Rising Star: Mostly Harmless Owner Ezra Star on Her Journey to the Pinnacle | Prestige Online

After reaching the pinnacle of the global bar industry aged just 31 with Drink in Boston, Mostly Harmless owner Ezra Star uprooted to Hong Kong, started from zero again during the pandemic and since found solace by redefining herself.

Since the city’s reopening, life in Hong Kong may have returned to some sort of normalcy, but moving on can still be challenging. Whether you’re making small talk with strangers or engaging in conversation with friends and family, life during Covid almost always comes up. Most of us put our lives on hold in the last four years, trading ambition for survival, especially for those who work in the hospitality industry. Those of us familiar with the trade will have heard of numerous closures of restaurants and bars, and new openings being postponed indefinitely. But for Mostly Harmless’ owner and bartender Ezra Star, the pandemic gave her the perfect opportunity to realise a long-held dream.

“It was hard,” she says. “It makes you re-evaluate everything. But at a certain point, you’ve got to make a decision: either I’m going to pull out of this or fully commit, which is what I did.

“Covid allowed me to open Mostly Harmless quietly, because I could just open a little bit here and there, and take my time. Nobody in Hong Kong knew what I’d done before, so I could do it under the radar. If I’d opened in New York or London or Paris, I would’ve had a lot of pressure from people’s expectations, and I don’t think I could have done it in the same honest way I did it here.”

And honest it is. Mostly Harmless sources ingredients as locally as possible, with many customers referring to it as an omakase experience, because of its no-menu approach –  though, says Star, that’s not entirely accurate. “I don’t tell people this,” she says, “but the secret about Mostly Harmless is it’s not an omakase bar. It’s a kaiseki bar with a set menu, and certain stages of the menu are supposed to happen.” Usually, the set includes four cocktails, starting lighter and more refreshing, then leading gradually to a more spirit-forward finale. Aligning with its name, which was inspired by her favourite movie, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mostly Harmless generates next to no waste and is also vegan, though Star prefers not to advertise the latter.

How Mostly Harmless might have turned out had Star opened the bar in any of those other countries we’ll never know, but what we do know is that her initial confidence in opening it here wasn’t misplaced. Only three months ago, her brainchild made it on to the Asia’s 50 Best Bars list – in 33rd place – only one year after its opening.

“I didn’t expect to be on the list,” she admits. “I’m very happy for my team that we’ve been able to do it and that they’re able to experience that kind of recognition and feel what it’s like. It’s great for their careers and will help them with what they want to do in the future.”

While the achievement is impressive, a glance at Star’s CV would suggest it’s fully justified. Having worked her way up through kitchens and bars from a humble dish cleaner to steering Drink towards winning World’s Best Bar at the 2013 Spirited Awards, the 41-year-old Venezuelan has achieved countless accolades other bartenders could only dream of. She’s travelled the world, giving presentations and demonstrations at international cocktail conferences while consulting for myriad bars in cities with unparalleled drinking scenes. So what makes her latest achievement so special?

“For me, it feels different from anything I’ve won before,” Star reflects. “I’ve won a lot of awards, but this is the first one where I had the idea for this bar for a long time – since 2013, actually – and then built it by hand alone when I wasn’t even able to pay rent for months. So to have this bar now and turning this room and kitchen into somewhere people want to visit and have a good time in? That recognition is incredible.”

After spending the afternoon discussing her journey while sampling a selection of concoctions at her bar, it’s apparent that the success of Mostly Harmless means so much to her for another reason: the fact she’s a woman. Previously, no one wanted to hire her, even though she had years of experience, because few women worked behind bars at the time. Getting the ball rolling proved to be a challenge.

“I’ve now worked on three continents, and it’s interesting to see the differences between each place,” she says. “Of all of them, I think Europe was the least welcoming to women, especially as owners. If you look at a lot of bars in Europe, they’re all owned by men. Beyond a friend of mine in Paris, very few women own their own bars.

“When I first started, I wasn’t the right kind of woman,” she adds. “They wanted showpieces, not people with brains. I think it’s a little easier now, and Hong Kong is getting better, but there’s still not that many women in the limelight. If you look at the people who are the most revered – outside of my wife Beckaly Franks – in this city, it’s pretty much all men. A lot of women work in bars here, but you just don’t see them much.”

When it comes to gender equality and representation within the hospitality industry, there’s still plenty of work to be done. A good starting point might be to offer more encouragement and mentorship – especially from trailblazers such as Star and Franks.

“Just stick with it and treat it as a job, not a hobby,” Star advises. “Anything you put into it will always come back to you. The energy you offer will always be received and come back. Understand it takes time and patience, and once you start getting good at it, that’s when it hasn’t even started yet. When you start to think you’re not growing is when you’re growing the most.

“Work on yourself fundamentally, because if you don’t have your fundamentals down, when other opportunities come around, you won’t be able to embrace them. You’ll be so worried about doing the small things that should’ve been easy.”

The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.

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