Imperial Bar Bar King Rum Bar Orange
Bar Tender Y&M Kisling Kuroitsuki
back to cocktail snob
August, 2008
v1.0
Cocktail Snob reviews by James Teitelbaum
Notes: a yen (¥) is about a penny right now, so ¥100 yen is a dollar, ¥2000 is $20, and ¥5390 is a bit over over fifty bucks.
Some of the material on this page is also repeated on my lengthy Japan travelogue, which can be read here.
I also visited some Tiki bars in Japan. Read about them in the August (Summer) 2008 issue of Tiki Magazine (Vol 4., no 2).
My notes said: ”Designed in 1923 by Frank Lloyd Wright and preserved from the original Imperial Hotel. They have signature drinks that capture the essence of Japan”.
This
lounge is elegant and upscale (of
course, since it is
near - but no longer strictly within - the ritzy area of Ginza). At the door, under a very cool vintage drawing of the bar it says: “Anyone with the distinctly exotic experience of having visited the Frank Lloyd Wright Imperial will tell you the very name stirs up delicious art deco images of glamour and intrigue. Relax amidst the ambiance of this remarkable legend over sandwiches and frothy beer, or try a Mt. Fuji, a 1924 Imperial original”.
Inside, I discovered that the Frank Lloyd Wright elements are fairly minimal. Bartenders are all in tuxes, and there is a nice selection of interesting liquors and liqueurs behind the bar. Being Japan, there is a great selection of whiskeys. Japanese people love their whiskey. The bar is very low, I almost felt like my chair was but a stool. There is a very well-defined spotlight shining on the bar top in front of each seat. Bar snacks are a little crystal chalice of salted peanuts and some other type of bar snack that I cannot identify.
I ordered a Mt. Fuji: gin, creme, orange juice, pineapple juice, and something else (¥1365). I wasn’t super impressed with it, and like everything else in Japan, it was rather tiny. My next round, an equally diminutive Sidecar, had some ice chips in the glass, but it is made with real lemon juice and is served in a glass with a cool checkerboard pattern etched around the rim.
| To my
left were a couple having an intimate conversation, and to my
right were two drunken Japanese businessmen in blue suits. Before my
first drink was gone, the suits wanted to be my best friends, and were
buying round two for me (the Sidecar). These guys were like sixty
years
old and ran big corporations. They would have never given me the time
of day at home. They are the opposite sort of person from me - I
have
absolutely no interest in the world of big business and don’t normally
mix well with people that do. But here in this bar, 6000 miles from
home, those sorts of social and economic barriers melt away. There are very, very few non-Japanese people in Japan. If you leave the major tourism areas like Roppongi and Shinjuku, you might go a whole day not seeing any people who aren’t Japanese. So, these two businessmen did not care that I am twenty-some years younger than them, that I work in the music biz rather in the world of high finance, or that I only know about twenty words in their language; they were curious about who I was and why I was in their country (in a very friendly and welcoming way). One of them had pure white hair and was as thin as can be. He looked like a mummy. He didn’t know much English, but kept asking me if I was a “moo-shan”. I think he meant “musician”. The other guy was a little younger, not quite so skeletal in build, had mostly black hair, looked a lot healthier, and was by far the more conversational, friendly, and outgoing of the two.He was wasted.He was telling me that he was a diplomat who had worked for the Japanese government in London (10 years), Iran (4 years), Palo Alto (California), and Vancouver. I believed him. He insisted that I call him up socially every time I come to Japan. He was turning 62 the following week, but he looked 45, tops. I do not think that anyone in his social, economic, or age class has ever been so friendly to me, unless they were motivated by either business reasons, or by being a friend or a relative or something. This guy had no ulterior motive: he was just a drunken Japanese businessman in a blue suit, and it is their way to be friendly. Both his given name and family name ended in the syllable “-aki”, so he insisted that I call him Aki. He pulled out a business card, and circled both instances of “-aki” to make sure I got the point. In Japan, it is sort of a ritual among honored peers to exchange name cards (as they call them). I had come prepared with a stack of my business cards (as we call them). I gave him mine in return. He was very pleased. We are now officially friends! Or colleagues. Or something. Exchanging name cards in Japan is like adding someone to your MySpace friends - you might barely know them, and never talk to them, but it is an acknowledgment that you like or respect them on some level and are willing to accept them into your life in some superficial way. |
|
My pal Emi took me for sake
at a little restaurant named
Mihachi
with a bar that must have had at least ten seats - a large bar for
Japan!I liked looking at all of the sake bottles lined up behind the bar. The label designs are so great. Bars and shops all over Japan like to line their sake bottles up for display inside or outside, or in a window, and a good display they make.
