Hemingway's Bangkok

'A bistro-bar steeped in Hemingway's Paris years, where the cocktails keep things simple but suggest plenty beneath the surface.’

Ernest Hemingway is one of literature's great understaters, a defining voice of the Lost Generation, the phrase Gertrude Stein used for the disillusioned writers and artists drifting through Europe after the First World War. His sentences look simple. They aren't. Every plain line hides something deeper, which is exactly what he meant by his famous iceberg theory.

He wrote The Sun Also Rises while working as a foreign correspondent in Paris, tapping away between café sessions, horse races and late nights with other expats. The novel follows a group of Americans and Britons moving through a world they no longer quite belong to, with Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley carrying the ache beneath all the surface cool.

Which brings us to Hemingway Bangkok. Now in the thick of Sukhumvit Soi 11, the bar-bistro still channels the writer’s Paris years through its easygoing dining room, leafy terrace and travel-worn charm. There's wine, champagne, beer and gin, but cocktails are the reason to lean into the theme. Try the Basil Bellini, Tik Tok Thai or Mexican Moondance, though in honour of the man himself, the daiquiri feels like the order that makes the most sense.

Soi Sukhumvit 11. Open daily, 11am-2am. Entry is free. Call 02 653 3900