The List: Jay Gray on how Sago House landed on the 50 Best Bars list
How a bar on a derelict floor of a shophouse, with a flat management structure and nightly airing of grievances racks up accolades.
I’ve got a different episode of Drinks At Work this week. I’m calling it Drinks At Work: The List.
It’s about how Jay Gray’s Singapore bar, Sago House, got onto the World’s 50 Best Bars list in 2023. It’s a bit of a different format for Drinks At Work, one I’m hoping to roll out from time to time; it’s more of a narrative piece than the conversational episodes that I usually make on Drinks At Work.
It’s all to answer this big question: what does it take to get a bar onto a globally recognised list of the best, like The World’s 50 Best Bars list?
Let’s say there is around one million bars on the fave of the planet. It’s a crazy idea to think about, really — how do you even begin to pull together a list of the best bars in the world?
And then making it into the top 50? Well, that’s pretty rarefied stuff.
Jay Gray started out in bars much like most of us do: he did it while he was at uni, working behind the stick to make friends. But Jay isn’t like most of us — he has a bar on The World’s 50 Best Bars list.
In this episode, Jay describes how they pulled together the bar from recycled and up cycled materials, on the third floor of an almost derelict shophouse in Chinatown,. He talks about surviving the pandemic, living in the bar with his partner in business and in life at the time, Desiree Silva, and building the place themselves along with fellow business partner George Abhishek.
He talks about how getting on Asia’s 50 Best Bars list the year they opened changed their business and how cocktail tourism has affected the experience. He talks about making the move from the original location to Sago House 2.0 as he calls it. He also talks about the value of a PR agency why they refused to do guest shifts the first year they opened, and why — despite a rotational list of cocktails — their emphasis isn’t on the drinks.
I really enjoyed talking to Jay — I hope you enjoy the chat. Let me know what you think of the episode too and the format, it’s a bit different for me and something I’ll look to refine as time goes on — you get me at sam@boothby.com.au.
And give Sago House a follow on Instagram at @sagohouse.sg.
