Native

Founded in December 2016 by Vijay Mudaliar (formerly of Operation Dagger), Native occupies a converted shophouse at 52A Amoy Street in the CBD's Telok Ayer / Tanjong Pagar quarter. The multi-floor concept pairs a ground-floor restaurant exploring locality through food with a cocktail bar of regional spirits and experimental drinks and an in-house fermentation lab, all guided by a sustainability-led philosophy built on local and regional ingredients.

Native has been a fixture on the world stage since it was named Highest Climber on The World's 50 Best Bars in 2018, jumping 34 places. In 2025 it ranked No. 45 on Asia's 50 Best Bars and No. 84 on The World's 50 Best Bars, cementing its reputation as one of Southeast Asia's most influential drinks destinations.

The zero-proof offering is a genuine anchor rather than an afterthought. As founder Vijay Mudaliar puts it, the bar keeps a non-alcoholic menu that equals the number of cocktails, none of it using refined sugar and drawing instead on hydrosols, edible oils and the team's ferments. Signatures include the Sereh Telang, a butterfly-pea build with lemongrass and calamansi, and a house Thai-style ginger beer of galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf and chili, each around S$12.

Fermentation underpins the whole program: the lab turns out kombuchas, misos, meads and a two-month koji-aged 'pineapple shoyu' made from fruit waste, letting the kitchen and bar lengthen and deepen local flavours that Singapore, with few alcohol producers of its own, would otherwise struggle to source. It is one of the clearest examples anywhere of a top-ranked cocktail bar treating no- and low-alcohol drinking with the same rigour as its spirits list.