Japanese Cocktail Technique Seminar : May 3-4

[David A. Goldfarb]

After that came a short section on lemon twists and how to express the oil onto a drink. Uyeda says that lemon zest has two kinds of oil: one aromatic and one bitter. He claims that the aromatic oil is lighter and creates more of a persistent fine mist when a peel is squeezed, whereas the bitter oil is heavier and tends to fall straight down. As a result, and under the belief that one generally wants the aromatic oil and not the bitter oil, Uyeda advocates squeezing the peel from a position roughly 6 inches above the surface of the drink traveling on a 45 degree angle. This, he says, is close enough for the aromatic oils to reach the surface of the drink, but far enough away so that the bitter oils will fall away and not make it to the glass. And, actually, when I watched him squeeze out a twist, I could definitely see that some of the droplets were larger and fell onto the bar whereas there was also a very find misty component that floated down on the glass. Whether this reflects two different kinds of oils with different properties or simply two differently sized oil droplets, I couldn't say.

I've seen this technique with an orange peel in the "Del Sasser" at Angel's Share, and it seemed as if its purpose was as much to release an aroma at the table in the vicinity of the cocktail as to flavor it directly. I don't recall the entire contents of the drink (which I highly recommend), but the main flavors were house-smoked bacon-washed bourbon, pomegranate juice, honey, and Angostura. Another description on the net also mentions plum liqueur and fresh lime juice, which I could believe. I have to go back and order another one.

Edited May 14, 2010 by David A. Goldfarb (log)

[slkinsey]

On to stirring...

Stirring, says Uyeda, is for drink using similar, easily combined ingredients when you want to keep some of the bite of the liquor and not lower the ABV% too much. The main worries are to chill the drink sufficiently without diluting the spirits too much, and as a result this relies heavily upon ice. Uyeda says that one should choose a combination of ice cubes with medium and large pieces of cracked ice, so that there are no large voids (I should point out that "cracked ice" in his terminology means pieces that have been cracked from a block of clear ice, and none are as small as what we would consider "cracked ice"). And he also points out that it's unwise to put more ice in the mixing vessel than the level of the liquid you will be stirring, because this ice can only contribute dilution through surface melting and cannot contribute any chilling. In stirring, you only want to use as much ice as will touch the liquid, and anything more is at best superfluous and at worst adds more dilution. This is different from shaking where you want to use as much ice as you possibly can, because you're moving the liquid around quickly to touch all the ice. Nothing revolutionary there, although or course it does evidence a strong attention to detail.

There are a few aspects of Japanese stirring techniques that I did find notworthy for their difference.

First is that, as far as I could tell, the idea of chilling the mixing vessel (or the glass for that matter) was clearly unfamiliar to Uyeda. I don't know if this reflects overall Japanese practices or just Uyeda's, but I found it striking that someone who had paid so much attention to other details would overlook this simple practice which is so familiar to the American cocktailian community -- especially when you consider the thermal capacity of those big, heavy Japanese stirring pitchers.

The second interesting difference, and a practice which is also observed in the shaking technique, is that after the ice is placed in the mixing vessel it is briefly covered with water which is then poured out. This "washing of the ice" is believed to clean the surface of the ice, melt away any small chips that would melt quickly and dilute the drink, smooth out any rough edges of the ice and chill the mixing vessel. To my way of thinking, this practice makes the ice wetter than it possibly could have been without such rinsing and pours an awful lot of "cold" thermal energy down the sink. When I was playing around with the hard shake at home, I found my early attempts overly diluted to my taste, which I easily solved by skipping the "ice washing" step. It is possible, however, that the cracked block ice he uses isn't quite as melty as my DIY Kold-Draft at home. Thanks to Don Lee I have a big-ass piece of clear block ice in the freezer now, so I'll experiment with that and see if it makes much difference.

