HANOI, Vietnam (Aug. 3, 2016) — One of Indochina’s most storied bars emerges this week from a two-month renovation that’s increased its seating capacity by one-third, introduced a new live-cooking station and doubled-down on its commitment to cocktails and fine wines.

One of the most colourful times of the year, Mid-Autumn Festival or Tet Trung Thu is celebrated throughout the eighth lunar month, and in particular at the first full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. This year the date is 15 September.

Le Club at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi now seats 120, up from 90, in a completely revamped space anchored by a new marble bar. The colors and furnishing fabrics are all new, and the new seating arrangement is redolent of a 1920s-era speakeasy.

The last upgrade to the bar took place in 2000. Today’s marble bar is entirely new but for copper fixtures that date back to the hotel’s redevelopment in the early 1990s. Remarkably enough, the space that is today occupied by Le Club is the very same venue that hosted the first screening of a movie in Indochina back in 1916.

With the new bar, there is a new voice. Zoey Jones (http://www.zoeyjones.com) steps up as the hotel’s new ‘jazz diva,’ singing five nights per week at Le Club through December. The British singer just came out with her first major release, an album entitled ‘Don’t Think,’ and is now in the midst of a longstanding engagement in Asia. She also appears in a new movie, “”Now You See Me: The Second Act””.

“Le Club is going to feel very much like a new bar,” said Franck Lafourcade, the Metropole’s general manager. “A bar where you really want to sit down to a perfectly mixed drink, or where you really want to uncork a special bottle. Like the Metropole itself, coming into Le Club is going to feel a little bit like going back in time.”

Last year, the hotel renovated two of its three signature restaurants — Le Beaulieu and Spices Garden.