[Photo provided to China Daily]

Speakeasy pop-up

The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong and WorldClass, the luxury collection of spirits from Diageo Reserve, have opened a pop-up bar through Jan 30. The Shell at MO Bar has been made-over to recreate PDT (Please Don't Tell), the legendary New York speakeasy named World's Best Bar at Tales of the Cocktail in 2009, and again in 2011 by The World's Top 50 Best Bars poll. Guests will enter PDT HK through a hidden entrance in a phone booth upstairs at MO Bar. Jim Meehan, bartender, founder of PDT and author of the PDT Cocktail Book, will be behind the bar making cocktails.

5 pm till late, Tuesday to Saturday through Jan 30. 15 Queen's Road, Central district, 852-2132-0077.

FRANCE

Dueling lists

Galled by France's lack of prominence in the UK-based World's 50 Best Restaurants list - not a single Gallic entry was included - the French foreign ministry recently launched the "totally scientific" La Liste (The List). The top slot in its ranking of the world's best 1,000 restaurants goes to French chef Benoit Violier, whose Restaurant de l'Hotel de Ville is in Crissier, Switzerland. More than a quarter of the new ranking's top 100 restaurants are in France. William Drew, group editor of The World's 50 Best Restaurants, responds that unlike the French list, "we are not affiliated to any government or any country".