Hong Kong’s Penicillin, winner of the 2021 Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award, is more than green. It’s a new shade of super-ultra-green.
On the menu, you’ll find vodka infused with scrap bread, rum flavored with used tea leaves, and the One Penicillin, One Tree cocktail, which funds the planting of a Mallotus muticus tree in Borneo. The bar’s tables were built with tropical storm debris, and even the lights were salvaged.
Does it all sound a little… fussy? Here’s the kicker: Penicillin owners Agung Prabowo and Roman Ghale also operate a traditional dive bar, Dead&, that serves cocktails on tap and canned beers. Dead& provides ingredient sourcing for Penicillin, Agung tells 50 Best — for instance, Dead&’s discarded paper cups are recycled to make coasters, menus and labels for Penicillin.
The moral of the story: Whether you run an upscale cocktail bar or a neighborhood watering hole, sustainability is within reach. All it takes is creativity and collaboration.
