Most bars that claim a concept have a theme. Saikindō in Abu Dhabi has a format. Its debut menu, Aji No Hibiki, which translates as “Resonance of Flavour,” arrives as a bespoke double-sleeve vinyl and is split the way a record is split: a Side One and a Side Two, with twelve cocktails between them, each one named after a song.
The conceit could be decoration. It is not. Each drink was built from the track it borrows its name from, with the bassline, tempo, and melody of the song informing the flavor profile of the glass. A slow, heavy track produces a slow, heavy drink.
How You Turn a Song Into a Drink
The starting point was synaesthesia, the condition in which the senses cross over and sound can register as taste. Rather than gesture at the idea, the team tried to reproduce it. They extracted the raw sound waves from each chosen track and fed them into an AI model trained to return a flavor mapping, analyzing beats per minute, tonalities, and musical dynamics to generate a preliminary aromatic profile for each song: sweet, bitter, bright, umami, or layered.
That is where the machine stopped. The profiles were a brief, not a recipe. Beverage Director Marco Corallo and head mixologist Ann Pinsuda then built the drinks by hand from those starting points, using Japanese ingredients and conventional bar technique to turn an abstract flavor direction into something you would actually want to finish. It is a useful distinction at a moment when a lot of bars are announcing AI programs: the model did the listening, the bartenders did the drinking.
Inside the Abu Dhabi Listening Bar
Corallo arrived by way of Four Seasons Resort Dubai and, before that, Artesian in London, where he became known for putting insects, seaweed, and soil into cocktails and making people enjoy it. That background matters here, because Aji No Hibiki is not a novelty list. It is a technical one wearing a sleeve.
Saikindō opened on 29 November 2025 inside Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island, and it is a listening bar in the Japanese tradition: a room built around a sound system, where the music is the reason you are there and the drinking happens at its tempo. The format has spread from Tokyo to London and New York over the past decade. “Saikindō is truly the pinnacle of my career so far,” Corallo told The Drinks Business, which is a strong sentence from a man who ran the bar program at Artesian.
What to Drink at Saikindo Abu Dhabi
Big Poppa is the clearest statement of intent: sotol and Campari pulled into savory territory by wasabi and tomato dashi, with vanilla underneath. On paper that is an aperitivo built on broth logic, and it is the one to order if you want to understand what the bar is doing.
Loungin’ is the smoke-and-brine end of the list, built on mezcal and shochu with citrus zest, IPA hops, and olives. Forget Me Nots goes the other way: Roku Gin, shochu, and dry sherry with sakura and sansho pepper, served with fruit jelly on a purpose-built stand. The spec promises florals up front and sansho heat behind them.
Like Sugar is the counterargument to the idea that this is simply a savory menu. Vodka with black sesame, banana, tonic, and blueberry balsamic, it treats sweetness with the same seriousness the rest of the list gives salt. Elsewhere on the tracklist sit A Lover’s Holiday, Am I Wrong, I Feel For You, Jungle Fever, Knockin’ Boots, Masterpiece, and Time After Time.
Why the Format Works
Concept menus usually fail in one of two ways. Either the concept is a costume, with the drinks unchanged underneath, or the concept eats the drinking, and guests spend the evening decoding a document instead of enjoying a glass. The vinyl format avoids both because a record is already a familiar object with rules everyone understands. You know what a Side One is. You know you are meant to listen in order, and you know you are allowed not to.
It also gives the room and the list a single logic. In a bar built around a sound system, a menu shaped like a record is not a gimmick bolted to the concept. It is the concept, written down.
Aji No Hibiki is pouring now at Saikindō, Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island. For more from the city’s bar scene, see our Abu Dhabi city hub.
Details
Saikindō, Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island
Opened: 29 November 2025
Photo credits: cocktails by Toby Davies, interiors by Don Rae Loriezo
