Taipei’s new wave of watering holes are reshaping the city’s nightlife scene with inventive liquid creations and accompanying bites.
The lights are low, the crowd is hushed but appreciative. On stage, local songbird Ann Cai eases into a languid rendition of the classic tune The Girl From Ipanema, followed by a pared-back, unexpectedly tender take on Michael Jackson’s Love Never Felt So Good.
We are down in the basement of The Glasshouse, one of Taipei’s latest after-dark venues, where Playback, an intimate 50-seat live music hangout has been drawing the city’s audiophiles. Hiding in plain sight, it is one of three concepts housed in the newly launched The Glasshouse, an ambitious standalone food and beverage endeavour by Capella Taipei.
Its emotional core is unmistakably Taiwanese. After all, music deeply anchors the local psyche – this is a city raised on Mandopop, where heart-stirring lyrics are memorised, ballads offer soundtracks to entire life chapters, and singers are adored.
This is one of the reasons why just two months into its opening, Playback, which also doubles as a vinyl listening room, already feels poised to become a hotspot. The eclectic roster of live performances certainly helps to keep things exciting, with a line-up of emerging artists and seasoned musicians across genres and eras, including, yes, Mandopop. And with the Taipei Arena just across the road, this may even turn out to be the sort of place where a chart-topping musician might drop in for an unplugged set. Who knows?
Yet, as serendipitous as Playback feels, it is no accident. The Glasshouse is itself deliberately situated in a separate building about 150m from the luxury hotel itself, so as to create a destination bar unmoored from the usual expectations of a luxury hotel lounge, one that sits better with Taipei’s lively nocturnal vibes.
“Taipei is the right city for this kind of experimentation because of its vibrant nightlife, multicultural openness and growing confidence as a creative capital,” says Capella Taipei’s general manager Dennis Laubenstein.
“By stepping outside the traditional hotel setting, The Glasshouse introduces a new social energy to the city, one that bridges luxury hospitality with authentic local culture and invites both travellers and locals to experience Taipei through a more contemporary, expressive lens.”
Indeed, this city long celebrated for its night markets and comforting street food has been gradually entering a more polished phase of its food-and-drink evolution. A new generation of mixologists is drawing confidently from Japanese precision, Western technique and distinctly Taiwanese ingredients to craft drinks that offer a clear sense of place. And to mix things up even more, these Taiwanese bars are no longer just places to drink, but are platforms for culinary expression too, with chow that is thoughtfully reimagined and elevated.
Best Taipei bars for a tipple
Across Taipei’s buzzy venues, this confidence is playing out in different ways. For instance, at Soil by FujinTree, the new cocktail-focused offshoot of the one Michelin-starred Fujin Tree Taiwanese Cuisine, the same reverence for seasonal produce carries seamlessly from kitchen to bar.
Over at retro-themed Hiboru, guests are drawn not just to its impeccably crafted highballs, but also its hearty izakaya-style reinterpretations of Taiwanese street-food classics like fried chicken, braised meat platters and comforting fish noodles. And bar-hoppers often end up closing up the night at local stalwart, the British pub-inspired The Public House, for craft cocktails as well as the bar’s signature – a cup of warm, comforting chicken soup.
This spirit of thoughtful experimentation is showcased at The Glasshouse’s first-floor, Art Deco-inspired see-and-be-seen cocktail bar Tilt, where Taiwanese ingredients are transformed into liquid love letters to the island’s diverse terroir. Concocted by head bartender Bryant Lu, who hails from southern Taiwan, each cocktail spotlights a carefully sourced local ingredient, from sun-kissed guava from Kaohsiung, to Ponkan tangerines from Yunlin, and cocoa beans from the southern highlands of Pingtung. His goal is to evoke a sense of “cultural resonance and curiosity”.
He reflects, “I hope that every cocktail can become a vehicle for conveying Taiwanese culture, allowing travellers from all over the world to feel our respect for the land and our dedication to detail through their taste buds.”
Traditional meets tipples
It is a sentiment echoed by Yumi Yoshino Cheng, director of Soil by FujinTree. The former head bartender of acclaimed Tokyo cocktail bar The Bellwood relocated to Taipei about a year and a half ago, bringing with her a knack for translating local practices and highlighting flavours to create inventive cocktails. A highlight is Morning Boost, a playful nod to breakfast ingredients like coffee, peanut butter, and bread transformed into a nightcap with bourbon and fernet, topped with a sourdough rusk designed for dipping. For a fresh sip, the Gin and Tropical cocktail layers the juiciness of passionfruit and mangosteen with subtle sparks of Sansho pepper in an aromatic reminder of Taiwan’s lush landscapes and breezy coastal air.
Yoshino Cheng says Taiwanese teas, with their varied flavour and scent profiles, consistently spark her palate. Currently on the menu is The Coldbrew Bamboo, which features tieguanyin tea that is cold-brewed in sherry and vermouth to create a fragrant, layered base that anchors the cocktail.
Tea lovers may also wish to pay Tei by O’bond a visit. This reservations-only speakeasy, which is an offshoot of the one-Michelin-starred Wok by O’Bond, is hidden behind a tea house and can only be accessed after a tea ceremony. It comes as no surprise that the cocktails all feature different types of tea. The revelation lies in just how far this single ingredient can be pushed, from crisp and floral to deep and umami-leaning. There may be no better place in Taipei than this elegantly designed, dimly lit bar to meditate upon and savour Taiwan’s varied terroir while sipping your tipple.
Beyond boundaries
For an entirely different experience, head to the always-buzzy Da’an outpost of cocktails-on-tap pioneer Draft Land. Thread through the crowd and climb upstairs to Testing Room, where what began as a research lab for developing new drinks has since evolved into a quietly subversive bar in its own right.
Here, there is no need to choose your poison. The menu spotlights flavours instead, listing only the key fruits, herbs, spices and other non-alcoholic ingredients. Think pineapple, peanut, longan, ginger and the like. The spirits, notably, are left unspoken and revealed only if you ask. The result is a tasting experience that feels both playful and considered, blurring the line between cocktail bar and sensory workshop. It mirrors a broader shift in drinking culture, one that privileges intention and curiosity over labels and palate over pure intoxication.
No wonder, then, that Taipei has garnered a reputation as one of Asia’s most exciting cities to drink in. And it is likely there is no place that pushes the boundaries of mixology as much as speakeasy UnDer lab, ranked No. 73 on the 2025 Asia’s 50 Best Bars list.
Here, cocktails are offered as an omakase-style, food-pairing journey woven around a theme. The current menu, Absurdism: Jellyfish in the Desert, unfolds as a surreal sand-sea narrative that deliberately blurs fantasy and reality, nodding to real-world drinks such as Moroccan tea while drawing deeply from Taiwan’s seasonal larder as well as unexpected ingredients.
The experience borders on theatre. Behind the tasting counter, founder Pei Liu whips up cocktails with flair. Take Leben, an Arabian fermented milk drink reimagined with the bar’s umami-driven house gin, green mango and tea, conjuring the brine of a salt lake. The food pairings push the illusion further. In Jellyfish in the Desert, ostrich meets Taiwanese red-plum wine jelly and a foamed bonito-konbu sauce, evoking a jellyfish drifting across sand.
It is experimental, occasionally disorienting and crucially, tasty. Most of all, it offers a tantalising glimpse of where Taipei’s cocktail scene may be headed next. We’ll gladly toast to this.
Note : The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.