On Top, 18 On Lan Street | Biggest Rip Off Ever

Went to this bar called “On Top” which is on the 29th floor of a building on On Lan Street, Central – Hong Kong one weekend.

The atmosphere is quite good and the al fresco area is good for smokers.

But be very careful if you are ordering wines by the bottle in there; the sommelier is there to sell you over-priced wines. I went with some restauranteurs whom I thought knew the sommerlier well so I asked for his recommendation. The wine was already starting to drop off the edge which is why they were storing in a normal fridge (4 degrees) rather than a wine fridge (~16 degrees) because you could slow down the death of the wine by doing so. The wine came out really cold – colder than white wines and it was obvious it was already on the decline.

It was a Cote Rotie 2005 and they tried to charge HK$ 3,000 for the bottle (equivalent of ~300EUR) – the wine was terrible and it seems that the bar and the sommelier’s strategy is to rip people off. So Caveat Emptor.