This article first appeared in the Drinks International Global Bar Edition which can be read in full here
In the sleek, Scandi-chic bar Bitters & Co in Kathmandu, Rovin Gurung leans in with a grin and places a lemon on the table. “It took a year and a half to find one,” he says, voice tinged with triumph. One expert had told him it would be “very impossible” to get in Nepal. But there it was, bright and yellow, the prize that sets him apart from every other bar in the city.
Limes are a staple in Nepalese cuisine, as are local citruses mousam and nibua. But lemons? They’re so rare that when Gurung began searching for a supplier, he had to tell people what they look like.
He enlisted produce traders whose work took them to remote villages, asking them to photograph any citrus trees they saw. After 18 months of nothing, a message popped up on his phone: Hey, is this what you’re looking for?
The elusive lemon was critical to Gurung’s mission to open Nepal’s first global-standard bar, where people would sip classics on a par with those in London or New York. It was a dream sparked on a trip back to Kathmandu from his adopted home of Hong Kong. Night after night, he searched for a decent cocktail but never found one.
“It was like going back an era,” he says. “People were making Mai Tais and Mojitos from recipes they’d found in some dusty book. Five-star hotels, local pubs, the only difference was the price. The flames were dying in my soul.”
He reached out to friend and marketing expert Mona Bajracharya with a pitch: If nobody else would open a serious cocktail bar in Kathmandu, they should. They got to work.
But they weren’t the only ones
Santosh Faiia had built a career in the bars of Miami and New York, before running the video department of a drink industry PR firm. He flew back to Nepal in 2019 to film a promotion to raise funds for Kathmandu’s quake-damaged World Heritage sites. “On that trip I was always trying to find a good drink,” he says. “But it was all so bad I ended up just having beers or rum & cola.”
Conversations with an old schoolmate, a graduate of Swiss hospitality academy Les Roches, led to the founding of Blackbird. The low-lit saloon is an oasis of quality amid the souvenir shops and dive bars of Thamel, Kathmandu’s tourist-trap party district.
Abhishek Tuladhar, meanwhile, was back home in Kathmandu after four years in Singapore’s finance sector and was dismayed by a landscape of syrupy Mojitos and heavy-handed Margaritas. “Everything was too sweet or too strong,” he says. “Nobody cared about balance.”
He began planning Barc, a stylish lounge well-hidden on the roof of an industrial complex.
Blackbird, Barc and Bitters & Co all opened in the latter half of 2021 when Nepal was under Covid-related restrictions, but curfews and social distancing proved the least of the problems.
The first issue was a dearth of demand. Consumers were not clamouring for a higher-quality cocktail culture. In fact, most of Nepal’s men weren’t interested in mixed drinks at all. “Cocktails were often seen through a gendered lens,” says Tuladhar. “Men gravitated towards whisky and (other straight) spirits.”
To break the stereotype and tease their craft, both Tuladhar and Faiia organized pop-up events before launching their bars. Tuladhar’s full-fledged cocktail catering service sometimes served thousands of guests at weddings or other private functions. “That helped to get the word out, so when we opened we’d already have an educated market,” he says.
Gurung’s approach was to focus on classics, introducing Nepalis to what a properly made Old Fashioned or Whiskey Sour should taste like, and slipping in lesser-known cuts like the Air Mail and the Enzoni. “Our bartenders have to learn 80-90 (classic) recipes,” he says. “These are the foundations of mixology and I tell my team: If your roots aren’t strong, the tree you’re growing into is going to fall.”
Hunt for ingredients
Securing ingredients was a battle. Lemons were just one issue. With Nepal landlocked and reliant on road deliveries from India, costs for fresh produce fluctuate wildly. A kilogram of tomatoes might cost 80 rupees one day, but 250 rupees a day later if there was a landslide along the route.
Bourbon is hard to come by, Maraschino liqueur is not available, and the only bitters on sale are Angostura. When big brand liquor does cross the border, the authorities slap a steep tax on it. “A bottle of Bombay Sapphire costs us about $80,” says Tuladhar. “And it keeps going up.” For perspective, the average hourly wage in Nepal is around $3.50.
Faiia has never used tequila in a signature cocktail because it is prohibitively expensive. Even a bottom-shelf brand costs upwards of $50 a bottle and he charges a flat 1,000 rupees (less than $7.50) a drink.
Before any of the bars could celebrate their first anniversary, the government twisted the knife by banning the import of any liquor. Spooked by plunging forex reserves and worried the country wouldn't be able to secure essential goods, policymakers imposed a sweeping ban on luxury items – from diamonds to dolls.
Gurung and Tuladhar both scrambled to stock up. “We called every liquor store and supermarket and managed to get six months’ worth of bottles,” says Gurung. “But the ban lasted eight months. We were nearly bone dry.”
Faiia is sanguine about the obstacles. “It forces you to be creative,” he says. “In New York, I could get any liquor under the sun. Coming here, I said, OK, I have to focus on local ingredients, make as many homemade ingredients as I can, and figure out how to serve quality cocktails at a reasonable price.”
So, at Blackbird you won’t find any famous-name sparkling mixers. Instead, Faiia creates syrups – the rhododendron, hibiscus & rosemary blend is a crowd favourite – and sends them to the Ranjana Soda Store, maker of fizzy drinks for nearly 80 years, to carbonate and bottle.
In Barc, Tuladhar champions local spirits, most notably a rustic grain liquor called ayla, primarily distilled in private homes for celebrations and religious offerings. Ayla has never been an aspirational spirit associated with fine drinking, but Tuladhar is giving it the kind of image overhaul that mezcal and shochu have enjoyed.
In 2022, Blackbird was voted on to the extended top 100 list of Asia’s 50 Best Bars. The following year Bitters & Co made it on to the same list. And in 2024 Nepal graced the top 50 for the first time when Barc landed at number 39. Perhaps more importantly, the success of these three pioneers has inspired a new wave of cocktail bars that could compete in any of the world’s great drinking cities.
Foremost among them is Bloom, whose owners had been contemplating opening a bar for close to a decade. “When we saw other people finally trying to do specifically cocktail bars we thought this might be the right time,” says co-founder Kavin Jung Shah. Now the bar draws crowds with drinks based on flowers native to Nepal, including a Hibiscus Collins and a Chamomile Bee’s Knees.
But as Kathmandu’s cocktail scene grows, so does the risk of losing well-trained staff to better-paying opportunities abroad. In 2023, a quarter of Nepal’s GDP came from remittances sent by workers overseas, and bars in Hong Kong, Singapore or Dubai are quick to poach talent. “A lot of times we’re just training, training, training,” says Tuladhar. “All we say is: If you’re going, please let us know.” At Bloom, Shah says, prospective hires often let them know mid-interview that they are applying for jobs abroad. “They just don’t know if or when they’ll get a visa,” he says. “Often it’s very abrupt when they leave.”
Bar owners in Nepal talk about the ways they try to retain talent – shorter working weeks, quality meals, trips abroad – but they know the brain drain won’t end soon. “It’s just who we are now,” says Tuladhar.
Turning a Himalayan valley into a cocktail destination was never going to be easy. That much was clear just after midnight on a Thursday at Blackbird, when the music cut and the room sank into darkness.
The founders of Kathmandu’s three pioneering bars were deep into their drinks. “The transformer?” Tuladhar asked. “No,” Faiia replied. “That blew hours ago. The backup battery just died.”
And yet, the night rolled on. For Kathmandu’s bartenders, the very impossible is just another shift.
