Jay Khan, the Hong Kong bartender who co-founded the agave-focused bar Coa in 2017, was profiled by The Straits Times on his annual sourcing trips to Mexico and his campaign to popularize tequila and mezcal across Asia.
The piece, syndicated by outlets including Red Hot Singapore, covered Coa's cocktail menu, Khan's charity workshop series Mezcal Mission, and his recommendations for other bars worth visiting in Hong Kong.
Who is Jay Khan and how did Coa reach the top of Asia's 50 Best Bars
Khan was born and raised in Hong Kong to a family of Pakistani heritage. He started in hospitality on the floor of the city's Hard Rock Cafe before moving into a karaoke bar job, then spent a year bartending in Melbourne around 2009. Back in Hong Kong, he joined the opening team of Lily and Bloom, widely described as the city's first true cocktail bar, where he tasted mezcal for the first time. A first trip to Mexico followed in 2014, and a later brand ambassador role with Remy Cointreau gave him the runway to open his own venue. Coa opened on Shin Hing Street in 2017 as a bar built around tequila, mezcal and other agave distillates.
Coa's rise on the Asia's 50 Best Bars list has been unusually fast. It debuted at No. 12 in 2019, winning the Highest New Entry award, then jumped to No. 3 in 2020 while also claiming the Nikka Highest Climber award on the global list after moving from No. 49 to No. 8. Coa then won the Asia's 50 Best Bars title outright in 2021, 2022 and 2023, making it the first bar to take the top spot three years running since the ranking launched in 2016. In 2024 the Hong Kong bar Bar Leone, led by Italian bartender Lorenzo Antinori, took the No. 1 position, pushing Coa down to No. 4; Bar Leone repeated as champion in 2025, with Coa placed 17th that year.
What Mezcal Mission does with its charity proceeds
In December 2020, Khan and fellow agave enthusiast Andrew Davis launched Mezcal Mission, a series of paid tasting workshops that teach guests about tequila and mezcal production. The initiative's beneficiary has evolved: early sessions raised money for Habitat for Humanity Hong Kong, a nonprofit that repairs and builds housing for underprivileged residents, while more recent accounts describe proceeds going to ImpactHK, which supports the city's homeless population, and to the food-redistribution charity Feeding Hong Kong. More than 40 workshops have been held to date, according to Tatler Asia.
What's on Coa's menu and where else Khan sends drinkers
Coa stocks a spirits list that runs more than 40 pages and a backbar of over 200 bottles of mezcal, tequila, sotol and raicilla, sourced from producers Khan says he has visited personally at their distilleries. Its longest-running cocktail is La Paloma de Oaxaca, a tequila blanco and young mezcal drink cut with lime and grapefruit soda and rimmed with worm salt, an Oaxacan seasoning ground from toasted agave worms, dried chile and sea salt. A newer signature, the Smacked Cucumber, pairs a mezcal and tequila blanco base with a house-made Chinese salad sauce, lime, ginger, honey and chile, styled after the cold Asian cucumber dish it is named for. Asked by The Straits Times where else to drink in Hong Kong, Khan pointed to Mius, Bar Leone and Quinary, the last two of which have both placed on Asia's 50 Best Bars list in recent years.
Where this goes next
Profiles like this one track a broader pattern: Hong Kong's cocktail scene has held the No. 1 spot on Asia's 50 Best Bars for five straight years, first through Coa and now through Bar Leone, with agave spirits doing much of the work to get bartenders and drinkers there. What the coverage does not resolve is any independent account of the specific bottles behind Khan's bar program beyond his own descriptions; readers wanting scored comparisons of the tequilas he name-checks, such as those made by producers he has personally visited, will not find that detail in this reporting.