Made ByBar
Hope & Sesame
Chef in Residence
Andrew Ho
Co Founder
- 01CityGuangzhou, China
- 02RecognitionWorld's 50 Best — No. 7
Ranked #7 in Asia's Best Bars 2025 and making its World's 50 Best Bars debut that same year, Hope & Sesame has operated from Guangzhou's Dongshankou district since 2016. Entry is through a concealed refrigerator door; the programme inside runs on ultrasonic infusion, rotary distillation, and seasonal menus built around regional flavour and cultural narrative.
- World's 50 Best · #7
At a glance
- Price
- $$$
- Per person
- $18
- Neighborhood
- Dongshankou
<h2>A Refrigerator Door in Dongshankou</h2><p>Hope & Sesame is a bar in Guangzhou's Yuexiu district, ranked #7 in Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025. The approach is unremarkable from the street: a Cantonese cha chaan teng, its signage ordinary, its facade giving nothing away. The entry point is a refrigerator door. Step through it, and the visual register shifts entirely, exposed brick and raw texture set against antique timber panelling, low lighting, and a layered warmth that reads less like a designed bar and more like a room that has always existed, waiting to be found. This is the physical grammar of Hope & Sesame, and it sets the terms for everything that follows.</p><p>Dongshankou carries weight in Guangzhou's urban story. The district's Republican-era architecture and tree-lined lanes have made it a neighbourhood of creative and cultural density, a different register from the commercial towers of Tianhe or the tourist-facing Pearl River waterfront. A bar with ambitions at this level, technical, aesthetic, conceptual, fits that context precisely.</p><h2>Nine Consecutive Years on Asia's 50 Best Bars</h2><p>Hope & Sesame's standing in the Asia-Pacific cocktail conversation is not recent. Hope & Sesame has appeared on the Asia's 50 Best Bars list every year since 2019, a sustained presence across six ranking cycles that few bars in the region can match. The trajectory tells a clear story: #35 in 2019, #36 in 2020, #15 in 2021, #18 in 2022, #39 in 2023, #14 in 2024, and #7 in 2025. The upward momentum in 2025 is notable, arriving alongside its debut on the World's 50 Best Bars in 2024 and continued recognition in 2025.</p><p>Co-founder Andrew Ho received the Altos Bartenders' Bartender Award as part of Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025, a peer-voted distinction that signals influence within the professional community rather than commercial visibility. Across those three separate ranking systems, the consensus is consistent. Within China, this positions Hope & Sesame in a different competitive tier from bars such as <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/obsidian-bar-shenzhen">Obsidian Bar in Shenzhen</a> or <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/cmyk-changsha">CMYK in Changsha</a>, which operate with strong regional profiles but without equivalent global list penetration.</p><h2>The Technical Programme</h2><p>Asia's serious cocktail bars have largely moved past the phase where technique was the story. At the tier Hope & Sesame now occupies, technique is infrastructure, the unseen engineering that makes a drink behave the way it should. The bar's programme runs on ultrasonic infusion and rotary distillation, two methods that extract and concentrate flavour without heat-driven degradation. The practical outcome is a range of flavour precision that simpler preparation cannot achieve: cleaner separations, more controlled intensity, aromatic compounds preserved at a molecular level.</p><p>This places Hope & Sesame in a specific cohort of Asia-Pacific bars where the back-of-house reads more like a laboratory than a service well. <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/coa-shanghai-shanghai-bar">Coa in Shanghai</a> operates with comparable technical ambition on its agave-focused programme. <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/bar-leather-apron-honolulu">Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu</a> represents the Pacific equivalent of this precision-led approach. What distinguishes Hope & Sesame within that cohort is the consistent grounding of technical output in local and regional ingredient sourcing, the methods serve the flavours, not the other way around.</p><p>Menus shift seasonally and thematically. The programme draws on regional flavours, cultural narratives, and nostalgic references reconstructed through a contemporary lens. This is not fusion as compromise; it is Cantonese and Southern Chinese flavour memory as a serious creative source. The five-course cocktail format, referenced across Tatler's coverage, structures the experience as a sequence rather than a list, an approach that mirrors the tasting-menu logic increasingly common at bars operating in the upper tier of Asia's ranking systems.</p><h2>How Hope & Sesame Fits Guangzhou's Drinking Scene</h2><p>Guangzhou's bar culture operates in a different register from Beijing or Shanghai. The city's commercial character, shaped by decades as China's trade gateway, by the Canton Fair cycle, by a Cantonese identity distinct from the Mandarin-centred cultural mainstream, produces a drinking scene less oriented toward international-brand showcasing and more open to locally inflected experiment. Hope & Sesame has occupied that space since 2016, a nine-year tenure that predates the broader China cocktail wave that followed.