I had learned a little bit about sake before I came to Japan:
“...most common is clear sake, divided into three main grades: daiginjo or tokkyu (premium), ginjo or ikkyu (first grade), and junmai or nikkyu (second grade). Junmai is typically a heavier, fuller sake, while the ginjo sakes are lighter, drier and more delicate of flavor and fragrance. Sake is also classified by taste, as amakuchi ("sweet mouth") and karakuchi ("dry mouth"). The ginjo sakes tend towards karakuchi, and the junmai sakes tend towards amakuchi. Premium daiginjo sakes are usually served cold”.
I wanted a high quality dry sake. So I got a daiginjo. The brand name was Dewazakura (pronounced: day-wa-za-kooo-rah). It was good.
I seem to remember a second round following it, and I think the bartender let me sample tastes of a few different types before I made my selection. I was always under the impression that sake was to be served warm, but cold seems to be the currently preferred way of enjoying Japan’s national beverage.
My sake was served in a little ceramic pitcher with a tiny matching ceramic cup. I also got a ceramic bowl containing a cube of something that resembled a cross between tofu and light cheese. On top of it was a cashew, two smaller nuts, and a tiny speck of wasabi.
| Did
I
mention yet that my policy towards food in Japan is: if I cannot
identify it, I must therefore go out of my way to eat it? I ate a whole
lot of things in the land of the rising sun that I absolutely could not
even classify as animal, vegetable, or mineral. Or for that matter, I
didn’t even know if some of them were person, place, or thing. The two
most questionable delicacies were both fed to me by Emi. Tonight, she
ordered a bowl of ika. Ika is squid. I have had calamari before, and I like tako, which is sushi or sashimi made of rather pretty purple, maroon, and white octopus tentacles, but this ika was something else entirely. Baby squids, whole, not processed, not seasoned, not cut or otherwise prepared in any way. A bowlful of them. Right from the sea and into this little ceramic bowl, completely intact. Maybe three inches long, and maybe six or eight of them neatly laid out for inspection. I did not hesitate. These were freaking bar snacks, and I have never turned down a bar snack. Manipulating my chopsticks like a native (or so I thought - except for that I am left handed and used my chopsticks that way, which, as I learned after arriving home, made me seem to be essentially a retard with no manners or hygiene), I plucked a lil’ squiddly diddly from the bowl and bravely popped it into my mouth. Hmmmmm.... Fishy. Salty. Rubbery. So far so good. Crunch. Crunch? What part of a baby squid goes “crunch”? Just one - the little tiny speck-sized black eyeball. It did not give a satisfying pop like a yummy salmon egg served up over rice, it was a hard crunchy crunch, like a little piece of coal or something. Emi only ate one. I wondered if she was seeing how far I would take this. Before my second pot of sake was gone, I had polished off the school of squid. Bring it.. |
|
This
bar is tiny (no surprise)
with one small booth and seven bar stools providing a total seating
capacity of about a dozen people. The little room is very dark, and a
little grubby. Not the cleanest place in the very clean city of Tokyo.
Smoky, and almost completely free of anything that might point to the
past or present presence of a decorator or designer. A steaming pot of
water on a tiny hot plate behind the bar is the establishment's excuse
for a kitchen. I observed the bartender making a rather tasty-looking
and decidedly un-Japanese plate of linguine alfredo with shrimp for a
guy at the bar, so I’ll reserve judgment on the size of the ‘kitchen’. Remember, it is not how big it is, but how you use it.
Anyway, Bar King Rum is where rums go to die.
For such a small place, they have a rather impressive collection of rums, and a nice cocktail menu. There are so many rums that they don’t all fit behind the tiny bar, so there are bottles sitting in clusters right on the bar itself. Bar King Rum carries a lot of my favorites from back home (Ron Zacapa 23, Pampero Anniversario, Matusalem, Diplomatico), a few more favorites that I can’t get at home (Havana Club Gran Reserva and no less than eight other Havana Club variants), lots of Demeraras (Lemon Hart, El Dorado, etc.), and a whole lot that I have never seen before (Green Label Demerara, a 12-year - the bottle looked fifty - produced in Guyana but bottled by William Cadenhead of Campbeltown, Scotland... ???). Right in front of me on the bar top was an ancient bottle of
St.
