The St. Regis Bar emerges from the shadow of the Astor Bar at The St. Regis Singapore with a lighter hand, sharper cocktails, and a confidence that proves even tradition can be seductive when properly stirred.
There are bars that reinvent themselves with a bit of paint, a few new cushions, and naively call it a refresh. Then there’s this — The St. Regis Bar in Singapore, which has taken the ghost of its former self, the Astor Bar, and coaxed it gently but assertively into the modern age.
Yes, one of Singapore’s most distinguished hotel bars has had a makeover. And what a glorious one it is.
For years the Astor Bar was the kind of place you went for old-world glamour and a stiff Martini, and where regulars had titles — not jobs. Diplomats, lawyers, and other assorted well-dressed men plotted trade deals here over the faint thrum of jazz and Champagne. It was red leather, dark wood, and the whiff of old money. A bit like New York’s old St. Regis Bar, transplanted to the tropics and left to marinate in humidity.
But the hotel, like much of Singapore, has decided that nostalgia doesn’t pay the bills. As part of the hotel’s sweeping transformation, the bar has shed its crimson velvets for something sleeker, lighter, and altogether more cosmopolitan. The brass is still polished to a military shine, but the palette now runs to champagne golds, forest greens, and gentle lighting that flatters even the most jet-lagged or floridly drunk complexion.
Gone is the beloved Violet Hour ritual. But The St. Regis Bar in Singapore keeps the DNA of Astor intact — you’ll still find its own spin on the house Bloody Mary, the exemplary service, and the niggling sense that you probably should have dressed better.
The new man behind the bar is Kelvin Saquilayan, previously of Manhattan Bar and Republic Bar, which means the head bartender has poured more negronis than most people have had hot dinners. The new cocktail programme — grandly titled ‘Time After Time’ — reads like a tryst between New York and Singapore, scrawled over five imagined decades of drinking.
If you’ve been to any The St. Regis Bar around the world — take, for example, The St. Regis Bar Jakarta — the one in Singapore follows a similar cocktail playbook, just given some local flavour.
The bar’s signature Bloody Mary, The Straits Mary, is the sort of thing that could wake the dead, and probably has. It’s laced with chilli padi, Japanese sansho, gochujang, and black pepper — a recipe that suggests someone had looked at a regular Bloody Mary and thought, this needs violence.
The Merlion Sling takes the city’s most abused cocktail and offers it a fighting chance with ginger and torch ginger, while Midnight Orchard gives the classic Manhattan a fruity little twirl with apple.
Those with a taste for hazmat-level libations should order New York Or Nowhere, a milk-clarified tequila-mezcal punch that’s simultaneously sweet, smoky, and a little untrustworthy — rather like the city it’s named for. Or go for the DOF.01, their Old Fashioned flourished bitter chocolate and soy, silk-lined and smooth as sin.
Yes, it’s still a hotel bar, and yes, the staff are polished to within an inch of their souls. But there’s a tangible shift in the air here — a loosened collar, a flicker of playfulness. If the old Astor Bar was the grand dowager in pearls and fur, surveying her clientele with a cigarette holder and an arched eyebrow, then The St. Regis Bar Singapore is her granddaughter: tailored, confident, and very much of her time.
The St. Regis Bar Singapore
Address 29 Tanglin Rd, The St. Regis Singapore, Singapore 247911 (Google Maps link)
Opening Hours 5pm to 12pm Sundays to Thursdays; 5pm to 2am Fridays and Saturdays
Website www.thestregisbarsingapore.com
Instagram @stregisbarsingapore
Reservations book here
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