The World’s Best Bar has opened a Shanghai sister venue where its brand remains strong and unspoilt. Hamish Smith reports on the latest venture from the Hong Kong team.
There are many qualities required to win the title of World’s Best Bar. Good timing is the least talked about of all of them – but timing, make no mistake, is everything. Bar Leone’s brand of ‘cocktail popolari’ – everyman Roman café-bar vibes serving up flavourful classics – was the zag that followed the industry’s zig. Before the World’s Best Bar had been Paradiso, Sips and Handshake Speakeasy – bars that brought cocktail awe, expanding the very idea of what mixed drinks can be.
Bar Leone is an antidote to extravagance. A study, instead, in
simple pleasures. Its founder, Lorenzo Antinori, had done wonderment in his London days. He worked in the esoteric world of Dandelyan and was once part of the Beaufort Bar team that sent a menu into space – 10 years on and his feet are more grounded.
From London – where he twice moved on from bars a year before they were named World’s Best – and to Asia. First up Charles H in Seoul, then Hong Kong’s Argo, where his reputation grew further. In 2023 he teamed up with Justin Shun Wah to launch Bar Leone. The more maximalist elements of his hotel-bar background were refined for his 2023 project – just as an artist removes extraneous elements in search of perfection.
Bar Leone is also the result of founders in their 30s, not their 20s. The quiet confidence of operators who know what really matters. And that is a simple twisted classic and a ginormous focaccia mortadella, made to Antinori’s own family recipe. The menu here isn’t trying to be clever – the most popular drinks are a twisted Negroni, Dirty Martini, Old Fashioned and a Sour. And while there are Italian accented drinks such as Filthy Martini with smoked olive brine and a Negroni, there’s also a Miso Old Fashioned with coconut and banana.
The local Hong Kong reaction to Bar Leone was instant, but once it scaled the summit of Asia’s 50 Best Bars in 2024, it went interstellar. My own cousin, a resident of the Central area, reported that she could no longer get into her favourite local bar (Leone), which suddenly had queues running down the street. It won again in 2025 and by the time it took top spot at last October’s World’s 50 Best Bars ceremony – incidentally in Hong Kong – a seat at Bar Leone must have been one of the most sought after in the world.
It raised a question: does becoming the World’s Best Bar change one of the very things that made it great? Not the offering, but the crowd. Compared to the regulars who created the award-winning vibe, the modern cocktail tourist – all phones and silence – offers a bar something quite different. At Leone the realisation came quickly – the guest list is now curated just as much as the cocktails, light and music. Cocktail popolari demands it.
Some bars are just bars, but some can be more. They can be brands too. Bar Leone, from its carefully selected football shirts (mostly Roma and Italy) and memorabilia on the wall to its images of the Pope driving in a Ferrari, to the Halleluiah soundtrack in the toilets, never takes a step outside of its brand rails. It is these foundations – this clarity around what the Leone is – that allow it to be rolled out. And that has just begun.
Bar Leone Shanghai
Leone Shanghai is in partnership with Sharon Wang, alongside the Hong Kong team. A regular visitor to the Hong Kong site, you might even say Wang was the bar’s biggest fan. So much so, she wanted one closer to her Shanghai home. Six months later and Bar Leone Shanghai is a reality.
This time over two floors, the horseshoe bar on the ground level dominates the room, bringing a less linear and more interactive experience to sitting at the bar.
Upstairs there’s room for some standing, bringing vertical vibes and higher energy. But everything else has a similar feel – there’s the mortadella focaccia, amaro, twisted Negronis and an Old Fashioned – this time with coconut and popcorn. The Caffè Paradiso – a sort of Irish Coffee with salted cream and rum – is on both menus. There are differences in the details, but the brand is precisely Bar Leone.
This article featured in CLASS 2026 Summer edition