Inside Bar Terumi: A Conversation With Shirmy Chan

We don’t often talk about bars as places of introspection. But sitting across from Shirmy Chan, it becomes clear that Bar Terumi was built with more than drinks in mind—it’s an expression of one woman’s inner world made physical.

I’d been to Bar Terumi once before. It was an interesting night, on which I remember very much enjoying the drinks and the atmosphere. Now, several months down the line, I’m paying it a second visit. Only this time, my date is with Shirmy Chan—the co-founder of Bar Terumi, its principal mixologist, and the woman who has become synonymous with the bar itself. It’s not often that you find women-owned bars, though that’s slowly changing these days, and that’s just one of the reasons why I thought it’d be interesting to have her tell me her story.

And so it was that after a long day at work, I jumped in a car and headed over, not quite knowing what to expect. I arrive and take in my surroundings. It’s early still, and so there isn’t yet quite as much of a crowd as there had been the last time I’d visited. I spot two people sitting at a table by the side, locked in quiet conversation. A couple seated at the bar share a relaxed back and forth with each other and, occasionally, the bartender.

Shirmy arrives shortly after I do and directs me to a long table by the windows. This is where she normally seats her guests if she’s hosting a party, she tells me. Today though, it’s just me. We take our seats and go through the obligatory introductions, as well as outlining what the next hour or so is going to entail. The first impression you get from Shirmy is of someone who’s rather reserved. She wears a stern countenance that I later learn belies a calm, contemplative personality.

New beginnings

I figure it would be a good way to kick things off by asking her about how it all started. Bar Terumi had its beginnings in 2022, and they’d just celebrated their anniversary this past August. I ask Shirmy where the name comes from, and she tells me it was the product of a long session of thought. “The tender bar is a concept. Then a bar needs a name. I tried to link the feeling, the concept of this bar, to a name, but I couldn’t find one that suits it.”

She then decided to look to her family’s names for inspiration. Taking her dad’s name, she had the sudden idea to look up its Japanese pronunciation. It sounds something like “teru”, which means “to shine”. Shirmy felt it mirrored the brightness of the space she had, and so she incorporated it into the name.

It would be just the first example of many I get throughout the night of how Shirmy goes to lengths to translate the abstractions in her mind into something tangible. That’s certainly effort I can appreciate. With most bars, you get the impression that they’re put together with a theme in mind or perhaps derived from a pre-existing template. Not Bar Terumi. Everything inside the bar once started as an idea or a feeling.

What’s on the menu?

Perhaps the most evident example of this is the menu, the latest iteration of which has only just launched. We grab a copy and Shirmy walks me through it. On the first page is a cut-out of a wheel. Above it, in bold, are the words: “Pick your colour, or let fate be your bartender.” Shirmy explains that the menu is based on Chinese metaphysical principles.

It’s certainly one of the most unique ways I’ve seen of helping you choose a drink, when the plethora of options available inevitably brings about a case of paralysis by analysis. Grouping ingredients according to the five Chinese elements, it’s all been meticulously worked out so that you can, by way of a few simple choices, arrive at a drink that perfectly suits your mood as well as the occasion. Shirmy explains the mechanics behind it to me, and while I find it incredibly absorbing, to say I fully understand it would be disingenuous.

It’s yet another example of how Shirmy, with the aid of an illustrator, worked to transform the ideational into the corporeal. It becomes an occasional happening throughout the course of our conversation that Shirmy touches on metaphysical matters, only to quickly sidestep them—as if she doesn’t expect anyone to fully grasp what she’s saying. I get it.

It’s often the case that when you bring up the esoteric with someone not quite tuned to the same frequency, you can almost feel their scepticism in the air. It presents as a sideways glance, perhaps, or a subtle tension you feel bubbling beneath the surface. The conversation takes a palpable turn, and you’re left steering it back to more familiar ground. But that’s not the case here. The more I listen, the more intrigued I become by Shirmy’s worldview.

Leave a message

Shirmy flips through the rest of the menu before arriving at a page near the end. “Oh, this one, this is an interesting part,” Shirmy begins. “We invite customers to be part of our journey and leave some positive messages for strangers.” It’s a page alive with an assemblage of scrawls. Some of them are elegant and looping, while others are more hurried and angular. It is a separate but ultimately connected expression of community.

She got the inspiration for it from a trip to an unassuming tea house in China, in which a lady passed her a tray of messages. She retrieved and unravelled one to read. “It said something like, ‘Life is changing, life is difficult. But no matter what, just keep moving forward, and you should have a good day.’ I felt like crying at the time. It’s such a simple message, right? So I decided to apply that here,” Shirmy explains.

Having spent the last hour or so talking about the story behind the bar and the menu, Shirmy decides it’s time for a drink. I tell her to pick one for me based on how she feels, and she relishes the opportunity. She studies me, before beckoning one of the staff and placing an order. My drink arrives—a darkly-hued, mysterious-looking potion. “This one I picked for you, because I think you’re definitely a refreshing drink. Give it a try.” I take a sip and mull it over for a few moments.

Just a feeling

“Why am I that? Why am I the Spice Whisper?” I ask Shirmy. “You are like the whisperer. And you are in this… black water. It’s just a feeling that I get. I also think you need some spicing up, because I’m guessing you’ve had a very long day today.” Yes, I have indeed. “So I needed to get you something refreshing, to spark your sensation again and to reset yourself. That’s why I got this for you.”

“This is my day-to-day job,” she tells me. “Picking drinks for people.” “Do you do that often?” I ask. “Yeah, I have to, because the customer often comes to me and just says, ‘Shirmy, can you make one drink for me?’ So I need to profile a certain person’s mood of the day or their condition of the day, and then I offer them certain cocktails.”

As I sip the drink so thoughtfully chosen for me, I ask Shirmy what she gets up to when she’s not doing all of this. “Oh, I need a lot of me time to reset. But the thing I like to do, I think of it as a remedy, is cooking.” But life is hectic these days, and she’s finding time to herself increasingly hard to come by. She tells me about her growing book collection, which she doesn’t read. I relate, because unfortunately, I’ve got one of those myself.

As time goes by

“I like to read but I just don’t have the time. I buy books, but I don’t read them. I think it’s a sign of being an adult, we don’t have much time for that. So I set a goal: if finally, one day, I can finish a book, that’s a sign I’ve achieved something else. It means everything is stable. If I finish reading a book, it’s a measure of something,” Shirmy muses.

I reflect on what an interesting gauge that is of where one really is in life. To be able to finish a book in a single day becomes a proof of something else entirely: that things are stable, that your attention isn’t scattered, and that your hours aren’t stolen by the spectre of urgency. I hope for those days too. As things stand, it takes me months just to finish one. Maybe someday I’ll get there. But in the meantime, I have stories like Shirmy’s to tell.

Bar Terumi