When two worlds recognize each other, they do more than collaborate—they begin to tell a shared story. This is exactly what happens between Drink Kong and Zuma Rome: a dialogue between visions, Japanese culture, and contemporary mixology. An encounter that is not simply a collaboration, but a convergence of aesthetics, perspectives, and journeys that find in Japan a common matrix, almost a shared language built on balance, precision, and a deep respect for detail.
For Lorenzo Mancusi, General Manager of Drink Kong, this meeting also carries a personal significance: Zuma Rome represents a key milestone in his journey, his first important experience in high-end hospitality, and, in many ways, the origin of a vision that now finds its full expression in the Drink Kong project.
It is therefore both a return and a natural evolution, taking shape in one of the city’s most evocative locations—the Zuma terrace on Via della Fontanella Borghese—where the view over Rome becomes an integral part of the experience, helping to create an atmosphere suspended between elegance and contemporaneity. In this setting, the aperitivo becomes a narrative moment, where the cocktail transforms into a language and a vehicle of identity, starting with the welcome drink supported by Campari: a shaken Campari enriched with yuzu-infused sake, immediately establishing a dialogue between Italy and Japan through freshness and vibrant citrus tension.
The two signature cocktails that follow reveal the deeper philosophy of Drink Kong, rooted in the contemporary reinterpretation of classics. The Ga-Ri-Bawl-Dee, a reinterpretation of the Garibaldi, is built on the redistillation of Campari and the use of an orange cordial, resulting in a perfectly balanced cocktail between bitter, sweet, and sour notes—conceived as a true passe-partout capable of appealing to a wide audience without sacrificing complexity. The Wasabi Stinger, on the other hand, represents a more radical intervention: it revisits a now less popular classic by distilling wasabi, introducing an elegant and original vegetal dimension, supported by a touch of garlic honey that enhances the aromatic profile while softening its mentholated edge, ultimately giving the drink a renewed contemporary relevance.
These cocktails are part of a broader project that finds its natural development in the new menu and in the Nite Kong space, where the concept of “twist on classic” becomes central—not as a stylistic exercise, but as a true research path in which the memory of great classics is reinterpreted through modern techniques and a sensibility that looks to Japan as a constant cultural reference.
Yet beyond technique and creativity, it is in Lorenzo’s vision of bartending that the most distinctive element emerges: the cocktail bar as a stage, the bartender as both performer and connector, a figure capable of bringing people together and creating relationships—so much so that, in a striking and meaningful provocation, it can be seen as a form of intangible heritage. A place where encounters, stories, and connections are born, where the night amplifies the experiential dimension and transforms the act of drinking into something deeper, almost ritualistic.
In this sense, the meeting between Drink Kong and Zuma goes beyond a single event and becomes the expression of a broader idea of the city and of hospitality, where different places engage in dialogue and create a coherent journey: dinner at Zuma and after-dinner at Drink Kong is not just a suggestion, but a vision of contemporary Rome—capable of moving between identity and contamination, between roots and international openness—where even a cocktail can become a storytelling tool and a lens through which to interpret the present.
