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Is that wasabi I can taste? This isn’t your regular Bloody Mary, but then this is not your regular afternoon at one of Saigon’s best-known five-star hotels either.

The ballroom at Le Méridien has Saigon’s early May sun bursting through its river view windows and right into the room.

People are milling around with purpose in all kinds of dress.

I’m not entirely sure how I got here or when I agreed to this, but less than 24 hours after hearing about it, I knew I had to head down south from Hanoi.

A runway has been erected down the middle of the room. A sound check is going on at one end. The Bloody Mary is helping.

This is the Saigon Cocktail Festival 2026.

Some may recall the 2024 edition, held at Saigon Outcast in Thao Dien, where a VND50,000 (US$1.90) ticket offered one possible answer to how to spend a Sunday afternoon.

This, however, poses another.

Outcast, alongside regular musical collaborators FTWR, is still running the show, but this year’s edition is not so much their baby as its older sibling in a suit. Today, that suit takes the form of an aodai.

Over the course of the afternoon, six fashion designers used the aodai to make their case for the national dress in 2026.

The runway is part of a effort to add a thematic element to the day’s proceedings and to elevate the afternoon beyond what events in such venues can often default to: corporate gala, sponsored networking, industry chat.

Festival partner and cocktail co-curator Jay Moir puts the vision plainly: “The goal wasn’t to create a standard drinks expo or large-scale drinking event, but more of a cultural hospitality platform that blended cocktails, fashion, music, creative communities, and the city itself together in one space.”

Chula, More Than Blue, Dinh Bach Dat, SexyBack, and My K.D.V each took their turn in front of a packed room. Contemporary, playful, a little rebellious. The show more than held the room.

This was in no small part due to Richie Fawcett, the British artist behind The Studio Saigon, who in his signature tongue-in-cheek but certainly-not-shy fashion reminded a few of the less captivated revellers that there was a little more to the day than mezcal-fuelled gossip.

Richie arrived in Ho Chi Minh City as a bartender by way of Hong Kong and has quietly shaped some of the modern city cocktail scene. The session pulled together the threads of his career. Sketches from the third and apparently final volume of his book on HCMC’s colonial history sat alongside cocktails poured to match, a meditation on the city’s transition from colonial port to modern metropolis.

His Wink Hotels aodai collection opened the runway, but his introduction had come earlier in the afternoon with his masterclass: Cocktail Art Peace Journey.

With upwards of 30 individual drinks served up, it was somewhat optimistic of me to think I could make my way through anything approaching the full offering. And a fair few stood out.

Hybrid took the Golden Shaker in the public vote, and the win felt earned.

The Saigon outpost of their original Nha Trang venture, which became the first Vietnamese bar to land on Asia’s 50 Best Bars back in 2021, operates at the molecular end of the cocktail spectrum: think centrifuges and rotary evaporators.

Their Penicillin Milkshake folded salted whipping cream into ginger honey and Famous Grouse to a decadent finish; their Maestro Mushroom worked shiitake and chicken fat into something far more refined than such rugged ingredients might suggest. The whole concept is built around the chemical formula of ethanol.

Le Méridien’s own Barson, alongside Barbaard, rounded out the podium.

Summer Experiment’s Silk Road Colada was further evidence of why Jay Moir’s bar made the same Asia’s 50 Best list. Nep Cam (black rice)-infused Grant’s Triple Wood whisky and Sichuan honey, finished with winter melon, pineapple and coconut.

At first glance, you may wonder how such a concoction can do justice to these ingredients while still feeling distinct. Tasting, as they say, is believing. It’s a delight.

Barbaard themselves are a story. One of the finest barbershops in the country, they have managed to translate the same classic approach and craft sensibility into cocktail bars that received recognition from the likes of Tatler, the international lifestyle and society magazine, in 2025.

Third on the day this year, their Ca Phe Muoi Highball, salted caramel cream over Dak Nong coffee, Tito’s and sparkling water, had me returning throughout the afternoon, acting as my fuel for the occasion. I may attempt to insist it makes an appearance on their regular menu up north.

Tatler’s Best of Vietnam gala had been held the night before at the nearby Sofitel Plaza. Something Saigon Outcast founder Nguyen Linh later called “a happy industry coincidence” gave the whole weekend the feel of an extended hospitality summit.

The Tatler 20 Best for 2026 list itself drew in six of the festival’s 10 bars: Hybrid, Summer, Layla, Raw + Atelier, STIR, and The Enigma Mansion. An indicator of just what level this festival was at.

Enigma’s contribution to the festival was the most aromatic drink of the day. Their Sandalwood layered Grant’s Blended Scotch with galangal and a smoke-infused sandalwood mixer, finished with a banana cream tonic. Erythritol kept the sweetness in check.

Herbal, smoky, properly grown-up. I discovered this late into the evening and leant on it to prop me up through the final stages. It was a refreshing change from a day brimming with sweetness.

Saigon cocktails are, on the whole, sweeter than I am used to up north. A boozy limoncello arrives with an actual lollipop. Coconut, pineapple, and salted caramel run through more than one menu.

Attendees at Saigon Cocktail Festival on May 10, 2026. Photo by @daitranphotographer

Reflecting on the day, I think about how Saigon got here. Competition is climbing almost as fast as commercial rent, yet this afternoon felt like a quiet answer to both.

In a market where one could easily assume the rivalry was as bitter as the drinks they sell, there was a notable sense of camaraderie and excitement.

You cannot get all the customers into all the bars, but you can bring all the bars to the customers. All you need is a Sunday. Festivals are increasingly how brands flex their creativity, test new concepts, and claim a corner suite in their customers’ minds.

The F&B industry got there first, largely because they have always been the most natural community-builders Vietnam has, and partly because they know how to throw a decent party.

Burgers, tacos, craft beer, rum, pizza. Now cocktails.

The modern cocktail industry has worked something out that older trades took rather longer to grasp. The bar across the road is not the enemy. He is the friend who sends you regulars when his place is full, who lends you a bottle of bitters at midnight, and who turns up on his night off to drink at your stations.

Nowhere was this more visible than today, where 10 of the city’s most ambitious cocktail bars agreed not only to share a ballroom but to charge a flat VND150,000 ($5.70) for every drink they poured.

The industry has learned to balance the best of practice with the best of times. A golden age of collaboration, with artistry providing enough cover for what could otherwise be debauchery.

Vietnam is an emerging economy where sectors mix freely, casuals and regulars and artists sharing the same room, with a sense of knowing each other and knowing there is always another one round the corner. Long may they continue, and here’s to the next one.

*AF Reeves is a Hanoi-based columnist exploring the intersection of food, beverage and life in Vietnam.