Agung Prabowo

Coming Up

Hotel bar discipline is built on timing, restraint, and the ability to read a room before the order is spoken. At Mandarin Oriental Jakarta, Indonesia (until 2005), Agung Prabowo worked inside that polished register, where technique and service sequence are only part of the job. The useful training is often less visible: pace, attention, and knowing when not to overwork the moment. Opening work tests a bartender differently from joining an established room. In 2005, Agung moved to Hong Kong to help open the hotel/bar at The Landmark Mandarin Oriental (from 2005), entering a market defined by speed, luxury expectations, and international guests. The Hong Kong progression sharpened a method built around kitchen-minded drinks, busy-service practicality, and ideas structured tightly enough to hold in volume. The craft development was not only a change of addresses. In Agung’s case, the work moved from executing within established rooms toward building a point of view that could support independent bars. Independent bar authorship in Hong Kong came into public focus through co-founder work at The Old Man (2017–2020), followed by co-founder work at The Sea by The Old Man HK. He also oversees beverage programs and day-to-day management of Penicillin, Dead & and Lockdown, keeping menu development tied to the practical demands of service.

Where They Are Now

Contemporary cocktail work in Agung’s Hong Kong bars is built before the drink reaches the guest. His own description points to experimental cocktails, culinary techniques, laboratory gadgets, and complexity developed in prep. That places much of the craft out of sight: choices around texture, temperature, preparation, and layering are resolved before the finished glass is served. Across Penicillin, Dead & and Lockdown, beverage development sits beside management rather than apart from it. The bar is treated as a working system, not only a menu platform. Agung’s role requires ideas that can be repeated, adjusted, and delivered under pressure with the same clarity each time. Flavor remains the test of the method.

Signature

Agung's signature cocktails include The Original by Agung Prabowo, One Penicillin, One Tree, Hot, Flat & Crowded, Love Clothes Last, and Christmas in Paris #1923. Signature naming in this body of work carries reference, house identity, place, pressure, and date-marked association without separating the title from the build. In Agung’s case, the drinks sit within a broader working language: experimental in preparation, informed by culinary technique, and intended to arrive as a complete sensory result rather than a demonstration of process.

In Their Words “Since I admire chefs around the world, our cocktails are experimental cocktails using a lot of culinary techniques and laboratory gadgets during the prep, to produce a good result and [get] complexity into the drinks.” “It’s the best cider in the world—not because we made it, but because the flavor is just there.”

Honors

Agung's honors include The Old Man placed No. 1 on Asia’s 50 Best Bars (2019), The Old Man placed No. 9 on The World’s 50 Best Bars (2019), Industry Icon Award (2020), and The Old Man named The Best Bar in China. Recognition here marks both bar performance and trade standing, but the craft line is more specific: hotel foundations, independent rooms, prep-led cocktail construction, and operating systems that keep creative drinks serviceable. For Agung Prabowo, the cocktail is not only the pour. It is the mise en place before service, the discipline of the counter, and the final test of whether the guest can taste the work without having it explained.