The K-Pour Chronicles | Going Back to Korea

This time, I arrived just in time to catch the last days of the summer menu, with autumn already waiting around the corner. And then something happened that made the return even better: I was remembered. More than a year had passed, yet there was a familiar smile from behind the bar as soon as I walked in. It was a small moment, but one that immediately made the place feel familiar again. And that warmth extends to the whole team. Before long, I was back where I like to be — sitting at the counter, drinking, talking and discovering what they had been working on since my last visit.

And I didn’t leave it at one visit. During my stay in Busan, I went back four times. That probably tells you more about how I feel about Make Zero than any ranking or recommendation ever could. Each visit brought another drink, another conversation, another detail to discover.

The team takes the time to explain their cocktails, not as if they are reciting a menu, but because they genuinely want you to understand what is in front of you — the ingredients, the idea behind it, the techniques, and those little details that turn an interesting combination into something distinctly Make Zero. There is serious knowledge behind what they do, but it is shared with generosity rather than distance.

At Make Zero, the cocktail may bring you through the door, but it is the hospitality, the details and the people behind the bar that make you want to return.

And the details extend well beyond the cocktails.

Make Zero has its own pâtissier, creating small desserts to accompany an evening at the bar. A delicate Mont Blanc with chestnut cream, a little slice of fruity cheesecake — not oversized restaurant desserts, but small, delicious additions that somehow feel completely at home here.

The music is another detail that is easy to underestimate. It never fights for your attention. It sits quietly in the background, fitting the mood and, somehow, even the flavours of what is happening in the glass.

I have always believed that a cocktail needs a stage.

The drink itself might account for only ten or fifteen percent of the entire bar experience. There is the music, the light, the interior, the glassware, the person behind the counter, the people sitting beside you, the conversation, the temperature of the room — all those things we absorb without necessarily noticing them.

Yet the cocktail is still the reason we choose one bar over another in the first place. It has to be good enough to get us through the door, and everything around it has to make us want to stay.

Make Zero understands that balance exceptionally well.

Nothing feels accidental. Even the music follows you to the bathroom — yes, the toilet has its own soundtrack. It is a tiny detail, slightly amusing perhaps, but also strangely telling. The experience doesn’t simply stop when you leave your seat at the counter.

And perhaps that is what I remembered so clearly.

A great bar experience is never just one thing. It is the drink in front of you and the person who made it. It is the music behind the conversation, the light falling across the counter, the room around you and the hospitality that connects it all.

At Make Zero, those things simply come together.

Sitting there again also reminded me of something else about travelling for bars: somewhere along the way, it has become as much about returning as discovering.

Returning to a seat at the counter where somebody remembers your face. To conversations that somehow pick up again after more than a year. To drinks that make you curious about what the team will come up with next. To that strange and wonderful feeling of being thousands of kilometres from home and finding something unexpectedly familiar.

Make Zero has become one of those places for me. I went back four times on this trip alone, not because of one particular cocktail or one particular moment, but because the whole thing works.

The drinks give me a reason to walk through the door. Everything surrounding them gives me a reason to come back.

And I certainly will.

Ulsan is perhaps not the first name that comes to mind when planning a cocktail journey through Korea. The city is better known for considerably bigger things. This is Hyundai territory — cars, shipbuilding, enormous industrial complexes and a skyline shaped in part by South Korea’s remarkable economic rise.

And then there are the whales. Ulsan’s relationship with them goes back a long way, particularly around Jangsaengpo, once an important centre of Korea’s whaling industry and today home to museums and cultural spaces preserving that history. It gives the city another identity altogether, somewhere between industry and sea. But, as usual, I was looking for something considerably smaller. A bar. More precisely, The Aviary. And small it certainly is.

The Aviary is one of those intimate little bars where you immediately become aware of the counter, the bottles behind it and the person standing on the other side. There isn’t much room for distance — which, as you probably know by now, suits me perfectly.

Whisky has a strong presence here, and you could quite happily spend an evening exploring the bottles. But I came for the cocktails, and I’m glad I did. What I particularly enjoyed was the restraint. The drinks were flavourful and carefully crafted, but nothing felt unnecessarily complicated. The balance was right, the flavours clear, and each drink seemed to know exactly how much it wanted to say. Sometimes that is enough.

A well-made cocktail can be interesting without shouting about how interesting it is.

After all, creativity doesn’t always have to arrive with ten ingredients, elaborate techniques and a lengthy explanation. A well-made cocktail can be interesting without shouting about how interesting it is. At The Aviary, that quiet confidence suited the room. And perhaps it suited Ulsan, too.

There was something I liked about spending the evening in such a small bar in a city associated with things built on an almost unimaginable scale. Outside: shipyards, factories, cars and industry. Inside: a handful of seats, bottles of whisky and carefully measured drinks crossing a tiny counter.

Quite a nice contrast. And another reminder of why I enjoy travelling through Korea this way.

The famous cocktail cities will always pull me in, and there are bars in Seoul, Busan and Gyeongju I could return to again and again. But sometimes it is the smaller stops in between that make the journey interesting — a city you might otherwise pass through, a bar you knew very little about, and a few very good drinks that make you rather pleased you stopped.