Cat Bite Club

Two childhood friends, 200 bottles of agave and an entrance behind a coffee shop curtain.

Cat Bite Club is the second stop on a Duxton crawl, or a first date with someone who appreciates a good entrance: an agave-and-rice-spirits bar hidden behind a coffee shop, with the drinks to back up the trick. Start with the house margarita and work outwards. The compromise is size; the room is small, so groups of five or more should reserve, and everyone else can walk in.

Duxton Road has more bars per metre than most neighbourhoods, which makes this entrance the best joke on the street. Look for a neon-red Cheshire cat sign at Monument Coffee, then push through heavy grey curtains. On the other side is a deliberately unfinished room, minimal, rough at the edges and very much about the drinks; it held roughly two dozen people when it opened.

The people behind it explain the confidence. It opened in mid-2023 under operating partners and bartenders Jesse Vida, formerly head bartender at Atlas, and Gabriel Lowe, once bar manager of Paradise Lost in Bangkok, with Erika Fajilagot as head bartender. Vida and Lowe are childhood friends who started bartending together in San Francisco in 2007, and the bar draws on their Mexican and Asian heritage, which is the whole idea in one line: agave meets rice. It debuted on Asia's 50 Best Bars 51–100 list at No.77 in 2024 and is back on it in 2026, at No.86.

The shelf is the star: more than 200 bottles of agave, alongside soju, shochu, sake and baijiu. So the Cat Bite Margarita is the obvious opener, and the Soju Sprint, with Tokki soju, peach, honey, mint, citrus, sherry, absinthe and soda, is the other house signature. The classics have had the same agave-or-rice treatment: at launch the Negroni came either as the tequila-based Stoic Stare or the soju-based Bitter Rind. Newer drinks have included Mango Potato Boom, a shochu-and-cold-brew twist on the espresso martini, and Fajilagot's Ode to Ada, an agave old-fashioned with two mezcals and apricot liqueur, named for the pioneering bartender Ada Coleman. The elephant tiki mugs have been swapped for Merlion ones.

How to do it well: arrive during the early-evening happy hour, order the margarita, then ask for the agave or rice version of your usual. Order the milk punch if it's on: part of the proceeds go to local cat charities, which makes it the one round you can defend on moral grounds. Tanjong Pagar and Maxwell MRT are both a short walk.

Good to know Cat Bite Club is at 75 Duxton Road, a short walk from Tanjong Pagar and Maxwell MRT. Walk-ins are welcome; groups of five or more should reserve.

Cat Bite Club | 75 Duxton Road, Singapore 089534 | Nearest MRT: Tanjong Pagar, Maxwell