Your boy is back on the streets, checking some new places for drinking in the city. These are not cocktail reviews. Vibes, music, conversation, stories, and sound take priority. The search is on for characters, challenging drinks, grandpa drinks in rocks glasses, and loud glassware.

This month... four places in one night: a Bund rooftop, a Filipino dive bar, a rice-cocktails place, and a Chinese craft beer bar in C-Park.

The Dome / Sky Dome

Bund Emotions of Yesterday, Updated

Bar Rouge? Glamour Bar? Attica?? ...CIRQUE LE SOIR?? Damn.

The Bund was very much a party place in the 2000s and early 2010s. Nights there were as routine as nights at INS are now. It's hard to say exactly when this Bund era ended, but it was over long before M and Bar Rouge finally shuttered in 2022.

But when I stepped out of the Didi at No. 1 Yan'an Lu last Thursday and maneuvered past big groups of Europeans, I suddenly had flashbacks to those days. That 2010s Bund feeling is strong here at The Dome and Sky Dome, a multi-level endeavor from the team behind The Fellas, Goodfellas, La Suite, and Captain Bar.

The Dome is the 5th-floor sushi restaurant and lounge that opened in December. Sky Dome is the 6th-floor terrace bar that opened this month, with a circular bar, dancefloor, two terraces, and room for about 150 people.

Like back in the day, the roof was full of models and bottles, continentals wearing nice linen, house and disco music, cocktails, old world wines, heavy glass ashtrays, and panoramic views of the Huangpu. There's also a wide selection of sake and some yakitori. Down the stairs, the sushi spot was still quite busy at 11pm, with guests ordering both à la carte and omakase from a Japanese chef.

Next door in a dark lounge glowing with red lanterns, a cyber samurai holding a disco ball stood quietly in the corner, perhaps waiting to start the party.

This place is the total opposite of C-Park, and that's good. Cities need variety and different neighborhoods.

Juanito's 2

Filipino Food, Strong Cocktails, Family Vibes

Just above the Family Mart and across from beautiful Xiangyang Park is the second outpost for Filipino bar/café/restaurant Juanito's. Back in 2023, the bar manager of Italo and The Parrot opened the first Juanito's at Shankang Li in Jing'an, and it's become a home-away-from-home for the Filipino expat community in Shanghai.

It's the kind of place with mezcal cocktails and complimentary shots flying around, a big menu of Filipino food like adobo and sisig, cold cans of Red Horse and San Miguel, and a reputation for strong pours.

On my first visit to the new location, bartender Matt immediately made me feel at home. We talked about Legoland and Happy Valley over a mezcal cocktail while he poured complimentary Fireball shots and asked if I wanted to pick the music.

It's just a real friendly atmosphere where you can easily chat with the bartender and other guests. While I asked for a lighter drink, this place could easily descend from "one or two quick drinks" after IAPM into oh damn suddenly it's 3am and you're in a Xiangyang Park pagoda in the rain talking about life.

At night, Juanito's 2 feels like a dive bar. By day, the big windows overlooking the park give it a different energy. The next afternoon, it was half full of people having coffee chats in the cool AC.

十 Sodam

Candles & Rice-Based Cocktails

Sodam came recommended by a friend, and it was the most intriguing destination on this quest: a bar focused on rice-based cocktails.

Shaoxing Lu is a quiet, narrow street with several bars, like Baowu, Dean's Bottle Shop, Ethereal Ruins, and this candlelit room that opened last November. When I pulled up around 12:45am, it felt like last call and the bartenders let me know it, but they quickly warmed up.

The menu is short but full of intrigue: a mango sticky rice cocktail, soju cocktails, something topped with a peanut butter cookie, and many others. Naturally, I went for the one named "Rice". The bar snack here is guoba, the crispy rice crust that forms at the bottom of the pot, and when you dip that into this Rice, it's like eating some rare cereal you never knew existed.

According to one bartender here, the rice concept came about when the bosses, one Korean-Canadian and the other from China, realized the one thing they had in common was rice. This is their first collaboration, and it works really well — just a great, simple concept executed smoothly.

Laid-back hip hop and R&B on the stereo, partially exposed concrete walls, real candles, good convo, and impressive glassware. Another bartender, an alumnus of Bar Blanc, explained how Sodam does classics with a rice twist: sakitinis, rice soju old fashioneds, rice daiquiris, that kind of thing.

This place feels warm without trying too hard.

Good Good Beer House

Chinese Craft Beer on Two Dozen Taps, in C-Park

All roads lead to C-Park? Even on a Thursday, there were three good parties there that night, plus this new beer bar in a recently unlocked C-Park map, just around the corner from Illum.

Good Good Beer House is the sequel to the Julu Lu beer bar known as Good Good, which specializes in craft beer from all over China. Again, just a good, simple concept here: Chinese craft beer served fresh and cold, via 24 taps.

Add some camping chairs, a pool table, a foosball table, and a boss named King, and that's about it.

Somehow this reminds me of a Windows bar for 2026, sans the burgers and Simpsons shirts. I settled on a small Kölsch for 35rmb because it was that time of night and because it was the bar's own brew. Very crispy and ideal.

This place stays open until like 4am, there's technically only one wall, and you can get beers in proper glassware or take them to go as you wander around the rest of the underground mall.

It's a good refueling stop for your C-Park adventures.