Hope & Sesame

Ten years in, Hope & Sesame has stopped being the surprise of the mainland Chinese bar scene and become its measuring stick. The room is warm rather than theatrical, the service is unhurried even when every seat is taken, and each drink carries one clear idea you can taste in a single sip. That combination is rarer than it sounds: plenty of technical bars make you admire the method, and very few make you forget it. If you have a single night in Guangzhou, spend it here, and arrive early enough to sit at the counter where the bartenders explain what they are doing.

The address is a cha chaan teng, a Cantonese cafe, on a Dongshankou side street lined with curio and collectables shops. You walk in past the counter, find the door at the back, and step into a low-lit saloon of brick, timber, and soft lamplight that feels much further from the street than it is. Counter seats face the working bar and are the best place to sit alone or as a pair; tables suit groups. The room is calm at opening and full by mid-evening, and the team switches easily between English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.

The current menu, Volume 16 x Lee Kum Kee, takes the sauces in every Cantonese kitchen and rebuilds them as drinks, so oyster sauce and marinades arrive as savoury depth rather than novelty. Order the Rattan Pepper & Coffee for the house style at its most confident, tingling pepper heat against roasted coffee, butterfly pea, and eisbock lager. The Native Martini pairs tea aromatics with a soy sauce chocolate garnish that sounds implausible and lands cleanly. For something brighter, the Yuzu Penicillin with yuzu sake and the Shiitake Espresso Martini are the easiest way in. If you would rather drink classics, ask for Off Menu on the floor above.

The bar is at 58 Miaoqian West Street in Dongshankou, a few minutes on foot from Dongshankou metro station on Lines 1 and 6. It opens daily from 18:00 to 02:00. The first two hours are walk-in only, then the night runs in booked rounds at 20:00 and 22:00, which you reserve through the bar's own website or by phone. Budget around ¥150 per person for drinks. Weekend nights and menu launches fill first, so book several days ahead if your dates are fixed, or turn up at opening and take the counter.

Hope & Sesame arrived in 2016 with equipment Guangzhou bars did not yet own: a centrifuge for clarifying, sous vide baths and slow cooking for infusions, and a rotary evaporator for low temperature distillation. The point was never the hardware but the access it gave to local ingredients that resist a shaker, from fermented sauces to roasted grains and pepper. Co-founders Bastien Ciocca and Andrew Ho have since built the Hope Group from four people into a team of more than a hundred across Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and Ho was named Altos Bartenders' Bartender at Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025 by his peers on the list.

Hope & Sesame sits at No.2 on our 2026 Asia ranking, behind 1920 Lounge & Dining in Jakarta and ahead of Zest in Seoul and Bar Leone in Hong Kong. It is the first mainland Chinese room this high on our list, and it also took The Best Bar in Asia 2026 and The Best Bar in Mainland China 2026 at the Asia's 50 Best Bars ceremony in Macau on 28 July. It has held a place on the wider Asia conversation for six consecutive years and reached No.29 on The World's 50 Best Bars 2025. Mainland China placed seven bars in our top 50 this season.