Hop Sing Laundromat to host a residency with craft cocktail pioneer Toby Maloney

Academics do it. Fine artists do it. Performers do it. Why can’t a bartender enjoy a residency at a saloon?

Hop Sing Laundromat, the idiosyncratic Chinatown cocktail bar, will host a weekly residency by bartender Toby Maloney, who led Chicago’s The Violet Hour to the 2015 James Beard Award for outstanding bar program and wrote The Bartender’s Manifesto.

Maloney, who is relocating to Philadelphia, said by phone last week he expects to start behind Hop Sing’s nickel-topped bar at 1029 Race St. in November, working only Thursday nights at first. He also is planning to lead cocktail classes.

Maloney said his forthcoming menu of about 15 cocktails will be “a mixture of some old-school hits from the various bars that I’ve worked in, and also some experimentation. I’m going to stretch my wings creatively while still staying true to the stuff that got me here.” Hop Sing’s regular menu will not be offered during his nights.

“We take classic cocktails that are rooted in pre-Prohibition drinks, and we use a culinary approach to reimagining them,” said Maloney, who went to culinary school before opening such New York City bars as Pegu Club and Milk & Honey.

Hop Sing’s owner, who goes by Lê, will operate the bar Fridays and Saturdays. The bar has been closed since the summer and will reopen Oct. 7.

There is no end date to Maloney’s residency, which is following his work at the Chicago opening of Mother’s Ruin and the post-COVID reopening of The Violet Hour, which introduced craft cocktails to that city’s Wicker Park neighborhood in 2007. “We are not bringing Violet Hour out to Philadelphia, but we’re bringing the program that Toby had set up to Philadelphia,” Lê said.

They said they had been planning a joint project before the pandemic idled cocktail bars and indoor dining.

The two met while working at the Grange Hall in New York City’s West Village, years before Lê loaded up his car for a 70-day, 33,000-mile road trip to visit every craft cocktail bar in America in advance of Hop Sing Laundromat’s opening in 2012. Maloney helped to train the staff for Hop Sing’s opening.

The ornate, dimly lit Hop Sing Laundromat, which won notice from Esquire in 2019 as one of the best bars in America, is arguably Philadelphia’s quirkiest nightlife destination.

Prospective patrons push the buzzer at its unmarked gate to await a doorman, who might be Lê himself. They’re asked to produce a driver’s license and an original proof of COVID-19 vaccination or QR code — no cell phone photos or copies. If they’re wearing flip-flops, shorts, or sleeveless T-shirts, they are turned away. They are also banned if it is determined that they or someone in their party are among about 5,100 people on Hop Sing’s banned list, which Lê treats with TSA-like seriousness.

Among the indiscretions that can get someone on the banned list: poor tipping, talking on cell phones, and use of photography, video or recording devices “of any kind, anywhere or of anything, yourself included,” according to the house rules.

Those who are not on the banned list and who are deemed suitably attired are led to an anteroom, where rules are spelled out on a sign that concludes: “All simpletons found in violation of these rules will be asked to leave immediately.”

The only food served at Hop Sing are dishes of beef with broccoli for $49.99 and egg drop soup for $24.99, brought in from a nearby restaurant. It’s also cash only.

As for Maloney’s contribution: “It’s going to be serious cocktails, but we’re not going to take ourselves seriously,” he said. “It’s going to be a little more whimsical than some of the really hard-core cocktail methods that I’ve worked with. But it’s still going to be just really good, delicious stuff.”