The taxi dropped me a short walk from AC House, a new Tokyo restaurant tucked in the origami folds of a residential neighbourhood near the Aoyama Cemetery. The location was appropriate since I felt like another drink would probably kill me.
A space capsule of smooth white curves, AC House’s first floor is dominated by a swooping 10-seat counter and an open kitchen where chef Atsuki Kuroda chars turnips on the robata grill and studs squid blini with gingko nuts. The open second story of this former residence has been preserved down to the last knotty timber plank. Anchored in Japanese ingredients and influenced by Italy and Scandinavia, the cooking is similarly layered, and I wanted to be excited about it. But the idea of 10 courses, each one paired with wine, dampened my enthusiasm like a bucket of cold water. Actually, I would have preferred a bucket of cold water.
Your low-ABV guide to the dining scene in Tokyo
“Could I switch to the nonalcoholic pairing?” I asked my server, Haruna Sugiyama. She explained that the nonalcoholic option needed to be ordered in advance. Her smile was sympathetic, but I knew she was thinking, What, you expect us to conjure a roster of compelling zero-proof drinks on the fly?
Except that’s exactly what happened, beginning with a glass of effervescent liquid far too fuchsia to be wine. “Amazake,” she told me, a cloudy, subtly sweet beverage made with koji-cultured rice. The purple was from shiso syrup, she continued, and that was diced pickled orange peel gathering at the bottom of the goblet like cubic boba. Pinprick bubbles raced to the surface. A single large ice cube clonked against the delicate glass, and suddenly, I was thirsty.
Tokyo is a drinking city. It happens at master-class cocktail bars hiding in nondescript office buildings. At shochu power hours that electrify dank izakaya. At luxury lobby bars in the clouds. But wherever the action takes place, lately it’s a drinking-with-less-alcohol city.
“For the customers at my bar, and for many young people, low-alcohol cocktails and mocktails are becoming more popular,” Keita Saito said after picking me up from my hotel, the buzzing Trunk, for a bar crawl in Shibuya. A sparsely goateed gearhead with tornado and lightning tattoos on his neck, Saito owns Liquid Factory, a 10-seat cocktail workshop a couple of blocks from Trunk. But it was his night off, so we weren’t heading there.
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At our first stop, SG Club, umami bubbles drifted across Parmigiano Sours, made with pisco and Sauternes, and neo–piña coladas arrived in pineapple carriages. Cheap and ferociously fizzy whisky sodas fuelled a feast of iridescent sashimi and wintry oden stew at Shirubee, a rambunctious restaurant-industry hangout. In Shinjuku, we pressed in to Open Book, spine-to-spine like the volumes on the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and sank into the citrusy, narcotic quicksand of the bar’s famous Lemon Sour. At some point, Saito told me, without irony, “It’s changing, the stereotype of Japanese people drinking too much.”
The evening’s shenanigans aside, Saito is not wrong. Alcohol consumption has been on a two-decade decline in Japan. The pandemic only accelerated this trend, and the drop has been most precipitous among Gen Zers and millennials. Lauren Shannon, an American expat and the general manager of the Arigato Japan tour company explained the next morning over restorative miso soup: “I’ve lived in Tokyo for twenty-five years, and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been to my Japanese friends’ houses.” It’s not a lack of hospitality but a function of logistics, she said; multigenerational households cohabiting in small apartments “push socialising outside the home to izakaya and bars.”
Book your stay at TRUNK (HOTEL) via Booking.com
Book your stay at TRUNK (HOTEL) via Agoda.com
Which was not possible during successive lockdowns, when the government severely curtailed operating hours for bars and restaurants. Largely bereft of their social-drinking spaces, people indulged less, and establishments that wanted to remain open, like the Bellwood, in Shibuya, had to get creative. Fortunately, this sepia-toned lounge already had an artist in residence. I met chef Ayaka Terai in her four-seat bar-within-a-bar, dressed like a painter in a linen smock over a black turtleneck, one long earring dangling from her left lobe like a lamp chain.
