Art and complexity at FiftyFive Coffee Bar

FIFTYFIVE Coffee Bar founder Nick Liu is a passionate home-brewer of coffee, calibrating parameters such as temperature and particle size to extract the subtlest notes. He brings this same focus on flavours to the Neil Road bar, which serves coffee by day and cocktails on weekend nights.

“Some people drink coffee just for the caffeine, and cocktails just for the alcohol,” says Liu. He instead encourages “intentionality” in appreciating these beverages: “I want to show people that... in a similar way to coffee, cocktails can have a lot of tasting notes as well.”

The second-floor shophouse space has a familiar minimalist aesthetic – white surfaces and dark wood – but also the unexpected centrepiece of a large sandbox, as well as suspended fishing nets.