You can tell a lot about a person when it comes to the drinks they order. An old-fashioned sipper is a man or a woman who appreciates the finer things in life. A tequila shooter is someone who’s perpetually ready to party. Those who order 25 Jaeger bombs for three people clearly don’t care about the next morning. Or week, for that matter. Basically, what you order at the bar is an investment in your personal taste.
Banking on this mentality is Wolf Market. Located in the heart of LKF, this is a bar where the prices of the drinks fluctuate. A stock market bar. A bar which fittingly reminds you of The Wolf of Wall Street. Basically, the cost of the sips go up if they’re ordered a lot and they go down if they’re not. Simple. Very Hong Kong. To spell it all out, as well, there’s an LED screen in here that runs from the bar to the ceiling. It displays tickers of the alcohol prices while large screens on the walls mark the current cost of each drink. As Asia’s first stock market bar, this clearly is the place for bankers who can’t get enough of their jobs…
We arrive fairly early in the evening and it seems the bidding hasn’t started yet, so we start off with a Golden Cross ($120). Served alongside a shot glass of coffee beans, this mix of bourbon, brandy and maple syrup is incredibly smooth. With the option to add the beans into the drink to enhance the flavours, we find the maple syrup staves off the bite of the alcohol while also serving as a conduit for the flavours of coffee to blossom on the palate. Investing stuff. We also opt for a Jazmin ($120), which is a concoction of jasmine-infused vodka and syrup in combination with apple and lemon juice. This tart cocktail is quite gritty to begin with, but the fruit flavours later bring out the floral aroma of the jasmine. This one outperforms.
Over the evening, we search the board to see the performance of our drinks. The Golden Cross falls four dollars down to $116 but the Jazmin rises to $123. So it’s cheaper, later on, to opt for the GC. But the biggest winner is the actual experience of watching the drinks prices fluctuate so you can buy, buy, buy at the right time. We doubt the standard deviation of any tipple is more than, say, $30, but we feel good about our investments and surely that’s the hook of the place. Even when we’re downing cocktails, our competitive side wants to prove we can spot a winner. And we think we’ve done just that with Wolf Market.