Booze Ceremony

The city’s new “Japanese bars” are a little Tokyo, a little New York, and a tribute to Japan’s elevation of an American art form.

- Mary Jane Weedman

IN 1993, when most of the city was gulping Cosmos, a tiny bar opened inside an East Village izakaya. The owner, Tony Yoshida, modeled it after ones in Tokyo: elegant, clandestine, with a focus on technique and perfectionism in everything from ice to garnish. Angel’s Share was soon frequented by customers like a 20-something Sasha Petraske, who studied the staff’s grace and dexterity, the smooth-motioned hallmarks of Tokyo bartending. It served as inspiration for his own spot a few years later: Milk & Honey, which revolutionized the city’s (and country’s) bar scene with a new wave of “civilized” drinking.

A quarter-century later, the seeds Angel’s Share planted have sprouted not only the speakeasy-style cocktail shrines in the Milk & Honey mold but a new kind of bicultural bar, melding tenets of Japanese mixology (itself an elaboration of pre-Prohibition American bartending) with Asian ingredients and flavor profiles in a setting devoted equally to Tokyo precision and high-volume New York speed. What seems like a recent trend is actually the product of a cross-cultural exchange that’s been unfolding for decades. In 2003, Okamoto Studio in Queens began creating Japanese-style “crystal clear” ice; in 2011, Dutch Kills owner Richard Boccato launched Hundredweight Ice and made cubes and blocks like those used in Tokyo. Bar-world impresarios founded Cocktail Kingdom and sold Japanese barware—like the tall, narrow jiggers that quickly appeared on bar mats around town. It was only a matter of time before the recipes began reflecting a similar influence.