started to observe things that could catch people’s attention, such as The Savory Project’s Thai beef salad cocktail, a very fancy and tasty drink.”
“When I travelled to Tokyo [earlier this year], I saw a bartender lighting my drink and the whole bar on fire. This is the most important thing you need to think about, the first three seconds of any video can catch people’s attention.”
Gordon’s videos are frenetic, highly visual, and informative, made possible with detailed captions and subtitles and as a result of him travelling to bars six times a week. “I am the type of person who likes to go out every day and night, as long as I have the energy. I just don’t want to stay at home (laughs)!”
Beyond designing products at his day job, his nighttime excursions have allowed him to meet others, learn the craft of bartending and cocktail mixing, and get famous at the same time. He says he regularly gets stopped in Soho by bartenders ushering him into their bars for free shots and new drinks for him to try.
The influencer is keen to support Hong Kong’s flourishing cocktail scene, recognised globally as one of the top destinations for drinking. “Compared to other cities,” he says, “people in Hong Kong are eager to invest in new concepts and try new bars, whereas people in other cities prefer more classic cocktails.”
“To be in Hong Kong, you have to produce very innovative ideas for your bar, finding a good balance between earning business and making your bar go viral. I think it’s also very difficult to achieve this because in Hong Kong the pace is very quick.”
Recognising his efforts to uplift the scene as one of Hong Kong’s very few cocktail influencers, Gordon keeps on trends to show that cocktails and bars are not just fixed to Soho.
“There are more decent cocktail bars opening in Tsim Sha Tsui and the dark side, with many opening in new hotels, such as Avoca, which uses Hong Kong ingredients to make their cocktails. These places have a very good vibe and feel to them, which is why I want to recommend them to Hong Kong.” He predicts that Kai Tak will soon see more bars coalesce in the neighbourhood in anticipation of the opening of Kai Tak Stadium in early 2025.
Gordon has also noted that cocktails have become more unique in the past two years containing more crazy combinations of ingredients and more experimentation to capture virality on Instagram and Xiaohongshu.
To further innovate within the drinks space, the influencer launched his own website this year allowing Hong Kongers to search for bars under a central directory, categorised into sake, cocktail, wine bars, and new openings. Users can also search by location or check categories for hotel bars, rooftop bars, speakeasies, Asia’s 50 Best Bars, and more.
In 2025, Gordon wants to bring his bar coverage to the Greater Bay Area, most importantly Shenzhen, to explore what’s bubbling in our twin cities bar scene.
Check out the latest openings and coolest cocktails on Gordon’s Instagram page Drinking Gordon.
