Makara At Large Blog

Makara: The World's First Vietnamese Tiki Bar

"Makara Bar sits in the historic heart of Da Nang, Vietnam’s most livable city—modern, creative, and increasingly cosmopolitan. Nestled between mountains and sea, Da Nang has become a destination where world-class design, food, and culture are within easy reach. And at the center of it all is a bar that defies definition...."

Rum Ruminations

"Rum is vast and contains multitudes — to borrow from Walt Whitman. As a spirit, it’s nothing if not endlessly complex and generous. Unlike whisky, which follows strict traditions and classifications, or gin, which must always nod to juniper, rum defies easy definition. It’s a spirit made nearly everywhere and in every way, shaped by diverse lands, cultures, and histories...."

Tropical Escape Artists: The Evolution of Tiki from West to East

"Tiki, like many cultural inventions, is not easily defined. It’s part memory, part mirage; a cinematic pastiche of Polynesian aesthetics, Caribbean flavors, and mid-century American longing for escape. But beneath the kitsch and carved wood lies a deeper story—one of empire, artifice, ingenuity, and return...."

Makara: Drink in Da Nang's Lost Kingdom

"Step into Makara and you’ll feel it before you understand it—something ancient, something carved in spirit. The bar’s centerpiece—striking architectural curves of bamboo, rattan, light and shadow—was inspired by the temples of the lost Champa Kingdom. If you’ve visited Mỹ Sơn, the crumbling complex of towers hidden in the jungle outside Đà Nẵng, you’ll recognize the homage. This isn’t just decoration—it’s a deliberate reflection of the deep cultural roots beneath your feet...."

Surveying the Liquid Landscape: The Emerging Cocktail Culture of Da Nang

"What follows is a personal, unabashedly biased assessment of some of the best cocktail bars in Da Nang, not an attempt to dictate tastes or establish hierarchy. Quality of cocktails is one measure amongst many — originality of concept, atmosphere, service, longevity, and resilience in a challenging, transient industry all matter, too. Especially in a city like Da Nang, where enduring even a few years speaks volumes...."

Makara: Handcrafted Evenings for Two

"In the heart of Đà Nẵng, a romantic refuge awaits—an old Indochine house where bamboo and rattan soften the edges of the city’s noisy rush. Warm light filters through carved arches, settling into cozy corners that invite conversation and pause.... Makara’s atmosphere is intimate—a space for meaningful moments. It suits a first meeting as well as a quiet anniversary."

The Art of Hidden Escape: Makara as a Tiki Speakeasy

"'Like the tiki bars that inspired it, Makara is also hidden in plain sight. Nestled in an Indochine-era brick house, its small, subtle sign is the only hint to passersby that it’s anything more than a quiet residence. But step inside Makara, and the transformation is immediate: the interior celebrates Chăm-inspired bamboo and rattan architecture, alongside shamanic masks from ethnic groups around Vietnam. The atmosphere is immersive, transporting guests far from the ordinary streets outside.'

Not-So-Far-East: The Scarcity of Tiki Bars in Asia

"Tiki bars are a distinctly Western invention, but they owe much of their aesthetic and mythos to real and imagined visions of Asia and the South Pacific. One might expect that in a region teeming with tropical fruit, an abundance of rums and other spirits, and millennia of refined craftsmanship in materials and design, tiki bars would flourish naturally in Asia. Yet they remain, paradoxically, a rare phenomenon, confined almost entirely to a few major metropolitan centers."

From Arithmetic to Calculus: Classic Cocktails & Tiki Mixology

"Simplicity in a Negroni or Manhattan is not trivial; precision exposes skill, and even minor lapses reveal themselves in the glass, with nowhere to hide. But those simple classics operate within predictable bounds. Tiki, by contrast, lives in the realm of fluid systems—expansive, adaptive, and infinitely variable. Respect is owed to both, but the complexity of judgment rises exponentially as one moves from the codified clarity of the classics to the dynamic artistry of tiki mixology."

MAKARA Beat (with apologies to Kerouac)

eat (with apologies to Kerouac

"People come MAKARA’s way to hide or to be found — often both. Tourists with cameras that glow like little electric moons, locals who carry their evening like a practiced secret, lovers who share the straw of a dessert cocktail. They call it a speakeasy because you feel like you’ve broken a rule just by being there, though the rule is only that real magic requires consent…and indulgence. The bar’s whisper spreads the way good gossip does — the vibe, the service, the attention to divine and devilish detail — and folks speak its name the way jazz musicians repeat a favorite riff."

What is Tiki

"Say the word “tiki” aloud and an image arrives before any thought does: a carved wooden face, torchlight, a skull-shaped mug sweating in tropical air. Tiki is one of the most immediately legible aesthetics America has ever produced — instantly recognizable, endlessly reproduced, but often unexamined. Few who invoke the word could say where it comes from, what it once meant, or by what sequence of accidents it came to be stamped on rum drinks and bamboo-walled bars an ocean away from anything it originally named. That gap is worth dwelling in before it’s explained away."

Menus Without End: Cocktail Culture and the Dearth of Modern Classics

"Each year, cocktail bars around the world debut new menus with fanfare. Many do it annually; some do it seasonally; some do it whenever boredom, ambition, or Instagram metrics demand fresh blood. There are respectable reasons for this—seasonality, creative restlessness, staff engagement, the simple desire not to ossify. There are also less noble ones: ego, novelty-for-its-own-sake, the fear of seeming stagnant in an industry that often confuses motion with progress. Marketing certainly plays a role, as does professional vanity, and the terror of eternal repetition."

On Becoming Da Nang

"Da Nang is a city in the process of becoming—rapidly expanding but not yet settled into a fixed identity. It stretches unevenly between beachside high-rises, master-planned developments, aging shophouses, and remnants of American military infrastructure...."