Highballs and Hijinks on a foodie tour of Japan
Rush hour in Shibuya, Tokyo
When it comes to serious food and drink, served in beguiling back-street bars and buzzy restaurants, Japan delivers. Whisky man Charlie Echlin discovers smoky grills, unctuous noodles and Highball heaven on an epicurean road-trip to Tokyo and beyond…
Liquid consumption in Japan is of a stupendously high standard. That is my overriding impression from two weeks travelling across this thirsty and thirst-quenching country.
After a tiring 15-hour flight I landed first thing on a Saturday morning in February and was immediately in need of caffeine. Working in craft spirits (my day job is in English Rye whisky) means I have a natural disposition to drip coffee and to procuring this from baristas who take their job seriously. Sometimes too seriously.
The first place I visited is a chain, but a very good one called The Blue Bottle. There are quite a few dotted around Tokyo and the franchise manages to exude an independent spirit despite being the very opposite. The Blue Bottle’s staff were friendly and professional and keen to get you a coffee in hand. They were also very excited about their new ‘special’ brews. It is worth stating that the best coffee I’ve ever tasted was on this trip, keep reading to discover where (or just scan to the Kyoto section, below…). I had a black drip coffee from Blue Bottle every day I went there. And, in fact, every day I was in Japan.
I was staying in the heart of it all, at a pleasant hotel called All Day Place Shibuya, in Tokyo’s bustling commercial and financial district.
I decided to take my first dinner a stone’s throw away from the hotel and, despite being tired from my journey, it was exactly what I needed. At Ryan I also had my first highball in Japan (for someone in the whisky industry this is akin to sampling your first espresso in Italy). It was lightly peated, perfectly refreshing and also just quite beautiful to behold. The glassware, ice and execution are what distinguish a proper highball in Japan from a simple whisky soda. It made me think of the perfect child born of a nuanced whisky mother and an easy, unpretentious soft drink father.
The staff at Ryan spoke good English (no guarantee in Japan generally, and particularly welcome if you’re a jet-lagged Brit) and served me some very soothing Soba noodles and a plate of Wagyu beef. At the end of the meal I was given the warm starch water the Soba noodles were cooked in to drink and was assured it had many health benefits. I remain unconvinced, but I enjoyed the experience and a brief moment of #wellness between the avalanche of highballs.
If your night is still burning bright head to SG Club for post dinner drinks — I went a few times whilst in Shibuya but in truth was too tired to make it on my first evening. There are many other bars in the area that are worth visiting but this is the one I enjoyed the most. Good bars here are both busy and yet not too bustling that you can’t find a place to sit. SG Club nailed this artform consistently during my time in Shibuya. The clientele, a mixture of locals and visitors, are a friendly and moderately trendy bunch who give off a nice vibe without making one feel at all uneasy.
Lots of highballs were consumed in the ground floor bar. I particularly relished a Wagyu beef-washed old-fashioned we sampled in the basement bar below. Night Owls take note: SG Club stays open to the small hours, so is a fine option when you’re in the mood for that ill-advised just-one-more-for-the-road.
The next day I stopped in for a delicious Udon noodle lunch at Udon Yamacho Ebisu before strolling along the famous shopping thoroughfare known as ‘Cat Street’ in Harajuku (an area next to Shibuya famed for its fashion shopping). It’s a great place to grab some new Levis. I didn’t linger. I was on a mission to see Yoyogi Park.
Yoyohi Park, perfect for escaping the city sprawl
This beguiling oasis has cultural aspects (a beautiful shrine and a typical landscaped garden with a teahouse) as well as plenty of space and a pleasing degree of nature —something to be grateful for if you’re staying in the dense urban sprawl of Shibuya. The Imperial Palace Gardens, located downtown, is a more popular must-see but one has to pre-arrange a proper visit (which I hadn’t) and anyway Yoyogi Park didn’t disappoint.