James, a good rum to begin with, but this bottle appeared to be older
than I am. Next to it was a Trois Rivieres that said 1953 on the
bottle, and a Saint Etienne (from Martinique). One bottle had a
hand-printed label on it: “Rhum Vieux dans Reserve, Albert (or Albeit)
Godefrey (possibly), 50cl, 45°”. The bar also has a few whiskies and one beer (Heartland).
I wanted to start sampling -- all of it -- but that idea could get dangerous and expensive.
Fast.
I settled on an XYZ, a popular drink in Japanese cocktail bars, which is Havana Club rum (2-year old blanco, unfortunately), Cointreau, and lemon juice. Like the drinks at Imperial Bar, this one was a rather Japanese-sized pour - less than two ounces in total. XYZ is basically a hybrid of a Sidecar (Brandy, Cointreau, lemon juice) and an Outrigger (Rum, Cointreau, lime juice). It was a little on the tart side for my taste (and I like my drinks like I like my women - tarts and full of booze), but if it were made with a hair less lemon and a bit better rum it could be a winner.
Cointreau,
by the way, is dirt cheap in Japan. It retails for about $40 for
a 750ml bottle in most U.S. cities, but I saw it all over Japan for
about half that. Bought a bottle at
duty-free on the way home for ¥1800 ($17 and change). That is
significantly cheaper than it costs even in France, where the stuff is
made. Yay.My companion Reiko had a ginger ale.
Bar snacks are a small plate of little wheat wafers with a small glop of vaguely seafood-flavored cream cheese(?) on it.
Sipped a taster of the Green Label out of curiosity (¥1000), it was ‘ok’. Also imbibed an 18-year-old Coruba, not bad at all, it is completely different from the regular Coruba, and it comes in sort of a crystal-ish bottle.
Well, I
figured that the only thing for it would be to try some Japanese rums
at this point. Bar King Rum has five of them, and four of those
have romanjii (western writing) labels. Rurikakesu, King
Rum,
Cor Cor, and Cor Cor Agricole. Reiko translated the fifth one as
Omiki. There is also a rum from India, Old Nonk, a seven-year.I went the the bar’s namesake for ¥735 (1 oz.), and also a small sample of the Cor Cor Agricole (¥945; the other variety is ¥840). The Cor Cor is made in Okinawa (South Borodino Island, Minamidaito), and is based on Martinque distilling methods and ingredients. A six-line poem on the bottle ends with: “...this is the magic of rum, a sugarcane love potion”. The whole company is three women who make all of the product themselves. It is a lot smoother than the King Rum.
The Rurikakesu and Omiki both come out of giant magnum-sized bottles like many of the sakes do; the later has two pastel parrots on it.
Bar King Rum is absolutely free of charm, vibe, or atmosphere, but if you want rum in Tokyo, this is the place to go. They will charge you ¥500 per person just to sit your ass on a stool (they call it a ‘table charge’ - although there are no tables). This fee does not go to the DJ, band, or anyone else but the owner (there is no DJ, band, etc), it is just a tax on your decision to patronize this bar instead of one of the thousands of others in Tokyo. You’re welcome. You will also be charged tax on your bill after the table charge is added.
Ouch.
I got a serious case of sticker shock when I saw my bill: I had been adding up the tab in my head as I ordered, but with two bogus table charges, two ginger ales at ¥500 each, and tax on top of all of this, things were a bit more than I expected. This is a typical modus operandi in Japanese bars, as we shall learn.
I had a map to Bar Orange, but it was not as accurate as I might have hoped. Also, the location was on a small side-street, and the business is only marked with a tiny orange light that looks a bit like a siren from atop a 1950s police car - except it is only 2% as bright.
I had actually walked past it a few times without seeing it.
I needed help.
Japanese people truly are helpful.
I accosted a random woman standing outside of a Vietnamese restaurant, asking if she knew where my destination was. She walked me three blocks away to another restaurant, a rather upscale place with sharp looking waiters and black lacquered bar and tables. One of the waiters pointed us in a direction sort of (kind of) back where we had come from. Then the lady asked another random guy on the street, who took over for her and led me to the bar, a block away. The whole time, I felt bad about being such a trouble, and I was asking the lady if she had to get back to her restaurant. She kept saying, in a dismissive manner, “oh, my customers can wait”.
Next time you are in Japan, and your food is taking a long time to come from the kitchen, remember that your waitress might be busy taking some American guy to a bar.
