What started out as a neighborhood brewery founded by three friends, the brewer Gary Heynes, chef Kelley Lee, ‘liker of good times’ Lee Tseng, and later brewer Michael M. Jordan, bestowed Shanghai with one its most enduring craft beer empires: Boxing Cat.
With two Boxing Cat locations, the Liquid laundry powerhouses, and Cobra Lily in Xintiandi, the group is now owned by multinational brewery AB InBev, with the aim of continuing the popularization of craft beer among Chinese drinkers, consumption of which is reported to be growing at a rate of 40 percent per year.
But the trouble with Big Beer is that it detracts from craft credentials. Clearly, the group has realized that opening more identical Boxing Cat Breweries is not the way to go, instead they’ve opted to use their collective experience to open venues tailor-made for neighborhoods: enter 45 Degrees.
Named after the perfect slant at which draught beer should be angled into a glass, 45 Degrees is a casual, high-ceilinged and spacious bar situated a few blocks from central Jing’an. The easy-going ambiance is more contemporary than that of Boxing Cat Brewery and less party-oriented than Liquid Laundry, though the space gets rowdier once filled with beer-fuelled patrons.
Said beers (RMB40-55), 12 of which are available on, are of the good, honest quality we can expect from the Boxing Cat group. You’d expect a bar with a motto of “The simple truth of great beer” to have lackluster cocktails, but fortunately they come courtesy of the group’s bartender Ruslan Kapstan, who first impressed us with his wild but balanced drinks at Cobra Lily and has achieved a similar effect here.
Decent food, which is better than your average bar snack menu but clear of high brow chef cuisine, is another thing to look forward to. An Asian and Latin American mashup is found in the Korean pork neck tacos, with scallion salad and queso fresco and guacamole to counter the spicy bulgogi marinade (RMB68). We’d also be remiss not to mention the blondies (RMB24), a wonderfully buttery and pecan-studded antidote to chocolate desserts.
Ultimately, 45 Degrees is a homely and honest neighborhood bar, with an original touch that keeps it aligned with the quality of predecessors like Liquid Laundry. We’ve yet to see the place let its hair down and become a fully developed destination for merriment, which is surely the point of any craft beer vending operation, though it’s not like the founding partners are any strangers to throwing parties.
Price: RMB40-55
Who’s going: mainly expats
Good for: happy hours, beer, casual dining, cocktails
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