Pony Up

Pony Up feels less like a destination speakeasy and more like the bar you wish your neighbourhood already had: warm, loud when it needs to be, and serious about the glass in your hand without making you dress for it. Dre Yang built the room around easy drinking first, then layered in the kind of ingredient work you expect from an Asia list regular. The result is a bar that works at 4pm under the skylight and still feels worth the queue at midnight, which is harder to pull off than the playful menu suggests.

The address sits on Jinxian Road near Maoming South Road, a strip of small bars where crowds spill onto the pavement on weekends. Inside, John Wong's design mixes walnut, deep green, and orange velvet booths around a cartoon equestrian artwork at the centre of the bar. Two counters run the room: the front bar handles daylight service under a skylight, while the back bar turns dimmer and more cocktail-forward after dark. The room is compact, conversation-friendly, and often full, with staff sometimes handing mini shots to guests waiting outside.

Menus split by time of day. From 13:00, the day card leads with One Sip Classics at ¥55, small serves of Martini, Manhattan, and Negroni meant as aperitifs, plus Classic Twists from ¥75 such as a Longjing gin and tonic or a baijiu piña colada. After 18:00, the night menu arrives as a theme park map where each drink is a ride: order Jurassic Gone Wrong for gin with rose beancurd, cacao, pecan, and vermouth, or Sunset Cruise for Scotch with masala chai, pineapple, and asparagus juice. Fizzy Fizz, Saucy Margarita, and Cuppa Negroni are the easy crowd pleasers, and the patty melt on Hokkaido milk toast is worth ordering even if you came for one round.

Pony Up is at 230 Jinxian Road in Huangpu, about an eleven-minute walk from South Shaanxi Road metro on Lines 1, 10, and 12. It opens daily at 13:00, closing at 01:00 Sunday through Thursday and 02:00 on Friday and Saturday. The bar is walk-in only with no reservations, so arrive before 18:00 on weekends if you want a seat without a long wait. Budget ¥55 to ¥95 per cocktail, or ¥150 to ¥200 per person with snacks. Call +86 184 6698 6722 or check ponyupshanghai.com if you need to confirm hours before you go.

Yang trained under Shingo Gokan and Steve Schneider before running the stick at The Odd Couple, the Shanghai room that long anchored the city's cocktail reputation. Pony Up is his first own venue, and the split-menu format reflects that pedigree without copying the hotel-bar formality of his former room. Day drinks stay short and classic-led so regulars can sit for an hour without fatigue; night drinks push further into savoury, tea, and fermentation territory while keeping each serve readable in one sip. Food is treated as part of the programme, not an afterthought, with Asian pantry ingredients folded into diner formats rather than plated as novelty.

Pony Up debuts on our 2026 Asia ranking at No.20 as a new entry and Shanghai's sole representative in the top 50, announced at the ceremony at Wynn Palace in Macau. The ranking recognises a room that turned a neighbourhood strip bar into a daily ritual for locals and industry regulars within two years of opening. Mainland China placed seven bars in the top 50 this season, led by Hope & Sesame at No.2 in Guangzhou, but Pony Up's climb confirms Shanghai still exports bar talent even as newer mainland cities dominate the upper ranks.