Astopia: Dublin’s Best Cyberpunk Bar
Astopia, a cyberpunk-themed bar that opened fairly recently on Aungier Street adds cyberpunk as one of the many themes Dublin bars offer. All around Dublin City Centre, you can find a number of different themed bars like the 1990s themed bar Jackies and more traditional Irish pubs. How Astopia stands out to make a name for itself besides its cyberpunk theme is its unique approach to Asian cuisine and its one of a kind mocktails (cocktails minus the alcohol).
The Origins of Astopia and Its Layout
Opening back in May of this year, Astopia (which was formerly Bao House) is an Asian cuisine mocktail bar which mixes eastern food with a cyberpunk backdrop. Imagery of AI art (similar to the image above), neon lighting, and sci-fi decor can be found throughout the layout of the restaurant. Astopia is a small space, so it is best suited to individuals, outings with a friend or partner, and small groups of people.
Astopia Menu
The menu of Astopia is split into eight different sections, including one dedicated solely to their mocktail range. Firstly, the menu introduces its customers to its appetizers in a section titled “Intro-Appetizers” to begin with. This section offers choices such as zen soup for instance, a miso soup with seaweed, tofu, and scallion. Astopia also offers its own in-house Astopia salad (shown above), which is a salad made with fresh apple, boiled egg, ham, and cucumber with home-made dressing.
“Chapter 1-Asian Tapas” is the next section in the menu that begins featuring Astopia’s main courses on offer. The Asian tapas section offers Asian tapa bowls, gyozas, and baos for customers to choose from. For example, their Chicken Gyoza (pictured above) is a five piece pan-fried gyoza filled with chicken, cabbage, garlic chive, and onion served with homemade dip.
Up next is “Chapter 2-Rice Burger Meal Box”, a part of the menu that offers rice burgers. These rice burgers can come either as crispy karaage (Japanese fried chicken) or else beef for their filling. Their crispy karaage rice burgers are made up of cheese, lettuce, homemade mayo, and a rice bun, whereas the beef rice burgers have homemade teriyaki sauce in them instead of mayo. Both are served with seasonal salad, as can be seen in the upper image, and can be ordered as boxes with solely one or the other in them.
Then, “Chapter 3-Mini Hot Pot Set” presents an array of different hot pot soups to choose from. “Chapter 3-Mini Hot Pot Set” offers customers both meat-based and vegetarian/vegan options for its selection. One type of hot pot set popular in Astopia is the Roast Bejing Duck Bowl with seasonal veg, steamed rice, and house made duck sauce (as seen above). This is also because it is part of a deal Astopia has where from 1-4 pm from Monday to Friday, you can get a hot pot and a soft drink for €10 in total.
Rounding off its main chapters is the “Ending-Dessert” and the “Encore-Pot of Tea” sections of the menu. The “Ending-Dessert” part of the menu serves dessert options like Taiyaki, a fish-shaped Japanese waffle with red bean paste filling. Meanwhile, “Encore-Pot of Tea” serves tea blends like the Astopia-exclusive “Therapy”, a tea with six different herbs mixed to create its own sense of identity and taste.
Astopia and its Mocktails
Mocktails are a key selling point to the Astopia experience, also in turn justifying their own individual subheading in this article. This is an option offered by the bar to bring the cocktail experience without the barrier of it containing alcohol for those who don’t drink alcohol. One example of their fabled mocktails is the mocktail titled “Extraterrestrial Allure” (shown above), mixing orange-flavoured rum zero, coconut juice, lemon juice, special herbal tea, and Milky Way chocolate.
Another mocktail out of their distinctive range is a donut coffee called “Donno”. “Donno” is a Korean coffee that quickly gained popularity across Asia, containing Astopia-blend coffee, milk or coconut milk (a vegetarian option), caramel syrup, and topped with cacao powder. It is renowned for its sweet taste and its donut-shaped cream head on its top, hence the label of “Donno” being a donut coffee.
One other mocktail to try during a visit to Astopia is their “Majhong” mocktail (in the picture above). This mocktail’s name derives from the game of the same name in which four players with 144 tiles draw and discard various tiles, until one player gets a winning hand. The “Majhong” mocktail is a blend of 4A level anxi tieguanyin tea scent, sour and sweet apple gin zero, and topped with cheesy cream foam with matcha powder on top.
Astopia in Summary
Astopia is by far one of the more unique bars Dublin has to offer to date. Astopia’s array of sci-fi/cyberpunk decor, Asian cuisine, and original mocktail range make it a one of a kind experience. Whether you’re a fan of cyberpunk or science-fiction, or even just Asian cuisine and curious about mocktails (or all of the above), Astopia offers an unforgettable place to do so.
Address: 34 Aungier Street, Dublin 2, D02 HK75
Opening Hours:
Monday – Closed
Tuesday to Sunday – 12:30 pm to 4 pm
5 pm to 9 pm
