What a cocktail bar is in Pattaya, and where the real ones are
Pattaya is a beer city, and a cocktail here is usually a tall glass of something sweet with an umbrella, made by a bartender who was hired for a different skill. The real cocktail rooms, where somebody has learned the classics and the ice is clear, are few, and the list above finds them by Google's rating and the reviews' mentions of the drinks rather than of the staff. Moon Whale on the roof, Gatsby on our soi, Bar Voyage and Ronin in their small rooms, and the Marquee, which is a Lambretta bar and cafe with a proper list, are the ones people who care about the drink name unprompted.
Gatsby is the one that matters most to this site because it is on Soi Diana, two minutes from our gate, and because it is the hour before the band. A lounge with a low light, a list that reads like a list, a bartender who makes an old fashioned the slow way, and a crowd that dressed for it. It is quiet at seven and full at nine. The way to use it is one drink, made properly, at half past seven, and then the walk down the soi to the hall for eight.
Trench Town and Hemingways are on the list because Google puts them there and the reviews mention the cocktails, and they are not cocktail bars in the sense above: one is a reggae bar with a rum list and the other is a sports bar with a kitchen and a bartender who tries. The list says what Google says. The paragraph says what the counter knows.
Cocktails at our counter, with the caveat
Save and Bank make cocktails, and the shot list is long and odd, and the caveat is that we are a bar beside a stage and not a lounge. The ice is ice. The glass is the glass we have. What you get is a drink made by somebody who has made it a thousand times, in a room at twenty degrees with a band three metres away, and if you order it at half past seven you will get it with attention and if you order it at half past ten you will get it fast. Regulars who want a cocktail made slowly go to Gatsby first. Regulars who want one made well while the band plays stay.
The rule for a cocktail in Pattaya is to order the classics. A gin and tonic, an old fashioned, a margarita, a mojito: things the bar has made before and has the ingredients for. Order the thing on the menu with six ingredients and a name and you will get a sweet tall glass anywhere in the city except the five rooms named above.
The list above is Google's rating weighted by review count, the rule stated so you can argue with it, and every entry has its distance from our counter. Gatsby is two minutes. Moon Whale is a bus. Our counter is at the back of the hall, three metres from the drummer, and the drink is the second reason to sit at it.