Bellwood’s founder and head bartender, Atsushi Suzuki, served me an easygoing welcome cocktail of shochu with shiso and seltzer, while Terai introduced her unconventional Bell Sushi. “I’m inspired by taking trips, talking to people, and Netflix,” she said. These influences converge in an exuberant, internationally inspired carnival untethered to traditions of who can make nigiri (only men) and where it can be served (not in cocktail bars). With a blowtorch, she flash-broiled dominoes of anago, pressed them into nigiri with delicately seasoned rice, and applied a shiny coffee glaze and cocoa nibs, in a tribute to Brazil. The burning smell wasn’t the smouldering sea eel but the demise of the sushi patriarchy.
Another night, I descended into a Ginza basement to meet two more resourceful disruptors. I found chef Tatsuya Suzuki and sake master Takafumi Doi waiting behind the dark wood counter of their restaurant, Kion, partially obscured by the soothing shadows like a couple of sake oracles. Pairing with Suzuki’s smart Mediterranean-Japanese cooking, Doi went all out with an array of sakes: Shikishima Junmai, a zephyr of peach blossoms and liquorice; a tawny aged brew from 1988, as acidic and nutty as Oloroso sherry; blond mango sake as sweetly fragrant as Juicy Fruit gum. A red-rice Kyokuko Rosso had been infused with sansho pepper and bergamot, then carbonated into a faux sparkling rosé.
Tokyo’s bar culture is in perpetual motion. To wit, Kion closed in April, but Suzuki and Doi have already launched Chord, a sake think tank and pop-up-restaurant series. The venue may be different, but the mission remains the same: reintroducing sake to a generation that often dismisses it, according to Suzuki, as “a drink for the elderly.” They offer spirit-free alternatives, too.
Back at AC House, a parade of peculiar, complex, and delightful drinks unfolded: roasty hojicha, on its own as cold brew and separately infused with burdock and fermented into sprightly kombucha; the Gin-Apple Soda, alchemy of fresh juice and juniper; aged red rooibos turned into a look-alike orange wine with plum syrup, pine oil, and pickled pine-leaf brine. None contained a drop of alcohol. Sugiyama, who by now I’d learned was not only my server but AC House’s beverage director, brought the last drink, a “mezcal” mocktail, with dessert. The delicious hazelnut ice cream melted in neglect as I sipped and studied the mocktail, a captivating concoction of plum, whey, and some mysterious alt-agave. It was fruity and sharp, bittersweet and smoky like a plum tarte tatin baked a little too long and extinguished with lemon and cream.
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Taking cues from the city’s new hospitality generation, I realised that drinking versus abstaining from alcohol can be a both-and instead of an either-or, and later in the trip, I would find that balance. At Liquid Factory, I would pick Flowers (a spirit-free basil-and-orange-blossom fizz) and One Pear (hopped gin and tonic laced with pear liqueur).
While staying at the Tokyo Edition, Toranomon, I’d try tea bottled like wine (an elegant Taiwanese oolong) and wine batched like a cocktail (Sauvignon Blanc with green rooibos and mint eau-de-vie) at the gorgeous Jade Room.
During a cocktail crawl with Shannon, I’ll trip out on the Blue Cheese Lore Martini at Folklore, a blend of blue cheese brandy, sweet potato shochu, Sauternes, and honey.
Back at AC House, I reflected on how Sugiyama had achieved the ethereal smokiness of mezcal in her after-dinner banger. “Lapsang souchong,” she said, the ancient tea finished over a pinewood fire. She invited me to compare it with the actual mezcal version, but I declined. “Do you not drink alcohol?” she finally asked. I offered a fitting answer for this Tokyo moment: I do, and I don’t.
Sugiyama has since moved on from the restaurant — like I said, perpetual motion — but her influence remains. Shortly after her departure, AC House went completely nonalcoholic.
Book your stay at The Tokyo EDITION, Toranomon via Booking.com
Book your stay at The Tokyo EDITION, Toranomon via Agoda.com
(Hero and feature image credit: Irwin Wong)
This story first appeared on travelandleisure.com
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