Cocktails & Wine

Meet the Team: Head Sommelier Francisco Nevot

We took a few moments to catch up with Head Sommelier Francisco Nevot on why he loves working in hospitality and his wine tips for all our guests in Hutong.

What inspired you to work in the industry?

It’s always been in my family. My aunt had a hotel in Spain where I grew up which had a lovely restaurant. I helped out when I was younger and worked there in the summers when I was at university.

How did you become a sommelier?

I started my career as a commis waiter at Galvin. I met a Spanish sommelier there who introduced me to the world of wine. He spent a lot of time with me, teaching me and letting me taste a lot of new wines I was not familiar with. I decided I wanted to be a sommelier and studied for my WSET courses. When I qualified I moved to Bluebird as a commis sommelier, I got promoted to sommelier quite quickly and really enjoyed my time there. I really developed when I worked at China Tang, there was an amazing sommelier team and my passion for wine just grew. Read more +

Enjoy a Chinese drinks pairing this Mid-Autumn Festival

To complement the complex and varied flavours of the Mid-Autumn Festival menu, our sommeliers and bar team have put together an optional drinks pairing highlighting Chinese wines and spirits.
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Chefs share their chilli expertise

Our Chilli Connoisseur Menu, available throughout November, has been proving extremely popular both with guests familiar with our northern Chinese cuisine and those intrigued enough by the menu to try it!

One wonderful effect of the menu has been to encourage guests to ask our team questions about the many varieties of chilli, how they are used in Chinese food and some of the myths and misconceptions around them. We thought it would be interesting to share some of the questions and answers here.
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Mid-Autumn Festival menu drinks pairing

To accompany our Mid-Autumn Festival Menu, our bar team and sommeliers have worked together to create an optional drinks pairing, showcasing Chinese wines and spirits and taking the moon as its inspiration.
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Feel the bite of our Red Snapper!

Although we only introduced our new cocktails a few weeks ago, some of the new drinks are already establishing themselves as firm favourites both with our guests and press. Indeed, olive magazine were so taken with our Red Snapper that they even asked us for the recipe to share with their readers!
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Feel better with our ‘Cocktail Cures’!

Chinese medicine is an ancient practice which employs herbs and plants to treat myriad conditions of the body and mind. For many centuries, the Chinese have chosen to use this traditional method in preference to ‘modern’ medicine, believing its natural, drug-free approach to be more beneficial to the human body than man-made medicaments.

Wishing to honour this long tradition respectfully but not without a little humour, the team in our Shanghai Bar developed our list of ‘Cocktail Cures’ – recipes using just a few of the many hundreds of ingredients which practitioners of Chinese herbal medicine believe to be beneficial.
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