Enter Ocho, an unassuming bar-tools shop on Fuxing Zhong Road, push the right section of shelving, and a hidden bookshelf swings aside to reveal a staircase. Climb it and you pass through a stack of bars, each more exclusive and more expensive than the last, ending in a members' room lined with rare whisky. This is Speak Low, the bar that brought a global-standard speakeasy to Shanghai and, by its founder's own account, changed the Chinese bar scene.
We rank Speak Low No. 4 on our guide to the 25 best speakeasies in the world, and the finest speakeasy in Asia. It is a textbook example of the form, a genuinely concealed entrance, escalating tiers of intimacy, and drinks that fuse New York technique with Japanese precision, executed to a standard that few bars anywhere can match.
The bookshelf and the bars above it
Speak Low's entrance is one of the most satisfying in the world. From the street it is simply Ocho, a shop selling cocktail equipment; the way through is a convincing false bookcase at the back that opens onto a narrow brick passage and a staircase. What lies beyond is not a single room but a vertical sequence of bars of ascending formality and cost. The lower level is lively and affordable, with classically led cocktails; the middle floor, historically reached by a further sliding panel, is more intimate and inventive, built around a polished copper-top bar; and the top floor is an exclusive, members-focused space where the rarest whiskies are poured beneath exposed rafters.
That layered structure is the whole idea. Rather than hide one room, Speak Low hides several, letting guests ascend through gradually more rarefied spaces, so that the sense of discovery does not end at the bookshelf but continues with every flight of stairs. It is a speakeasy built as a journey.
Shingo Gokan: the bartender behind the bookshelf
Speak Low is the creation of Shingo Gokan, one of the most influential bartenders of his generation. Japanese by birth, Gokan moved to New York in his early twenties and became head bartender at Angel's Share, the pioneering hidden Japanese cocktail bar in the East Village that he calls America's first modern speakeasy. In 2012 he won the global Bacardí Legacy cocktail competition with a drink he named "Speak Low," and when he opened his own bar in Shanghai in 2014, he gave it the same name.
His stated concept was simple and evocative: "What if Prohibition happened in Shanghai?" He set the bar inside an old Shanghai house and added a Chinese touch to the 1920s speakeasy template, insisting the theme be authentic and letting word of it spread organically. Gokan has since built the SG Group into one of Asia's most important bar companies, with venues including Sober Company in Shanghai and The SG Club in Tokyo, and he was named the Industry Icon at Asia's 50 Best Bars in 2021. He remains the creative force behind Speak Low's menus.
East meets West in the glass
The cocktail that gave the bar its name captures Gokan's signature style. His "Speak Low" combines Bacardí Superior and Solera rums with Pedro Ximénez sherry, matcha and yuzu, and its defining move is a piece of tea-ceremony theatre: the rum is whisked with matcha using a traditional matcha whisk before being shaken and served. It is a neat encapsulation of the whole bar, Japanese ritual and precision applied to a Western cocktail format, with an Asian ingredient at its heart.
That East-meets-West sensibility runs through the drinks across all the floors, from approachable classics on the lower level to more experimental, concept-driven serves higher up. Gokan has said that if the concept of a bar is strong, everything else, the menu, the music, the interior, the service, follows from it, and Speak Low is the proof: a bar where the drinks, the design and the ritual all pull in the same direction.
The menus themselves rotate and evolve, which is part of the point of returning; Gokan has said he creates the great majority of the drinks across his Shanghai bars himself, building each from a concept rather than a formula. Early visitors noted characterful house pours on the lower floor, and the higher you climb the more the list tilts toward the experimental and the spirit-forward, culminating in the top floor's focus on rare and Japanese whiskies. Rather than a fixed set of signatures, then, Speak Low offers a moving target of well-made, concept-driven drinks, which is exactly why regulars keep coming back to see what has changed.
Recognition
Speak Low arrived as a fully formed international-standard bar in a city that had not had one, and the accolades followed. It reached No. 10 on The World's 50 Best Bars in 2017 and remained on the global list later in the decade, placing No. 35 in 2019. On the regional list it hit No. 2 at Asia's 50 Best Bars in 2017 and continued to feature in the following years. The World's 50 Best has described it as a hidden speakeasy institution that, though no longer quite the secret it once was, still holds a place in the upper echelons of both the world's and Asia's rankings.
