Manila’s cool crowd is cliMbing down froM the club tables and tucking into quiet corners. Stephanie Zubiri explains why the trendsettersare sneaking sips secreted away, and acts as our gps to the city’s new night-owl nirvana. photographed by Sonny thakur

Behind Closed Doors

obstacles to abv include burgers, a phone booth and an elevator shaft.

82 f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 6 / t r a v e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a . c o M

“What do you mean, ‘Meet me in the 7-Eleven storeroom’?”

Sometimes I think my conversations on where to rendezvous with my friends in Manila are so down-the-rabbit-hole surreal as to be farcical. These days, you can’t plan a night out without making sure everyone has detailed directions, the odd secret passcode and the blueprint plans to the bowels of buildings—plus a strong sense of irony coupled with the inclination to lose all notions of time and place. Where the coolest scene once surrounded anyone who snagged the spotlight tables at the see-and-be-seen clubs, now it’s about having the confidence to squirrel away and drink in the dark, opting for quality over quantity in terms of both company and cocktail intake.

Manila is mushrooming into unassuming black holes, meant to be places of refuge, where an “oldie” like me can avoid all the blingy, glamour-crazed, EDM-pumped millennials in the large clubs and trendy lounges. Hidden behind greasy spoons and old wooden cabinets, on the rise are nooks where you can have a proper drink accompanied by a real conversation. Where you can be civilized

and act your age as opposed to dancing on a ledge while showing the world your underpants. That’s not to say no one indulges in getting blissfully blotto. I vaguely recall, for instance, tumbling out of the sliding metal-grill door of an antique elevator-to-nowhere one predawn, as if a reverse vortex had spat me out from the shadowy, vintage comfort of the doubly concealed speakeasy pictured here, leaving me dazed and confused at the contrast with the vulgarly neon-lit sidewalk on which I had been deposited.

That was my last hurrah, as it happened, before I got pregnant. Having been making the social rounds recently while sober, though, I’ve had more clarity to assess what’s going on after hours in the Philippine capital, to analyze the anthropological and architectural elements that have driven this city out of the light and to the clandestine. As the smart set matures and relaxes into its skin, they’re seeking out diversions that are actually enjoyable rather than simply enviable. Steady, comfortable and refined, the new Manila thrives in hidden alleyways, blossoms in the shadows. Here’s a roadmap and a flashlight; go explore the dark.

Bank BarThe Convenience Store CacheYour uninitiated friends are going to get lost and then they’ll get incredulous en route to meeting you for a drink at Bank Bar, which is nestled deep—and I mean deep—inside a corporate tower. To up the already sky-high exclusivity level, the owners have contrived to make you sneak into 7-Eleven storage room in which a hidden entrance opens up into a cavernous space that looks like a posh industrial warehouse vault with velvety armchairs and touches of granite, serving delicious bar bites and the most inclusive list of alcohol in the metro. Built on a vast network of single shareowners who pay for extra perks, the A-list clientele ranges from bankers (naturally) to society mavens and celebrities to good-looking expats who have managed to divine their way to the door and past the doorman. A quieter crowd

looking for an after work wind-down paired with the tastiest truffle french fries in town starts trickling in from 6 p.m. When a friendly mixologist makes his way to your table with a tinkling martini cart filled with the finest gins and vodkas from around the world, making almost indecent proposals to whip you up whatever you want right here and now, you know you’re in for a night of high-class indulgence. The vibe picks up around 11 p.m. with upbeat early-2000s house music and people swishing their cocktails and clinking Krug glasses as they hop from table to table. It’s a crowd of regulars, like Cheers—if draft beer were small-batch sake and Norm and Cliff were the beautiful people.GF RCBC Savings Bank Corporate Center, 25th & 26th St., Bonifacio Global City, Metro Manila; 63-2/ 544-5776; reservations recommended, the smarter your attire the better; drinks for two P1,000.

aBVDial-a-DrinkAn old-school speakeasy with the old-school touches to match, ABV is hidden behind a not-so-secret door in a fake phone booth that leads to a vintage elevator cage in the owners’ neon-lit, diner-style, burgers-and-hotdogs joint. Cozy banquettes, aged brick walls, flickering candlelight and rocking cocktails: the place is for me the ultimate vortex. Oddly funnel-shaped, with no windows to help ground you in time or location, it’s a seemingly civilized atmosphere lubricated by deliciously

potent drinks that abduct you for a few hours. It’s easy to go with the flow when partner Lee Watson is on hand for a hello hug and you’re sure someone you know is going to sweep through the curtains any minute. An entertaining observation I’ve made sober was that people are so blissfully unaware of their Stockholm syndrome, like willing prisoners of the whiskey sours and Moscow mules expertly crafted by ABV’s Diageo World Class mixologist Ken Bandivas, that many don’t realize their state until they get up and their knees buckle. Yes, the

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