Realistically, you are not going to have the time or the energy to visit all of Tokyo’s big attractions. A trip to Asakusa to see the temple(s) is almost obligatory, however, and the same could be said about the fish market in Ginza (Ginza is the Midtown 5th Avenue equivalent of Shibuya’s Soho/ Brooklyn). I would not deter the reader from going to both Asakusa and the fish market but - having probably done them ‘wrong’ — I found the experiences a bit underwhelming. Do them nonetheless.
If you are going to Ginza, don’t forget your passport. This is not because you’ll be asked for ID or to confirm your nationality whilst wandering the streets but because armed with yours you will be able to visit the 12 floors of Uniqlo and take away half of the shop for an eye-boggling tax free price. I did not bring my passport but still managed to fill a second check-in bag with a bounty of £10 cardigans, trousers and other essentials.
Customers crammed around the bar of a typical Tokyo Izakaya
It was also in Ginza that I experienced the famed omakase sushi dinner, where, for a few yen more, the customer can sit at the bar and gorge on unbelievable fresh fish and seafood. I went to Ishiyama with the master distiller from our distillery, Francisco ‘Chico’ Rosa, and we both enjoyed it immensely. Cod sperm was the most off-piste thing we ate. Takayoshi, our brilliant host, is an Arsenal fan (bonus points) and over dinner we discussed both the benefits of sushi for one’s health as well as Bukayo Saka’s astonishing ability to play game after game for our team. Ishiyama is fantastic, but if you are going for the omakase experience, book in advance.
Chico and I had many fun evenings out in Tokyo, and our last one, shared with a crew of industry folk, was particularly memorable. We were intrigued to try ‘Pizzakaya’ — a pizza restaurant with a name that riffs on the Japanese concept of an Izakaya (literally a ‘dine-in sake shop’, and sort of like the pub culturally, but also not really like a pub at all). Drinking with affordable food and snacks is what one does at an Izakaya and we complied enthusiastically at Pizzakaya. Brendan McCarron, a fairly well known palate and whisky maker, ate so much of The Reaper pizza (the spiciest thing I’ve ever tried) that he has a new heroic status in our gang of wandering whisky nerds.
Enjoying an omakase sushi dinner at Ishiyama, with Arsenal fan and host Takayoshi on the right
Palates collectively pickled after our encounter with this satanic pizza, we headed off in search of somewhere to drink light and refined Japanese whiskies. We ended up at Mizunara Cask, four floors up of an unspectacular building in Rappongi. It’s a bar with an upmarket Caledonian feel. We had quite a few rare drams and more refreshing highballs. Brendan, who’d made the brilliantly smoky Ardbeg Grooves expression in his LVMH days, ordered a round of those and we drank them merrily.
In the lift down from Mizunara Cask we noticed that there was, improbably, a virtual golf venue in the basement of the same building. Expecting to be turned away, Chico, Brendan and I went down for 18 holes at 2am. A Scotsman, an Englishman and Portuguese man walk into a virtual golf bar in the small hours of a Sunday morning. What could possibly go wrong?
We staggered through about 5 holes until dawn when our highly tolerant host, a proper golfer with all the right gear, including a single pristine white glove, signalled that the course was now closed and it was time to leave. No prizes for guessing who came out on top after a few drinks and a few holes…Brendan won by a considerable margin.
The next day we left for Kyoto — Japan’s former capital and a cultural hub — on a Shinkansen (or “bullet train”). Kyoto is a big city, roughly the size of Munich, but feels much saner than Tokyo. It was here that I sampled the best coffee I have ever had. So good were the wares at Söt Coffee that we went every single day in Kyoto and also packed a considerable amount of their beans to take back to the UK.
Thirsty for something stronger, we were keen to try some of Kyoto’s Izakaya bars.
