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The Golden Tooth

Jakarta

Crafted cocktails and conversations converge

Built around the twin pillars of cocktails and chats, The Golden Tooth has been a fixture of South Jakarta's Melawai quarter since March 2023. The bar itself feels like a New York-style loft of rugged concrete and exposed beams transplanted to Jalan Adityawarman, where a long sky window floods the marble bar and leather stools in golden hour light each evening. The mood is deliberately unhurried, closer to a well-stocked living room than a destination bar, with good records on rotation, regulars on first-name terms with the team and the occasional guest shift to lift the tempo, and the conviction that the conversation matters as much as what lands in the glass runs through everything the room does.

Behind the stick is Kenny Soetomo, a nineteen-year veteran of the trade who found his calling watching the Japanese drama Bartender in 2011 and sharpened his craft in Australia, where shifts of two hundred espresso martinis a night and the 2014 Australian National Suntory Cocktail Connoisseur title taught him both speed and finesse. His menu trades on flavour memory rather than technique for its own sake, with the Snow White rebuilding apple pie from gin, white rum, apple yoghurt and gingerbread, the Smokey Highball conjuring barbecue bacon with no bacon at all through Johnnie Walker Black, agave and sparkling lapsang souchong tea, and the Hubba Hubba landing bubble gum in a glass via blood orange gin, Solerno, peach and vanilla. The Robusta Negroni makes the strongest case for the house style, splitting reposado tequila and gin beneath vermouth, Campari and a punchy robusta coffee for something bold and bittersweet, while a tight classics list runs from a Bobby Burns to the house TGT Whiskey Highball of bourbon, oloroso and soda. A debut at No.98 on the extended Asia's 50 Best Bars list in 2025 confirmed what the neighbourhood already knew, that Jakarta's most easy-going bar is also one of its best.

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