</p><p>The comparison set across the region reinforces how Hope & Sesame's position was earned incrementally. <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/janes-hooch-beijing">Janes & Hooch in Beijing</a> and <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/lobby-bar-nanjing-bar">Lobby Bar in Nanjing</a> represent different points on the China bar spectrum, one more British-heritage in format, the other hotel-anchored. <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/flair-wuhan-bar">FLAIR in Wuhan</a>, <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/epanouir-xiamen-bar">ÉPANOUIR in Xiamen</a>, and <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/the-londoner-amoy-bar">The Londoner in Amoy</a> extend the picture further into second-tier cities where cocktail culture is developing rapidly. <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/jeno-belgium-pub-hsi-an-bar">Jeno Belgium Pub in Hsi An</a> and <a href="https://www.enprimeurclub.com/bars/the-ritz-carlton-bar-lounge-macau">The Ritz-Carlton Bar & Lounge in Macau</a> illustrate how format diversity across the broader Pearl River and interior China region has expanded. Against all of them, Hope & Sesame holds a singular position: the only Guangzhou bar with sustained global ranking presence across multiple independent bodies.</p><h2>Planning Your Visit</h2><p>The bar is located in Guangzhou's Yuexiu district. The neighbourhood's concentration of independent restaurants and small bars makes an early dinner nearby a natural precursor. Seasonal menu cycles mean the programme on any given visit will differ from one three months prior, so checking the current theme before booking adds context to the experience.</p><div class="faq-block">
Know before you go
- Dress code
- smart_casual
- Reservations
- recommended
- Parking
- street
- Payment
- cash, credit_card
Frequently asked
How would you describe the overall feel of Hope & Sesame?
Entry is through a concealed refrigerator door set into what appears to be a Cantonese cha chaan teng facade on 58 Miaoqian Xijie, Dongshankou. Inside, exposed brick and antique timber panelling sit against low lighting and minimal modern Chinese detailing — a combination that reads more like a recovered room from another era than a purpose-built cocktail venue. The bar has held a place on Asia's 50 Best Bars every year since 2019, and the interior carries the considered restraint you'd expect from a programme operating at that level.
What part of town is Hope & Sesame in?
Hope & Sesame is located at Guang Dong Sheng, Guang Zhou Shi, Yue Xiu Qu, Zhan Qian Lu, 站前路广州地一大道亚洲首席地下服装展贸中心时尚女装街D区D50-1 邮政编码: 510010, Guangzhou.
What distinctions does Hope & Sesame have?
Hope & Sesame has received recognition including: {"address": "58 Miaoqian Xijie, Dongshankou, Guangzhou, China", "badge_name": "Best Bars Asia-Pacific 2025", "badge_text_raw": "Best Bars Asia-Pacific 2025", "badge_year": "2025", "description": "Discover the unique five-course cocktail exp….
What should I drink at Hope & Sesame?
The programme is structured as a five-course cocktail experience rather than a conventional à la carte list, so the selection is guided rather than open. Menus shift seasonally and thematically, drawing on regional Chinese flavours and techniques including ultrasonic infusion and rotary distillation. Individual drink recommendations shift with each iteration, which is part of the bar's identity as a ranked member of both Asia's 50 Best Bars (#7 in 2025) and the World's 50 Best Bars.
What's the main draw of Hope & Sesame?
The bar has appeared on Asia's 50 Best Bars every year since 2019, reaching #7 on the Asia list in 2025 and making its debut on the World's 50 Best Bars ranking the same year. Co-founder Andrew Ho received the Altos Bartenders' Bartender Award as part of Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025, a peer-voted recognition that places him among the most influential figures in the regional cocktail scene. For Guangzhou specifically, Hope & Sesame represents the city's most internationally documented bar programme.
How far ahead should I plan for Hope & Sesame?
The bar's 2025 trajectory — #7 in Asia and a debut on the World's 50 Best Bars — has materially increased international reservation demand. Visitors to Guangzhou should plan bookings well in advance, particularly around major travel periods. The bar is reachable from Dongshankou metro station on Line 5, at 58 Miaoqian Xijie, and can be contacted at +86 188 1935 3461 or via hopeandsesame.cn.
Who founded Hope & Sesame and what is their standing in the Asian bar industry?
Hope & Sesame was founded in Guangzhou in 2016 by Bastien Ciocca and Andrew Ho. Ho was awarded the Altos Bartenders' Bartender Award at Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025, a peer-voted distinction that reflects influence across the broader Asian cocktail community rather than a single venue's output. The bar also appeared on the Tatler Best Bars Asia-Pacific 2025 list, adding a second independent editorial credential to its nine-year run on Asia's 50 Best Bars.
Address
MiaoQian Xijie 58, Dongshankou, Guangzhou, China
Dongshankou
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