Zuma's lounge is the room you reach by climbing the spiral staircase. The Landmark restaurant on level five draws the headlines, but the bar above it on level six is where Zuma Hong Kong does its drinking, with cocktails on tap, a serious sake list and a DJ booth that turns a dinner address into a late room.
Zuma is the contemporary izakaya group founded by Rainer Becker, and the Hong Kong outpost has anchored The Landmark in Central for years. The Landmark's own listing describes the layout plainly: the restaurant occupies level five and connects by a dramatic spiral staircase to the lounge and bar on level six, where weekly live DJs and musicians play. That staircase is the design idea, a deliberate separation of the eating room below from the drinking room above.
The room
The lounge reads as the social counterweight to the kitchen's precision. The izakaya model Zuma is built on was never about formal courses; it is the Japanese tradition of drinking with food, where small plates arrive to keep pace with the glass rather than the other way round. Upstairs, that idea is given its own floor. There is a terrace that the venue turns into an after-work destination in the warmer months, with a curated cocktail-on-tap menu and DJ sets, so the bar shifts character through the week from quiet aperitif to a proper night out.
The robata grill anchors the Zuma kitchen, a charcoal hearth borrowed from the fishing villages of northern Japan, where the word itself means hearthside. That technique sets the flavor register the bar drinks against: smoke and char on the plate ask for clean, cold and precise in the glass. A bone-dry sake or a high-acid highball reads as the natural answer, which is why the lounge leans on sake and Japanese whisky rather than sweet, heavy builds.
What to order
Begin with sake, because Zuma's strength is a list deep enough to taste by style. Sake is brewed rather than distilled, and the key variable is how far the rice is polished: a daiginjo milled to the core drinks delicate and floral, while a junmai keeps more body and savor, and tasting two side by side is the fastest education the bar offers. The cocktails-on-tap program is the second move, batched and carbonated for consistency and speed, which is the modern bar technique of treating a signature drink like a draft line so every pour matches the last. The Japanese whisky selection rewards a neat measure with a question for the bartender. Bar snacks from the izakaya kitchen are built to sit beside all of it.
Who it is for
After-work crowds in Central, sake and Japanese whisky drinkers, and anyone who wants a polished room with a DJ rather than a quiet corner. It runs premium, in step with a Landmark address. Place it beside the city's other Japanese-leaning rooms in our Hong Kong cocktail bar ranking, near the izakaya-style The Aubrey and the sky-high Ozone.
Best time to go
The lounge suits the after-work hours, when the terrace and the tap cocktails come into their own, and it stretches later toward the weekend as the DJ takes over. Go early in the week for the sake list with room to talk, later for the music. The spring and summer terrace programming, which the venue builds around tap cocktails and DJ sets, is the moment the lounge is most worth planning a night around. Plan the night with our Hong Kong guide and the global cocktail bars hub.
Sources
Reporting for this profile draws on the official Zuma Hong Kong site, The Landmark venue listing, and hkclubbing.
