Long Bar, Singapore — claims 1915

Long Bar

Raffles Arcade, 328 North Bridge Road, Singapore

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

Long Bar claims 1915. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed

1915

First record

none found

Building

no single date

The building. The present two-storey bar is in the Raffles Arcade, built in the restoration that closed the hotel in 1989 and reopened it on 16 September 1991; the hotel itself opened in December 1887 and was declared a national monument in 1987.

Cocktails

Colonial

Standing room

Late night

The claim

The bar at Raffles where the Singapore Sling is said to have been mixed in 1915, by a barman called Ngiam Tong Boon, for women who could not be seen drinking in public. It is two storeys of rattan and dark timber in the hotel's arcade, built in the restoration of 1989 to 1991, and it takes no bookings at all. Peanut shells go on the floor.

What the records show

Raffles dates the Singapore Sling to 1915 and to this bar: the hotel's account is that the barman Ngiam Tong Boon mixed gin, pineapple and lime juice, curaçao and Bénédictine with grenadine and cherry liqueur into a drink pink enough to pass for fruit juice, at a time when a woman could not be seen drinking in public. No dated document supports the year, and no drinks list of the period is known to survive. The bar itself has moved more than once. The hotel places the Long Bar of the planters' era along Cad's Alley, with its tables facing Bras Basah Road, and English Wikipedia records that the bar was relocated from the hotel lobby to the adjoining new shopping arcade in the renovation that closed the hotel in 1989 and reopened it on 16 September 1991. So the room that pours today is not the room the date belongs to, which is why this house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking. What it plainly is, is a bar: the hotel's own page says the Long Bar is open to walk-ins only, from eleven in the morning until half past ten or half past eleven at night, and the peanut shells still go on the floor, a habit it traces to the rubber and plantation men who gathered there at weekends in the 1900s.

What to look for inside

The Singapore Sling is dated here to 1915 and to the barman Ngiam Tong Boon
Open to walk-ins only, with no reservations taken
Peanut shells are swept from the counter onto the floor, a habit traced to plantation men of the 1900s

Visiting

Long Bar is in Singapore, at Raffles Arcade, 328 North Bridge Road, Singapore. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

raffles.com Directions in your maps app