Every F*cking Tiny Little Thing (And The Anatomy Of A Well-Built Bar)

What makes a good bar great? It’s the question that’s launched a thousand design concepts, burned through countless budgets, and kept an endless number of bar owners awake at night.

Host Emma Janzen is on stage at Bangkok Bar Show 2025 with four esteemed members of the global bar community [from left to right front in feature image] – Patrick Pistolesi from Rome’s Drink Kong, Frank Kurt Maldonado from Employees Only, Hayden Lambert from Melbourne’s Above Board and lately Hands Down, and Sudarat ‘Taln’ Rojanavanich from Bangkok’s Bar Us and Messenger Service. And, right now, they’re picking apart the anatomy of a well-built bar.

Emma remembers Toby Maloney – bartender at Milk & Honey NYC, the Flatiron Lounge, and Pegu Club in the early 2000s, with whom she co-authored The Bartender’s Manifesto – responding to that same question: How do you make a good bar into a great bar? 

It’s Very Simple 

“Actually it’s very simple,” Toby had said. “All you have to do is pay attention to every f*cking tiny little thing.”

But there’s an elephant in the room. That might not seem surprising, considering we’re in the conference room for Bangkok Bar Show 2025’s series of panel talks at Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel – the flagship of the Bangkok-based Anantara group, a grand hotel filled with Thai decorative touches (lots of teak and silk). But it’s not that kind of elephant.

Where Neon Meets Negronis 

“Budget,” Taln says, addressing it immediately. The rest of the panel – Patrick Pistolesi, Frank Kurt Maldonado, and Hayden Lambert – nod in agreement. For all the discussion about what a well-built bar looks like and feels like, budget looms large over any construction project, especially for independent bars – the kind they’re all a part of.

Taln’s the driving force behind two of Bangkok’s most talked-about drinking destinations – Bar Us and Messenger Service. The latter, with its concept that blends bar and grocery store, won the Best Bar Design Award at Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2025.

Guatemalan Frank Kurt Maldonado is from New York’s iconic Employees Only, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year (its 21st this December). These days he travels the world helping nurture the bar’s siblings, like Employees Only Singapore, whose design is a carbon copy of the original only in reverse – and spreading the Employees Only energy in a hail of napkins hurled in the air, often to The Killers’ ‘Mr Brightside.’

Patrick Pistolesi runs Drink Kong in Rome. There he’s created a multi-room space where neon meets negronis and the menu takes unexpected sensory-driven twists – in drinks like his milk punch-style BE(E)TRUE(T) and umami-rich YUGEN. Menu mainstays like the gimlet-style Canova evoke the sea breeze and his Gaijin looks east to Japan for inspiration, with Japanese whisky and miso cordial.

Hayden Lambert’s Above Board is a minimalist space where bottles are tucked away in cabinets and cocktails are served with old-school attention to detail. His minimalist approach isn’t just aesthetic – it’s philosophical, extending from his analog cocktail techniques to the meticulously stripped-back space that “looks like a Tetris puzzle about to be completed.” He calls his new venue that he just opened, Hands Down, a ‘social bar.’ 

What Could We Afford?

“A lot of it does just come down to budget,” Hayden says, slouched in his chair, his signature white-framed glasses highlighting his face, remembering the creation of Above Board in 2016. “What could we afford?”

First, he stripped the concept back to its essentials before rebuilding: “Bar top. Sink. Running water. Ice. But most importantly, people.”

He wasn’t sure about the people though. “I didn’t really think about how many people were gonna be there,” he admits. “If I’m honest, I actually never thought anyone was gonna come. I didn’t really have a plan.” But they did, and the bar debuted on the World’s 50 Best Bars list in 2021 at No.44. 

The space features a 5 ½ meter American walnut bar top, 18 seats around the counter (“I wanted to create a horseshoe bar that didn’t look like a horseshoe”) and two banquettes on the other side of the bar (“When I first did it I thought it was an amazing idea but people don’t always enjoy sitting behind the bar”).

Who I Am And What I Wanted

Patrick is as rough-edged as Drink Kong’s home city of Rome, his nasal pronouncements scattered with expletives. “When you come to Rome you’re just invested by Rome – the Colosseum, everyone wants the pasta, then you go to Trastevere, there’s a bit of Chianti and you get ripped off here and you get ripped off there, and you go into a bar for a beer and there’s no beer. And you’re a little bit confused.”

So when he had the chance to open his own place, he thought long and hard about what it should be. “I looked back at my past and who I am and what I wanted. I’m half Irish. I like pubs. I like classic things. But I like to play with the lab, rotovaps and sh*t; to play with flavors.” He just knew it had to be proper, and by that he means original and true to himself.

It’s a multi-room space that’s moody, neon-lit, and kind of loungey.

“I grew up in the 80s, and that just changed me – Blade Runner and Star Wars are in me, hence the neons. And we do a job that’s all about vibe, about feelings. We’re part of the night. Babies are born. People f*ck. It’s not daytime, it’s nighttime. It’s a whole different mood,” he shrugs about the obviousness of it all.

