Smoking honey, charring pineapple cores, washing rum with peanut butter—just another day at Port Autonomy, where the bar obsesses over taste as much as the kitchen.
Masterminded by award-winning mixologist Jen Queen and her talented team, PA cocktails are some of the most innovative and delicious in the country.
Although the drinks embrace the tiki spirit, they smartly dodge the fresh-material trash that typically comes with the tropical creations. Instead, they use ingredients to their fullest potential, making for a playful experience.
Let’s start with one of Jen’s favourites, “Three Dots and a Dab,” a reimagining of a tiki classic which is Morse code for “victory.”
One of its core flavours, a housemade spiced dram, takes six days to make. Meanwhile, the lemongrass falernum (syrup liqueur) is a three-day job that involves blanching and toasting almond shavings before mixing them with cloves, lime leaves and lemongrass.
The result is an explosive, aromatic taste that joins hints of pan-smoked honey, stirred through for four hours. The smoky sweetness hits the citrus, and then the spice hits you at the back. Fortified with three blended aged rums, people love it and now you know why.
But the beauty of PA is that you don’t have to dive into the intricacies of their process to have a good time. Groups can get merry from the “Scorpion Bowl”—lashings of vodka, gin, white and dark rum, passionfruit, orange and guava.
For a throwback to PA’s first incarnation five years ago, sip on a remastered “Return of the Jetty” with its frothed whites, vodka and fresh citrus, or a sochu-based “Angry Apple” with a housemade, zero-waste apple shrub.
Channelling irreverence on show in the menu, the “C. U. Next. Tuesday” is a predictably bitter cocktail that uses smoked tamarind, bourbon, lemon and cynar—a bitter digestive made from artichokes.
Seasonal Myanmar ingredients are prevalent throughout the tipples, such as the passion fruit-centred “Lilikoi Lifted,” a delicate infusion that rises up like a soufflé when the soda is poured on the cream and egg whites (it taste like a passion fruit creamsicle).
The “Nutty Buddy Mai Tai” comes from freezing peanut butter with rum and it’s capped with jasmine, bamboo straw and pineapple leaves for garnish.
If your space by the bar is filled with the scent of cinnamon, someone has probably just ordered a “Black Rice Horchata.” Made from a locally sourced black rice, the teetotal drink has a light body and looks like chocolate milk. You can change the creation (and your night) by throwing in a shot of tequila or rum.
One especially creative offering is Min Aung Thet’s “X Marks the Spot,” a major competition entry mixing Wild Turkey 101 with pineapple gomme and aquafaba (water from chickpeas) as an egg white substitute. Black sesame makes a dotted line for the map on its surface; below is a thick, velvety taste.
Other must-tries include the Sawbwa espresso martini, a kimchi vodka Bloody Mary, and the piña colada with vodka.
As ever, these craft cocktails are composed, balanced, and have plenty of underlying layers to explore. As long as you don’t drink too many, getting lost in them makes for a memorable evening, though either way you’re guaranteed a fun time.