Golden hour in downtown Kyoto
BDYエスニック is an excellent establishment (just copy and paste those letters into google maps). This is where we got into pairing sake and beer. We justified this bold move by telling ourselves that both products come from grain and, therefore, technically we weren’t really mixing drinks. Thus, we countenanced ‘double parking’ and even — utter madness — triple parking (adding whisky to the liquid party) from that day on. While we still managed to achieve hangovers, I believe they were easier to manage and that our grain theory has some legs.
Sot-l’y-laisse gets an honourable mention. It’s very close to BDYエスニック and is technically a yakitori restaurant. You grill your own skewers and they have a good selection of sake and beer to go with it.
Totally skewered: Charlie tucks in at Sot-l’y-laisse in Kyoto
My favourite Izakaya in Kyoto, and of my whole visit to Japan, was Rutubo-Izakaya, where we had a large lunch pre-ninja museum (not recommended). Rutubo-Izakaya has a terrific menu of both food and drink and is very reasonably priced. This is a place to go to in the way one visits a good pub on a weekend — for several hours with the aim to drink and eat languidly and leisurely.
For cocktails and whisky there is an area in Kyoto centred around the Takase river, where the venues are tightly packed and full of great atmosphere and conviviality. Bar Luckenbooth is good for neat whisky drinking and Bar Rocking Chair is good for cocktails.
Our bodies are a temple: Charlie and Chico in Kyoto
Perhaps the best (and certainly the strangest) late night place we went to was Rum and Whisky, run by a kind and knowledgeable man who goes by the pseudonym “Mr Sloth” (he’s not lazy, he simply loves sloths). Rum and Whisky is exactly what the name suggests. You can only buy rum and whisky, in 10ml measures, but Mr Sloth’s selection is like a fever dream to spirits nerds. The back bar is literally overflowing and the main bar itself is festooned with bottles (some empty, but too precious to throw away). You simply shop with your eyes and pay your bill at the end before going for late night ramen.
Monsen is where we got our 3am fix. Noodles in a spicy broth, some fried chicken skin and a couple of beers to send us home.
We did a fun day trip to Osaka from Kyoto and had a good time doing very little. Later on we popped into Bar Augusta before boarding the train back to Kyoto. This is a great place to sit at the bar, talk about whisky and drink even more highballs.
From Kyoto, we returned to Tokyo for one evening before heading to Kariuzawa, a legendary place in whisky, to attend the World Whisky Forum, held at Komoro Distillery, one of many new Japanese distilleries. There are over 140 in total now but Komoro is distinct in many ways, not least for the presence of Ian Chang, formerly of Kavalan, at the helm for whisky production. Dave Broom hosted the forum immaculately, as one would expect, and the personal highlight was buying a Yamazaki Highball for Suntory’s chief blender — in whisky terms, this felt a bit like getting to have a kickabout with Ronaldinho.
After the forum we darted down to Kagoshima on the southermost tip of Japan. This was not to see a volcano or eat salt water eels (though those options are available to hardy travellers) but so we could visit Kanosuke Distillery.
Tantalisingly remote, Kanosuke is a single malt distillery built on a fantastic legacy of sochu making and one of the world’s great whisky pilgrimages. The family who own the distillery are sochu makers and the name, Kanosuke, is a tribute to a legendary member of that family. If you go, grab a drink at the distillery’s Mellow Bar, a glorious melding of whisky and Japanese design.
Our trip to Kanosuke was a real smash and grab. A day after getting there, we were back in Tokyo and facing the prospect of saying goodbye to Japan. Generally two weeks away, anywhere, can feel like “enough” but I had found my appetite for Japan was just getting keener. A last trip to the SG club in Shibuya and a final midnight raid on Lawsons and Seven Eleven (convenience stores which make Tesco Express and Londis look like 1970s corner shops) and that was it. I was in the familiar state of a mild hangover at an airport gate waiting for my turn to board.
Speaking to other people who have visited Japan, I have found there to be a consistent feeling about their respective trips: when and how can I visit again?
