London to celebrate Asian cocktail culture with week-long Taste The Orient festival in June

A new week-long cocktail festival, Taste The Orient, will run across London from 22^nd to 28^th June 2026, bringing together 45 Asian bars and restaurants in a city-wide event organised by The Orientalist Spirits in partnership with the founders of London Cocktail Week. The festival aims to showcase ingredients and techniques drawn from across Asia, many of which rarely feature in Western cocktail bars.

Each participating venue will offer a Signature Serve created specifically for the festival, alongside short menus, tasting flights or food pairings. 

Among the cocktails featured is a reworked Martinez at Bar Lotus on Kingsland Road, priced at £15, which uses a house vermouth made from traditional Chinese medicinal botanicals. At Kioku by Endo at The OWO, two three-drink kaiseki-inspired flights are available at £30 each. The Meadow flight includes a serve using katsuobushi – dried fermented skipjack tuna – with white miso and jasmine, while the Woodland flight incorporates chanterelle, apricot, pine, Douglas fir, sloe and blackberry.

Lucy Wong in Fitzrovia is serving an Omija Tea Collins for £12, a gin cocktail using the Korean Omija berry, which carries five flavours simultaneously: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and spicy. Opium in Chinatown is offering the Citrus Ritual at £15, a gin sour with yuzu and salted lemon cordial finished with freshly grated Buddha’s Hand, a Chinese citrus prized for its fragrant oils. At Sexy Fish, current Bartender of the Year Sam Page has created a Pomelo Negroni at £10, batched and sous vide with toasted sansho peppercorns and finished with shiso distillate.

Hakkasan Mayfair offering includes their Signature Dirty Martini with The Orientalist Origins Vodka or The Orientalist Gunpowder Gin and the Lychee Martini. The specials by Lucky Cat entail Akai Ito – where warming rum balances with soft earl grey tea syrup, crowned with a delicate, aromatic lychee foam – and Between The Moon – a concoction elevated with yuzu-infused Martini Ambrato, fig liqueur, salt and chocolate bitters.

Among the other ingredients featured across the venueºs participating to Taste The Orient there are the Awamori, an Okinawan spirit distilled from long-grain indica rice, shio koji at The Aubrey, and sake kasu at Sticks n Sushi.

Attendance at the festival is free, although individual cocktails are charged and some experiences require pre-registration directly with venues.

The Orientalist Spirits was founded by Michel Lu as an Asian spirits house sourcing ingredients and distilling influences from across the continent. Taste The Orient is curated by Hannah Sharman-Cox and Siobhán Payne, who founded London Cocktail Week in 2010.

Food Desk

A full line-up and registration for the free Festival Guide is available at Taste The Orient’s website here.