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*this article first appeared on Vietcetra.com: full article here
A building treated as a script
The intelligence of Bar Kap is that it treats the House as a script, not a stage set. The cocktail program, developed with Studio Ryecroft, is organised around four eras drawn from the building’s biography: the Kapitan Era of Tan himself, the Station Master Era of British colonial rail, the Order Era of the convent school, and the Dynasty Era of the recent TCM clinic. Each drink is a small act of historical interpretation.
Pepper Peddler (S$28) combines baijiu, gin, and makgeolli into a bright, peppery highball that recalls the spice trade Tan built his fortune on. Tank Road (S$28) reaches back to the colonial railway with roasted orange, bay, grapefruit, and scotch. TCM No. 3, a zero-proof drink of soy milk, ginger, honeydew, and gula melaka, arrives in ceramicware that nods to the building’s most recent occupant. By the fourth glass, a guest has absorbed a century of Southeast Asian history without anyone giving a lecture.
The most ambitious move is the clay-ageing program. Bar Kap is the first bar in Singapore to revive the practice of maturing cocktails inside traditional purple clay vessels, a method that goes back roughly 8,000 years. The Dynamo, a deep build of Irish whiskey, amaro, sherry, and Drambuie, comes out softer and rounder. Owner Chai Karim, principal of Gaia Lifestyle Group and the Karim Family Foundation, sums up the operating philosophy with a line worth pinning above every restoration meeting: “heritage in the walls, modernity in the glass, generosity at the table.”
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