The critical consensus is striking. Difford's Guide called Speak Low "a speakeasy of such textbook perfection that it set the bar for all the rest when it opened in 2014," a verdict that captures its influence: this is not just a great hidden bar but a reference point for how the format should be done.
The SG Group and a bar-building empire
Speak Low was the foundation of what has become one of Asia's most influential bar companies. Under the SG Group, Gokan followed it with Sober Company, a sprawling Shanghai venue combining a cafe, restaurant and cocktail bar that opened in 2017, and The SG Club in Tokyo's Shibuya, which opened in 2019, along with a growing family of related venues and the SG Shochu spirit brand. Across all of them Gokan applies the same principle he used at Speak Low: begin with a strong, specific concept, and let it dictate the menu, the music, the uniforms and the interior so that everything hangs together. It is a philosophy of coherence, and it explains why his bars feel so complete.
That body of work has made Gokan a genuine industry figure, not just a bar owner. He was named the Industry Icon at Asia's 50 Best Bars in 2021, recognition of an influence that reaches well beyond any single room. Yet Speak Low remains the origin point of it all, the bar where the SG approach was first proven and where the company's identity was forged.
A speakeasy for a changed city
Part of what makes Speak Low significant is timing and place. When it opened in 2014, Shanghai simply did not have a bar operating at global cocktail standards, and Gokan has said he believes Speak Low changed that, giving the city its first world-class reference point and helping to spark the speakeasy and craft-cocktail wave that followed across China. He was determined that the concept should be authentic rather than a costume, and he let word of the hidden bar spread organically, a slow build that suited both the speakeasy conceit and the moment, as social media was just beginning to knit the city's drinkers together.
The setting reinforces the story. Speak Low occupies an old house in the former French Concession, one of Shanghai's most atmospheric districts, and the "what if Prohibition happened in Shanghai" premise is grounded in that specific, local sense of place rather than a generic 1920s pastiche. It is a speakeasy that feels rooted in its city, which is exactly why it reads as authentic rather than imported.
How to visit
Speak Low sits at 579 Fuxing Zhong Road in Huangpu, in the old French Concession. Cocktails average around the equivalent of nineteen US dollars, rising as you climb, since each ascending floor is more premium than the one below. Access has traditionally scaled with exclusivity too: the lower floor is the most open, the middle floor has generally needed a reservation on busy nights, and the top floor is effectively members-and-regulars only. Policies at bars like this evolve, so confirm the current reservation and access arrangements before you go.
Whatever the details on the night, the essential experience is constant: a bar-tools shop, a false bookcase, a brick tunnel, and a climb through a series of increasingly intimate rooms toward a whisky sanctum at the top. Few speakeasies reward the effort of getting in quite so richly.
What to expect on the night
Because Speak Low is really several bars in one, no two visits feel quite the same, and part of the pleasure is choosing your altitude. Arrive early and stay on the lower level and you get a lively, sociable room and well-made classics at the most approachable prices. Climb to the middle floor, with its polished copper-top bar, and the mood turns more intimate and the drinks more inventive, the domain of Gokan's more experimental, concept-led serves. Reach the top and you are in a hushed, exclusive space built around rare and Japanese whiskies, the reward at the end of the ascent.
That vertical structure is the clearest expression of the speakeasy idea taken to its logical conclusion: exclusivity as a gradient rather than a single locked door. It also means Speak Low rewards repeat visits and a little planning, since the higher floors are harder to reach and worth the effort. Come with time to spare, let the evening unfold floor by floor, and you experience the full arc the bar was designed to deliver, from the false bookcase at street level to the whisky sanctum at the top.
The verdict
Speak Low is Asia's benchmark speakeasy and one of the most complete examples of the form anywhere. It has the concealed entrance, the layered sense of discovery, the pedigree of a world-class founder, and drinks that marry two great cocktail cultures with real finesse. More than that, it changed a city: before Speak Low, Shanghai had no global-standard cocktail bar, and afterward it had a scene. For its craft, its influence and its textbook execution of the hidden-bar concept, it earns fourth place on our list, and a spot on any serious drinker's itinerary.
See how it compares in our 25 best speakeasies in the world, or explore more in our Shanghai guide.