Mostaccioli Brothers hides where the best Soho rooms often do, down a set of stairs between two buildings on Elgin Street. Time Out calls it one of Soho's best-kept secrets, a rustic Italian-American trattoria that keeps a real bar of its own, the Mos Bros Bar, for drinking rather than just waiting for a table.
The address is B/F and G/F, 16 Elgin Street, in the heart of Soho's restaurant grid. Time Out describes the layout in two parts: a small bar area for casual drinks and snacks, and a larger, high-ceilinged dining room with an open kitchen stocked with Italian pantry goods, both with their own alfresco space. The name nods to mostaccioli, the tube-cut pasta that runs through Italian-American cooking, and the whole room leans into that rustic, second-generation tradition rather than a polished modern Italian.
The room
The descent off Elgin Street is the charm. What opens up below is surprisingly tall and spacious for Soho, a trattoria built around an open kitchen with the bar set to one side. The Mos Bros Bar is the casual end, a counter for a drink and a snack while the dining room handles longer meals, and the alfresco seats give the basement a route back to street air. It is a neighborhood room, not a destination cocktail lab, and it plays that role with confidence.
Italian-American cooking is its own tradition, shaped by southern Italian immigrants who built hearty, tomato-rich plates around what American markets stocked in the late 19th century. The drinking culture that grew with it favored simple, food-friendly pours: a tumbler of red, a bitter aperitivo, a Negroni built to whet the appetite rather than end the night. Mostaccioli Brothers keeps that logic intact, which is why the bar reads as part of the meal rather than a separate event.
What to order
This is wine and aperitivo territory before it is a cocktail counter. The Italian-American table has a built-in drink logic: an Italian red or a bitter aperitivo cuts the richness of cured meats and tomato sauce, which is exactly the food coming out of this kitchen. Start with a Negroni, the Florentine classic of equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth that was designed in 1919 to stand up to food rather than dessert. Follow the bartender to an Italian red by the glass for the pastas and mains, and use the cold cuts and antipasti as the anchor the bar snacks are built to be. Daily hours from late morning to 11pm mean an early aperitivo is as easy as a late one.
Who it is for
Soho regulars after a relaxed drink with real food behind it, wine drinkers, and anyone who likes a room they have to find. It is value-minded and unfussy, a counterweight to the street's pricier cocktail dens. Set it beside the neighborhood's other Soho rooms in our Hong Kong cocktail bar ranking, near the Italian-styled Bar Leone and the agave-led Coa.
Best time to go
The early-evening aperitivo hour is the sweet spot, when the bar is calm and the kitchen is firing, before the Soho dinner rush fills the dining room. Weekday nights stay relaxed; weekends turn social. The two-floor alfresco layout means a warm evening can be spent half outdoors, a rarity for a Soho basement, and the late kitchen hours keep the bar useful well past the dinner rush when nearby cocktail rooms fill up. Plan the surrounding crawl with our Hong Kong guide and the global cocktail bars hub.
Sources
Reporting for this profile draws on Time Out Hong Kong, OpenRice Hong Kong, and Sassy Hong Kong.