“We have a gorilla as a logo, and we wanted to do a bit of storytelling. So what does a gorilla do? Wakes up. Takes a sh*t. Gathers the cubs. Everything is fine. Then he follows his instinct. So when people come to the bar, we want guests to follow their instinct. Live the night.”

Everyone Called Them Crazy

Employees Only opened in a rough neighborhood of New York City. “So much crime, everyone called them crazy,” Frank says of the five founders setting up in the West Village. Oddly, that’s where lots of psychics set up shop. You’d go there to get your tarot cards read. “But they took the space. They believed in themselves,” Frank smiles.

The design of the bar was different from any other at the time. “Dushan Zaric [one of the founders] decided that when he’s behind the bar, he doesn’t want everyone’s faces to be lined up flat. He wanted everyone to be able to see each other. Observing everyone, interacting.”

Budget was a factor again. “I mean, imagine five bartenders chipping in money to create a bar,” he laughs. 

“So the bar’s about halfway finished and they run out of money!” He launches into one of his favorite anecdotes, picking up pace like the fast-talking New Yorker he’s become.

“One finance guy asks to rent the space for an event, the ceiling’s not done, the bar counter’s in place, but they don’t have running water yet, but Henry (another of the founders) said let’s make it happen. And so he got 1,000 balloons to cover the unfinished ceiling, and they made the party happen and completed the project with the proceeds,” he remembers.

“The lights, music, the design of the bar, having the right people. They thought about it all. They wanted people to feel this is their home, people can be themselves there. I always believe the lighting is super important. There’s a study that the lower the lights, the more alcohol consumption increases, by something like 70%.”

The Space Dictates 

Considering the design award and the spaces she’s helped create – Bar Us, conceptual and precise; Messenger Service like a friend’s apartment where you can wander around, explore the prep area, even make a cocktail with the bar team – Taln, who looks every bit the hip designer, legs crossed, jeans insouciantly frayed at the bottom, has a surprisingly pragmatic attitude. “Once you have the budget set, then you know how to get it done – quick, fast, cheap,” she shrugs. 

“After considering the function, the lighting, the equipment, the music, the smell – those are the elements you need to put together before you can open the business.”

The space itself dictates too, she says, like at Messenger Service, now located in the historic Baan Trok Tua Ngork building (a 90-years-old shophouse located in Bangkok’s Chinatown). “We had the rule that we couldn’t punch anything into the wall – it’s a protected building. So the design came after the rules. We had to build it from the ground up.”

The concept can guide things too. At Bar Us, they’d decided to create savory cocktails, which became a cocktail menu divided like a dinner menu – starters, mains, desserts. So they modified the bar station to look like a kitchen island. But we turned it into a bar,” she adds.

From Little Masterpieces To Double-Sided A4

They don’t align on everything, like their approach to menus. Patrick’s is a work of art, where, with his “beautiful designer,” they tried to translate what’s in the drinks into visuals. “The menu is essential. They’re little masterpieces for me,” he explains.

Hayden’s is a piece of A4 printed on both sides in a leather binder – on one side signatures, on the other classics, with around nine drinks on each. “We get to explain and it’s a way to interact with customers.” He’d worked at the Merchant Hotel in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the menus they created got more and more complicated. And he noticed people just ordered the drinks with pictures, “and so people just bought the same three drinks all the time.” 

That made him realize he wanted something simple at Above Board. “The concept was minimal and there’s no point having a gargantuan menu when that’s your concept.”

For Taln, it’s a thing that should be self-explanatory, even though it’s conceptual. “A good menu is something you don’t have to explain much. Sometimes you don’t have time to explain it to everyone. When the bar is super busy they have to be able to get it, and then they can order themselves without help. And curiosity makes them order more.”

And Frank’s menu is as forthright as New York drinkers demand. “In New York City, if I presented a drink and tried to tell them the beautiful story behind it, they’d say, ‘F*ck off,'” he laughs. 

Frank and the team are primed with the beverage’s backstory on the rare occasions that they need it. Mostly, the “direct and simple” menu does the talking. 

They update it twice a year: the first page is Employees Only signatures, many of which have been on the menu since the beginning. Then – because New York City has seasons – there’s one page of refreshing drinks for spring and summer, another of cozier drinks for fall and winter – “which can be very heavy, we get snow and everything.” 

The iconic signature drinks, like the Amelia, are bestsellers even to this day. “It’s one of the simplest cocktails: vodka, lemon juice, St Germain and blackberry, four ingredients shaken up, that’s it, and it works completely fine and sells more than any cocktail on the seasonal menus.”

People like what they like. 

True To The Creator 

“But that’s the thing,” Hayden concludes, “I get some guests come in, feel immediately uncomfortable, stay a few minutes and then leave – it’s not for them. That’s fine, there’s another bar around the corner that might be for them. And if that sounds anti-hospitality, it’s not.”

And maybe that’s the takeaway: a well-built bar should be true to the creator. It will have taken some resourcefulness to bring to life. And even then, it might not be for everyone, and the menu might be a conceptual book, or elaborately designed, or a double-sided bit of paper, and it might be 18 seats, or it might have room after room. But undoubtedly, you can be sure, its creator will have considered every f*cking tiny little thing.