Nokal welcomes back its ‘Lokals’

Marco Viray was all smiles, greeting guests by the door of NoKal, the popular club in Poblacion which recently reopened at Basement 1 of Makati Cinema Square.

The unassuming younger brother of Joe's Brew founder Joey Viray and business partner in two other Poblacion destinations, Kampai and The Spirits Library, as well as Gugu Room in New York, and Zicatela and Siargao Bed & Brewery earlier told us: "You'll be delighted and surprised on what we're about to open."

The original NoKal opened in 2018 in Makati's famed Poblacion district, on the street it was named after, North of Kalayaan. Consisting of three levels — a diner on the ground floor, a dance club on the second floor, and a bar on the third floor — it quickly became one of Poblacion's hottest nightspots, until the pandemic forced its shutdown.

At its new home in a corner of the Basement 1 parking lot of Makati Cinema Square, the new NoKal didn't stray from its roots — a dance club that welcomes the young crowd, as well as old fogeys like us whose memory of its mirror ball harks back to Where Else? in the late '70s.