Shelley Tai traces her journey from Hong Kong nightclubs to Singapore and back.
Shelley Tai has built a career on the pursuit of excellence, though she would never describe it that way. Ask her what she considers her greatest strength, and she will speak of seriousness over talent or creativity. It is a modest answer, but it explains everything that follows – including being named the winner of the Altos Bartenders' Bartender Award, as part of Asia's 50 Best Bars 2026.
Here are the five drinks that marked her rise to becoming Asia's new favourite bartender.
The first last word
Tai took her first bartending job to pay rent. She worked punishing hours in the nightclub circuit, serving drinks to a crowd that wanted speed over subtlety. She credits that chaos with giving her the grit to push through whatever came next.
Shelley Tai's first encounter with craft cocktails was a last word in Hong Kong
Then a friend took her to a Japanese cocktail bar in Causeway Bay. A bartender made her a last word, a mix of gin, green chartreuse, maraschino and lime. The craft and precision, the way the drink demanded attention over just consumption; she realised there was another way to do this job.
"I only went there once," she admits. "But it showed me a different side of bartending and all its possibilities."
Yuk Bing Siu
Tai left the nightclub scene to deepen her newfound love of cocktail creation and joined Quinary, the Hong Kong bar that would become her training ground. This was where she learnt not just how to make drinks, but why each creation worked.
The mentors she found there, Samuel Kwok and Antonio Lai, pushed her to think deeply about flavour and service. Despite her previous experience, she started at the bottom washing glasses and learning the rhythm of a craft cocktail bar before picking up a shaker again.
The Yuk Bing Siu was the first original drink Tai designed for a menu
In 2018, she was tasked with creating a drink for a menu themed around everyday ingredients: rice, oil, salt, soy, ginger or tea. She was assigned rice. The result was Yuk Bing Siu, a cocktail built around a Cantonese rice liqueur of the same name. She toasted glutinous rice to release a nutty warmth, then infused the liqueur with coriander. Amaro followed, with a sliver of cheese and micro herbs to finish.
The drink made it onto the menu, marking her first creation in a professional setting. That small validation gave her a new kind of confidence.
"It was my first real original drink," she says. "It felt like a turning point."
City's Bouquet
In 2019, she entered the Diageo World Class competition. Not because she had anything to prove, but because she'd seen colleagues at Quinary win regional titles, and with Kwok and Lai encouraging her, she figured she'd take a chance. 
Tai was encouraged to compete in the 2019 World Class competition by her mentors at Quinary
Her drink, City's Bouquet, was savoury and floral: gin, dry vermouth, fennel pollen, gentian and olive. It won her the Hong Kong and Macau title. Next thing she knew, she was on a plane to Scotland to compete against the other regional champions from across the globe.
The World Class finals were not a gentle introduction to the international stage. Over 5 days, she competed across three countries, battling jet lag and sleep deprivation – the kind of travel that leaves you disorientated and running on adrenaline.
She made it through and came back with something, though she doesn't make a fuss about it. "Competition taught me precision," she says. "Every drop has to have a reason."
Garden City
In 2020, as Hong Kong's hospitality sector contracted during the pandemic, Tai moved to Singapore to help Nutmeg & Clove reopen in its new home. Nearly five years later, she had risen to operations director of the whole bar group.
Her first impression of the Lion City was the greenery: the lush gardens and the tropical humidity. The Garden City cocktail was created to capture that feeling, a mix of gin, shiso, musk melon, Empirical Ayuuk (smoke-dried Pasilla Mixe chilli spirit), lime and honey. "When we reopened, it was one of the first drinks we launched," Tai says. "Guests loved it."
The Garden City was inspired by Singapore's green spaces
But the real transformation was internal. Managing a team forced her to develop skills she had never needed. She devoured management books, studied communication and learned to read people in ways she hadn't anticipated.
Tai had always been an introvert, and for a long time she saw it as a limitation. Behind the bar, however, her observant nature made her watchful. She could notice a guest's needs before they spoke, or pick up on a teammate's exhaustion before it showed.
Tai was the group operations director of the Nutmeg Collective before returning to Hong Kong in late 2025
The job also demanded physical stamina. Regular exercise became non-negotiable, a way to build the strength to endure. "This industry can break you if you're not careful," she says. "I love what I do, but I also know I have to be strong enough to do it."
During this period, working with the Nutmeg Collective, she also helped open a bar in Singapore named Last Word, a tribute to that formative drink in Causeway Bay.
The homecoming Highball
Returning to Hong Kong in late 2025 to open her own bar, Mius, was the culmination of everything she had worked towards. Unassuming and welcoming, it has become a beloved neighbourhood spot. The space, like the woman who built it, has a natural, understated presence that makes you want to linger a little longer.
The iceless highball is a signature serve at Mius
Her fifth drink, a highball of frozen whisky and chilled Japanese soda served without ice, distils everything she has learned.
"This drink represents me finally coming home and doing exactly what I love," says Tai. "Simple doesn't mean careless. We put thought into the glass, the whisky, the carbonation. It's the kind of drink you can come back for every night and never gets old."
Tai has built something at Mius that reflects her values: simplicity, precision and the kind of hospitality that doesn't need to be complicated to be memorable. She wants guests to enter freely, feel at ease and leave knowing they have been cared for.
The Highball is not just for guests. After closing, she and her team stay behind to have one together. It is their ritual, their way of ending the night. It's this generosity of spirit, openness and warmth with her team past and present that has made her one of the most sought-after and admired bartenders of her time.
The list of Asia's 50 Best Bars 2026, sponsored by Perrier, will be revealed in Macau on 28 July.
