Elysia Rooftop Bar & Kitchen

📍 88 Sukhumvit Soi 11, Watthana, Bangkok, Thailand 10110

🗓 Opened: June 2025

🌐 Website | 🗺 Google Maps

Bangkok's Newest Sky-High Address Is Already Turning Heads

Bangkok opened another chapter in its rooftop obsession this June with the debut of Elysia Rooftop Bar & Kitchen, perched on the 32nd floor of the newly completed Sora Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 11. This is not another generic sky bar with overpriced cocktails and a mediocre menu — Elysia arrives with a serious culinary team, a cocktail programme built around regional Thai botanicals, and a design that took three years to commission. For anyone who has grown tired of the usual suspects on the Bangkok rooftop circuit, this is the opening worth rearranging your diary for.

What Makes Elysia Different From the Competition

The kitchen is helmed by Chef Nattapong Srisuk, a Chiang Mai-born cook who spent six years working under Michelin-starred chefs in Lyon and Copenhagen before returning to Thailand in 2023. His menu at Elysia reads as a confident negotiation between French technique and Northern Thai ingredients — think slow-braised short rib glazed with nam prik noom chilli paste, or a chilled prawn dish finished with a lemongrass-infused beurre blanc that somehow feels entirely at home in the Bangkok heat. The kitchen sources directly from a cooperative of highland farmers in Chiang Rai, meaning the produce changes weekly and the menu shifts accordingly. That kind of supply-chain commitment is rare at this altitude, literally and figuratively.

• Signature dish: Slow-braised wagyu short rib with nam prik noom glaze and jasmine rice cake (฿890)
• Must-try drink: Makhwaen Sour — wild Sichuan pepper gin, kaffir lime, egg white (฿420)
• Chef's snack: Crispy pork belly with fermented shrimp paste dip (฿280)
• Price range: ฿600–฿1,800 per person for food; cocktails from ฿380
• Best time to arrive: 5:30pm for the golden-hour view over Asok and Phrom Phong

The Space and the Vibe

The interior was designed by Bangkok-based studio Form & Friction, the same team behind the widely praised Nap Collective co-working spaces and the Haoma restaurant garden renovation. At Elysia, they have used raw concrete offset by hanging gardens of tropical ferns and cascading pothos that soften the industrial bones of the space considerably. The bar counter itself is a single slab of reclaimed teak sourced from a demolished Ayutthaya warehouse, stretching nearly eight metres and seating fourteen guests who want a ringside view of the cocktail programme in action. Lighting shifts gradually from warm amber at sunset to a cooler, more electric blue after 9pm, which changes the mood of the room entirely without any heavy-handed theatrics.

Cocktails Worth the Trip Alone

Bar director Ploy Thanakit, formerly of the award-winning Rabbit Hole bar in Thonglor, has built a cocktail list of twenty drinks that lean heavily on house-made infusions and ferments. Her Makhwaen Sour has already become the drink everyone is photographing, using a wild Sichuan pepper gin she co-developed with a small distillery in Lampang province. There is also a rotating selection of low-ABV highballs for guests who want to pace themselves through a long evening — the butterfly pea flower and yuzu version is delicate, aromatic, and exactly the kind of thing you want in your hand while watching the Bangkok skyline shift colour at dusk. The non-alcoholic menu is equally considered, with house-fermented tepache and a cold-brewed Thai tea served over hand-chipped ice.

Practical Details Before You Go

Elysia operates Tuesday through Sunday, opening at 5pm and running until 1am on weekends. Reservations are strongly recommended for Friday and Saturday evenings, where the 120-person capacity fills within hours of slots going live on their website each Monday morning. Smart casual dress code is enforced — the team are politely but firmly turning away guests in flip-flops and singlets, which is a reasonable call given the positioning. Valet parking is available through the Sora Hotel lobby on Soi 11, and the venue is a six-minute walk from BTS Nana station.

The Verdict

Elysia is the rare Bangkok rooftop that earns its altitude with food and drinks serious enough to justify the view rather than hiding behind it. Chef Nattapong's Northern Thai-inflected menu is genuinely exciting, Ploy's cocktail programme is among the most thoughtful to open in the city this year, and the design avoids every trap that sinks lesser venues in this category. Book a table for early June before the word spreads any further — this one will be impossible to walk into by August.