W XYZ Bar is the resident bar of the Aloft Singapore Novena hotel at 16 Ah Hood Road, Novena, and carries a strong 4.7 Google rating. Hotel bars occupy a useful niche in Singapore: the drinks are made properly, the seats rarely need fighting for, and nobody minds if you linger over a single glass. Bartenders at a good one know their classics and are usually happy to recommend beyond the obvious, so it pays to ask what they enjoy mixing rather than defaulting to the same gin and tonic. In a district like Novena, with its hospitals, clinics and offices rather than nightlife strips, the hotel bar tends to double as the neighbourhood local, drawing an after-work crowd before things quiet down. For this stretch of Ah Hood Road, W XYZ Bar is that rare thing: a proper bar close to home.