Bar Orange is owned and operated by a friendly cocktail geek who is also a fanatic for the films of Stanley Kubrick. My kind of fella on both counts. Had he spoken any English, we’d have been fast friends.There was a couple in the bar, who left shortly after I arrived, and after that, it was just me. There is a small painting of Kubrick by Wada Makoto at one end of the bar, and a small framed photo of the four "droogs" from the film A Clockwork Orange - a-ha! Bar Orange! - at the other. A couple of books on Kubrick co-mingle with a few cocktail and wine guides on a small shelf behind the bar. Once again, lots of whiskies, but a nice selection of liqueurs and other spirits as well.
I
had a nice (if small) Negroni in a delicately etched glass with a huge
and perfectly square iceberg in it. Bar snacks were dried figs and
raisins, with a single sliced cherry tomato, and a few tiny pieces of
baguette smeared with some relative of peanut butter. As is the case in
all Japanese bars, you get one serving of these, and you’re done. Eat
them slowly. Having
been burned with the extra charges at Bar King Rum, and also since I
had no idea upon ordering how much I was paying for drinks, I was
skittish about staying at Bar Orange too long or ordering more than a
single
drink. I would have liked to stay longer, but I could not afford to
drop
fifty bucks on two drinks again. Turns out that I wasn’t hit with the
table charge, or a tax, or any other spurious charges (gaijin
tax, as I came to think of it), so my total bill was the price of the
drink (¥1580). A bit pricey, particularly for a Tokyo-sized
pour,
but I
didn’t walk out of there feeling sour about the bill like I did at Bar
King Rum.
It
really does seem like even the classiest bars (or especially the
classiest bars) will charge a table charge, or an inflated
sales tax (5% is standard in Tokyo, but Bar King Rum charged 10%), or
ask ¥500 for a soft drink (no refills), or all of the above, if
they
think they can ass-fuck a tourist.
Watch yourself.
Last
stop for the night was a nice little liquor store in on Roppongi-dori
in Nishi-Azabu, called Shinanoya.
I grabbed a bottle of
Havana Club 7-year (¥2310) with which to keep my flask full. For
the
price of one Tokyo-priced cocktail and a table charge, I had thirty
drinks ready to go, and twelve days left to consume them. A good
investment. I could have dropped another ¥1800 or less on 750ml
of Cointreau, bought a few lemons, and had thirty Sidecars... but no, I
wanted to try Tokyo cocktails in the wild, not make them in my hotel
room. The Havana Club was emergency rations!
Bar Tender
5F, 6-5-15 Ginza, Chuo-ku
This
one is right on Sotobori-dori, the main road in the heart of spendy
Ginza. I
got there early Friday evening, just as the sun was setting.
This
place is way up on the fifth floor of a building. The sign, also
sticking out of the building on the fifth floor, is easy to miss.
Inside, the bar is plush and quiet. The owner, a distinguished
middle-aged gentleman, has a few world bartending trophies displayed
behind the bar. He is truly the lord of this room, a real sensei (honored
master), held in awe and respect by his underlings. Two guys in their
thirties are occasionally allowed to make a drink when the master deems
them worthy, and a younger guy (perhaps college age) is the new
apprentice: he has been there for four years and has yet to serve a
drink to a customer.
Sensei did
not speak a word of English, but the college kid did. He was a little
bit shy. Awkward and unsure of himself, but sincere and sort of
endearing. I guess spending your formative years in the thrall of a
pompous (if talented) master will sap anyone’s esteem. The kid told me
that he practices making drinks at home every night, using the lessons
he has learned at work each day to improve his skills. I have to say
that I truly admire this dedication, and I have a lot of respect for
any bar that is this deeply committed to keeping the craft of the
gourmet
cocktail alive.
Sometimes there is a point where things just get
ridiculous, though.
Four years? Let the kid serve a damned drink already!
While
perusing the third of the menu that consisted of house original
cocktails (sixteen of ‘em), I asked the lad if he had ever invented a
drink of his own. He looked shocked, taken aback, almost afraid. No, he
told me - wide-eyed and shaking his head - he is nowhere near ready for
that. Just to be sure, I
clarified the matter: not even at home, not even just for his own fun.
Never.
So very Japanese!
Two cocktails later, I was out
the door.
Unfortunately, my notes for the night were erased when my tape recorder
rewound itself without me knowing it.
I
am almost certain that my drinks were a rum-based Maria Elena
(¥1600)
and a whiskey-based King’s Valley (¥1700), both house creations. I
asked if I could take
a
menu along with me to aid in my notes (glad I did, seeing as how my
tapes were erased), and was charged ¥1600 for it (without being
told
that there would be a charge).
They also got me for 10% tax, for a
grand total of ¥5390.
Ouch.
