HK's Signature Drink

SECTIONCODE: 38-food-UTT
SECTION: Food
SUBSECTION: Under the table
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P/Q: The Wan Chai Wash— a combination of beer, vodka, whiskey, gin, tequila, and kamikaze shots with a measure of spit and of vomit, then poured over a 5am kabob.
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I write this to you from an uncomfortable stool at the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. I came here to discover why the Singapore Sling, invented at this bar in 1936, is so famous. I see it at every shitty airport bar, in every cocktail book, in our collective memories. Though I do not know of anyone who would comfortably order this vile mixture of thickened cough syrup and food colouring poured over a mug of sugar (for this pleasure, it cost me S$23). But to condemn this drink is to condemn the nation whose name is behind it. So I better tread carefully.
I’ve been thinking for some time about why Hong Kong doesn’t have a signature drink. Singapore’s got the Sling; Russia’s got the white Russian, and black Russian for that matter; Ireland’s got Guinness; Mexico has the margarita’s (though Texans will dispute this to their death-beds). And no introduction needed: The Cosmopolitan. So how come Hong Kong missed the international boat on this one?
If Hong Kong is a first tiered, world-class city, we should have a drink that symbolises us, much like its famous bridge, tower, statue or national dish. We should have our flag in every shitty airport bar. So I went searching, for a drink that represents Hong Kong. Came up with nothing.
Then I remembered something Karen Mok told me, “Hong Kong people think imported is better than homegrown.” Is pride the reason we lack a national drink?

After a self-education on cities’ signature cocktails, I found that the commonality running between most national drinks is this: sweetness. You see it in the sticky-sweet fruit punch of Singapore Slings, the rim’s of margarita glasses, the sweetened whipped cream of a Blow Job (tossed back, no hands). Sugar, it seems, aids sales. Second, the most famous cocktails were created in hotel bars. Much of this has to do with the hotel’s famous, vocal, clienteles such as F. Scott Fitzgerald who used to eat the orchid garnish off a lovely young woman’s drink in order to gain her favour at the Petit Bar at the Ritz Paris.

Third trait: the origins of the main liquor component are home-grown. Rice wine, maybe our only alcoholic spawn, does not agree with me, but maybe as a wash it could give the drink a secret burn.
With friends, I tossed around this question of the city’s signature drink. We created a laboratory of sorts and played around with plum sauces, ginger liquor and got down-right drunk in the process. Through our drunken stupor, we did invented one delight: The Wan Chai Wash— a combination of beer, vodka, whiskey, gin, tequila, and kamikaze shots with a measure of spit and of vomit, then it is poured over a 5am kabob.
Since we still don’t have a drink that represents us, I, in a hurried afternoon, thought up of what could represent Hong Kong in a glass. In a combined effort between myself and Gani, the bartender at Union J, a recipe was revised to one and a half part gin, one part crème de ginger, one part orange liquor, freshly crushed ginger and a topping of boxed lemon iced tea found at any local Circle K. It was as refreshing as an icy pimm’s lemonade on the hottest of Hong Kong days.

I don’t know who said it first, we were evenly drunk by this time, but someone slurred out “Wong Island Iced Tea”. And that stuck as the name of this drink.

I’m not going to be pompous and say that the Wong Island Iced Tea will become Hong Kong’s national drink. I just want there to be a national drink for no other reason than to see it on a menu in a shitty hotel bar by the airport.

So if not this one, then maybe another, created by someone who knows what they are talking about, who is actually a person of mixing authority. So I’ve asked several bartenders from hotel bar in Hong Kong to create what they think would be a candidate for a drink that would best represent our city.

There will be no contest or casting of votes for this drink. People will vote with their wallets and their tastebuds and maybe the public relation world will do its thing spread the word. Then hopefully one day, I’ll be sitting at a shitty bar in an airport sipping Hong Kong’s signature cocktail.