Zikra Armeda, Sokyo Lounge

The best bartenders are much more than impatient pourers of drinks who give you your change on a saucer. Zikra Armeda, for one, works on building a rapport with her customers. “I was interacting with a customer once and they gave me their baby and asked me if I would leave my current position to take up babysitting!” she recalls. “It was a proud moment, and a great laugh among the bar staff.” Sokyo is highly regarded both as a bar and a Japanese restaurant, and Zikra was determined to showcase Japanese whisky in her east-meets-west variation on the classic Whisky Sour. “When the Japanese took whisky-making from Scotland in the early 1900s, they ended up creating something special. We are also taking the western condiment marmalade and reinventing it with Japanese ingredients.”