Nathan Mintz has operated BOUND Kowloon for a near-decade on Boundary Street in Sham Shui Po, serving Hong Kong craft beer, art, music, and conversation.
Before he hosted arts shows, crafted cocktail menus, and brought nightlife culture to the middle of Kowloon, Nathan Mintz was your typical finance worker.
Moving to Hong Kong in 2007 as a cash equity trader, Nathan thought his time was up in the city eight years after his arrival. He had an itching feeling to move on and continue his corporate finance climbing abroad. As a final goodbye, he moved to Jordan to spend six months discovering parts of Hong Kong he typically shied away from before.
“I wanted to make sure I at least saw as much of the city as I could,” Nathan remembers. He wandered around coffee shops, art houses, street markets, and drank locally around Sham Shui Po. “I found a little bar called Hillywood I really liked in the area and it reminded me a lot like San Francisco and Seattle.”
“The team that ran the bar,” Nathan’s future partners Charlie and Chau, “needed a larger footprint and moved out six months before the lease ended. I took a gamble and decided to take over the lease. I took over half of the lease to see if anyone would like the way I make coffee and enjoy a beer forward focus.” He was unemployed and looking for a creative outlet before he left Hong Kong for good. Or so he thought.
Weeks into his gap-year project, business ballooned and crowds gathered. Nathan knew what was coming. “I met [Charlie and Chau] and said we had to open something more permanent.” That came in 2016, a passion project of his to create a community within a neighbourhood drinking hole.
BOUND Kowloon was born on Boundary Street, the once demarcating line between colonial British Hong Kong and mainland China from 1860, when the the southern part of Kowloon was ceded by the Qing dynasty government to Great Britain, till 1898 when the whole of Hong Kong was leased to the colonial government for 99 years.
Then, British and Chinese soldiers stood opposite each other, flanked by bamboo fences. Today, bargoers congregate outside BOUND sipping Hong Kong-inspired cocktails and Hong Kong craft beer, with the bar acting as a stopping point for a night out in Sham Shui Po.
“ We opened BOUND in 2016 and it was meant to be a space that we wanted to go to [as bar goers]. We spent a lot of time in Sham Shui Po, so everything that we enjoyed had traffic around the shop, and of course the community.”
Envisioned as a bar that remained simple with its concept, BOUND began as a community space for people to gather. Their beer menu consisted, and still to this day, with four rotating beer taps from local Hong Kong breweries and five classic cocktails with hints of Hong Kong flavours.
Signature cocktails are priced at HKD100 and ‘house favourites’ at HKD80 to HKD85, ranking lower than SoHo’s prices.
For food, their one-pager menu consists of sandwiches, Japanese curries, all-day breakfast, and Japanese snacks.
“Simplicity is really important for us, having a few ingredients with the cocktails rather than going over the top. [BOUND] has this less is more mentality to some degree.”
With a particular arty and DIY feel to the bar, Nathan brought local music and art performances to the bar, using its blank slate to encourage the neighbourhood’s art community to see BOUND as a space for creativity and community.
“A lot of people visiting us are living in the neighborhood, but we do have visitors making a special trip to Sham Shui Po to visit us. They are rewarded for that because you have a great neighbourhood to walk around with cafes and shops and culture.”
Nathan and BOUND have witnessed Sham Shui Po’s rise and rise since 2016, through the pandemic, and onwards from 2023. “In 2018, there may have been one or two coffee shops in a radius around the bar, now there are 20 to 25.”
Fears of gentrification, in a neighbourhood historically flush with fabric stores, food vendors, and street markets, were dampened during the pandemic as a synergy was found between funky cafes piling in and the neighbourhood’s computer centres and markets still pumping with energy.
“People were calling it the new Brooklyn, but I feel we all found that hard to hear. It’s Sham Shau Po, Kowloon. The community built the neighborhood and made it special for a long time before coffee, gentrification and BOUND started.”
“Venues like XXX, Parallel Space, THY Lab, Urban Coffee Roasters 1st shop, Wontonmeen and close creative friends were already here. We just plugged into what we liked and apparently what the community liked. We are lucky and fortunate and love this neighborhood, Kowloon and in the larger picture, Hong Kong.”
Nearly 10 years on into his community project, Nathan has grown up alongside patrons he first began serving at 18 years old. “They are still hanging out with us a decade later.”
“This bar is a real community. It has become a place that I want to go to. These community spaces in bars exist elsewhere in Hong Kong, Dead Poets and The Aftermath in particular, but we are bringing this energy to Kowloon.”
“We need these spaces in Hong Kong where culture, design, and most importantly people come together for a good community.”
Fortunate and lucky are two words that come to mind when reflecting over the past 10 years operating BOUND. “We have had such great support from a lot of people. It has been incredibly hard work from my business partner and everybody that works here.”
“It is a family and it feels like coming home every time you visit us.”
Visit BOUND Kowloon today for the best of Hong Kong craft beer, good vibes, and Japanese food.