Y&M
Kisling
7F, 7-5-4 Ginza, Chuo-ku
Just around the corner from Bar Tender is Y&M Kisling, another demure lounge with bartenders in cream cocktail jackets. After being completely tapped out, spending fifty-plus bucks for two small drinks at Bar Tender, I just could not afford to get hit again for double tax, table charges, and very expensive drinks. I like my high-end cocktails, but all of the other service charges that come with them in Japan put a night of pleasant quaffing out of my price range. Still, I was determined to see what Y&M Kisling was all about.
Arriving
at the very top of a nondescript building via a phone-booth-sized
elevator, I stepped into Y&M Kisling. Of all the places on my
list
that I had visited to date: Imperial Bar, Bar King Rum, Bar Orange, Bar
Tender, and Y&M Kisling, I liked this one the best from a design
and vibe point of view. The lighting is nice, the bar is cozy, the
atmosphere is elegant but still comfortable. This is the one I
might
have liked to hang out at with some friends for a while. But I
wasn’t
about to risk dropping an entire Ulysses S. Grant - or the Japanese
equivalent - on another drink or two. I just couldn’t roll the
dice
again. To date, I’d had two bars charge me fairly, and two gouge
me.
Won’t get
fooled again, at least not ten minutes after the previous time.
I
gave the barman a combination of bad Japanese from my phrase book and
some universal sign language to indicate that I was waiting for my
friend. Even this little fib felt very wrong; the Japanese just
don’t
do these things.
I sipped a glass of water that appeared in front of
me, took in the surroundings, peered at some other people’s drinks,
pretended to look at the door a lot (as if waiting for someone),
munched on some bar snacks with a slight feeling of guilt (as I’d be
buying no drinks), pronounced Y&M Kisling to be a worthy
destination for a later visit, and made for the elevator - on pretense
of stepping outside so as to call my phantom buddy.
Next time.
I
reached into the little man-purse that I carry when I travel, and felt
the comforting metallic presence of my flask full of Havana Club. A cup
of ice from a fast food restaurant, and I had a little bit of
satisfaction as I planned my next move. Poked
my head into the famous Ginza Lion (built in 1899 as a
German-style
beer hall), but it didn’t look like the sort of place one went into
alone; it was full of groups of friends sitting at festive tables.
|
The person who told me about this place
told me that it was on the third floor of an otherwise completely
nondescript building, and that the door to the bar had no signs on it
whatsoever. It was supposedly just a plain copper door in a
cramped and
tiny cinderblock hallway on the third floor of another of the endless
identical Tokyo office buildings. Long story short, I
had all but found
the place
when
I finally gave in and asked two Japanese girls working in a
French-style bakery for directions. After some head scratching by my
French-Japanese teenage helpers, I was directed to a building... next
door. A building I had walked past three times, stared up at, and
deemed to be ‘not it’ more than once. That’s Tokyo for you, folks. Carefully pulling
open the fabled copper
door, I
entered
another tiny lounge. All of the walls were untreated concrete, cold and
industrial looking. Only the bar top and some panels behind the bar -
which were later revealed to be the entrances to storage areas - were
made of a material other than sooth grey cement; they were made of the
same copper sheeting that covered the door. There was one customer in
the place (it holds perhaps a dozen), as well as the owner / bartender,
and her dog Koshu. A small stereo in the corner was softly playing some
music that I later realized was the 1960s / early-1970s lineup of King
Crimson. This I did not expect. My hostess did not
speak a word of
English, but
(like many Japanese) she could write it. In fact, she wrote down, on an
index card and with perfect penmanship, “I do not speak English”. She
could write it, but she could not say it, or understand it when spoken.
I was told later that most Japanese learn to read and write English in
grade school, but few learn to speak or understand it when spoken. So
weird. |
|
She
did mix up a fine Negroni, however, and I got
out of there without being too severely raped on the taxes and table
charges (¥1000 for the drink, and that was that... come to think if
it, this was also sort of a bargain).
This
woman is a
real cocktail aficionado (like the owners of Bar Orange, Bar Tender and
the others), and from her tiny, dim, coldly decorated cave, she pours
from an amazing little selection of whiskeys and a carefully curated
assortment of gins, rums, and tequilas. I wasn't served any snacks, but
the other customer got those little cream cheese spread crackers that I
got elsewhere. Two more guys came in just before I left, and were
drinking red wine, which
was served with some 1848-brand 86% cacao French chocolate (the very
same brand and variety that I had
brought back from Paris last year!). A very nice pairing.
| |
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