For nearly three decades, Yangdup Lama has been making bars work better. Not just through the drinks. Through the people behind them, the culture around them and, over time, the bars themselves. Through Cocktails & Dreams, Sidecar, and years spent mentoring young bartenders, Lama has quietly influenced how India drinks today. Last year, Asia’s 50 Best Bars honoured him with its Industry Icon Award, effectively acknowledging a career spent shaping an industry rather than simply participating in it.
Which is what makes Bar Stormy feel different. For the first time, Lama wasn’t simply building another cocktail programme. He was designing the bar itself.
Hyderabad was a city Minakshi Singh and Yangdup Lama understood from the outside but needed to understand from within. That’s where Kishore Pallamreddy entered the picture. Best known for building Red Rhino Brewing Co. into one of South India’s leading craft beer brands, he’s spent years watching Hyderabad’s hospitality landscape mature, particularly in the Financial District where multinational offices grew in parallel with premium residential complexes and a growing wallet for better hospitality.
The timing of their partnership feels deliberate. Hyderabad’s Financial District has spent the last decade building the kind of audience hospitality operators dream about: young professionals with disposable incomes, global exposure, and an after-hours culture that’s steadily finding its feet. “Hyderabad has become one of India’s most dynamic hospitality markets,” says Pallamreddy. “The city has attracted a well-travelled and diverse audience that’s becoming more experimental, and cocktails are a natural next step in that journey.” Minakshi adds, with a chuckle, “It’s as if the right city, the right partner, and the right opportunity came together at the same time.”
Years behind the stick teach bartenders things no design school can. Where every bottle should sit, how many unnecessary steps exist between the ice well and the garnish station, and how quickly a service can unravel because of poor ergonomics. Lama’s learnings result into Yang’s Bar, a 19-foot counter fabricated using a specialised fingerprint-resistant stainless steel with three identical workstations where every bottle, garnish, refrigerator, and sink sits within easy reach. Bartenders stand higher than they normally would, reducing the hours spent hunched over a counter. The prep room remains completely visible, turning what most bars hide into part of the theatre.
“The funny thing about good bar design,” Lama tells us, “is that the guest should never really notice it. What they do notice is that someone is there to greet them immediately, their drink arrives quickly, the bartender isn’t constantly searching for something beyond their two-foot radius. Those little moments shape the overall experience.”
That philosophy extends beyond the counter. Stormy resists the polished sterility that often accompanies new hospitality projects. Just shy of 3,000 square feet, this 75-seater bar uses warm timber to soften the space and artwork by Hyderabad-based artists in collaboration with St+Art India and Guerrilla Art & Design.
The cocktail list is divided into three distinct parts. The first features 10 Stormy Signatures, where regional ingredients and local nostalgia take center stage. Imagine riffs on the local legendary Osmania biscuit or the aromatic temper of curry leaves. For example, Southern Storm is an inventive nod to curd rice; the Stormy State is their take on a Manhattan. The second section, Timeless Tails, offers eight “All Time Hits” like Foghorn, Cilantro, and Yang’s Old Fashioned that have migrated from the team’s other outposts. Finally, a quartet of Dark & Stormy variations anchors the menu, featuring a classic execution of rum, lime, and ginger beer. We particularly liked Stormy Shenanigans – gin with raspberry and blueberry, finished with a sharp chilli tincture.
But if there’s one surprise from the preview, it’s the food. It’s easy to walk into a bar expecting the kitchen to play a supporting role. Here, Chef Abhishek Halder’s tapas-styled menu keeps stealing scenes. The Wai Wai Bhel and Brie on Toast feels like the sort of thing one table orders before every neighbouring table follows suit. Skip the paratha slider part, and order two portions of the Mushroom Galouti; a soft, deeply comforting, decadent melt-in-your-mouth kebab. The Fried Yoghurt is crisp on the outside, light and creamy on the inside, with an earthy beetroot pachadi is dangerously delicious that demands an encore. By the time the Bone Marrow Nihari or Hangover Show Mein Bowl or Kundapur Prawn Pil Pil arrive, it becomes clear that this isn’t food designed to accompany cocktails. It’s food worth returning for in its own right.
The Financial District has spent years becoming the city’s engine room for business. The question is whether it can become a neighbourhood people choose to linger in after work, rather than simply leave behind. Bar Stormy is betting that it can. If it succeeds, it won’t simply be because they know how to make great cocktails, it’ll be because they understood something simpler.
People rarely fall in love with bars because of a single drink, but they do based on how a place makes them feel after the second one. And somewhere in the middle of that sits a bar counter that took nearly thirty years to draw. That, more than anything else, feels like the real reason to visit.
Address: 4th floor, 205, Myscape Stories, 205, Myscape Rd, Financial District, Hyderabad
Reservations: +91 7075943336
Timings: 4 PM – 12 AM on weekdays and 4 PM – 1 AM on weekends