After the ice is washed and drained, and the liquor poured into the mixing vessel on top of the ice, the bartender's job is to chill the drink quickly with the proper amount of dilution. Special attention should be given to making sure that (1) the ice doesn't collide, possibly breaking off chips and overly diluting the drink; and (2) no air is incorporated into the drink by turbulence or violent movement of any kind. As a result, the technique at this point is focused on getting the spoon in and out of the mixing glass with minimal disruption of the ice, and stirring with a consistent speed so that any turbulence is minimized.

The idea is to find a natural small void near the edge among the pieces of ice where you can slide in the barspoon. The barspoon is inserted into the void not straight down but rather starting with the shaft held at an angle in according to the curvature of the bowl of the spoon so that the bowl of the spoon goes in straight. Then, as the barspoon is inserted further down in the mixing vessel, the shaft is gradually straightening up. The Japanese way of holding the barspoon is to have the thumb and ring finger on one side of the shaft and the index and middle fingers on the other side, pinkie finger extended and unmoving. The thumb and index finger pinch the shaft and support the spoon while the middle and ring fingers perform the actual rotating movement. The stirring speed seems fairly brisk compared to the NYC tempi I am used to seeing. The most important thing is that the speed is absolutely consistent and that both acceleration and deceleration are smooth. This way the ice does not collide and there is no turbulence to incorporate air into the liquid. Uyeda stressed the importance of making sure that the stirring movement isn't jerky and uneven. Just as you want to brake through the first half of a turn and accelerate through the second half when driving, Uyeda says that you have to make sure you push the spoon through the first part of the rotation and pull the spoon through the second part of the rotation. Any stir that has too much of one element compared to the other will be a jerky motion that creates turbulence. At the end, in the final turn, the bartender draws out the barspoon without stopping the motion of the ice and allows the drink to spin down by itself (again, minimizing collision of ice and turbulence).

The Tokyo Kaikan stir simply means holding the barspoon in the middle (apparently most Japanese bartenders hold the barspoon up at the top). When a long-shaft Japanese barspoon is held in the middle for stirring, it makes an especially nice visual effect to see the fork end revolving around above the mixing vessel. It also seems likely that this provides a strong visual testimony of the evenness of the bartender's stir. Uyeda did say, however, that this is for show and that the Tokyo Kaikan stire doesn't have a meaningful impact on the result of the drink. He also said that he had not yet found the perfect way of stirring, and he has apparently not developed or personalized a stirring technique the way he has done with his shaking technique.

[Kohai]

Just need to jump in here and say that chilling glassware is de rigeur for Japanese bars. I can't explain why he didn't spend any time on it (doing it or talking about it) at the seminar but it's definitely the norm for places in Ginza and most other areas, too.

[slkinsey]

Thanks Pip. Uyeda is apparently so much a thing unto himself, and does so little visiting, that it's difficult to know how accurate his generalizations as to " Japanese bartending techniques" are (as opposed to his personal techniques and practices).

So... with respect to "chilling glassware": Does this mean chilling the cocktail glasses with ice? Keeping cocktail glasses in a freezer? Freezing the glass stirring pitchers?

It would actually make more sense to me with respect to the heavy glass stirring pitchers if they were packed with ice, filled with water, stirred to chill the pitcher, and then the entire contents discarded and the now-chilled pitcher refilled with ice and booze, etc.

Pip, do you have any sense as to the extent to which thermal properties of tools and ingredients are considered by Japanese bartenders? A lot of the best cocktailian bartenders in American think about this sort of thing quite a bit -- although it must be said that it took some time for them to start thinking the correct things (in earlier days people supposed that shaking in all metal produced a colder drink because of thermal conductivity, when in fact the difference is due to thermal capacity). This is one of the reasons so many bars are now using all metal Boston shaker sets and freeze their glass mixing vessels (or, if that is impractical, may use metal stirring pitchers).

[jk1002]

First of all, thank you Sam for the long write ups that you did.

I got the book today. It kind of makes me want to go to the store and get some blue curacao.

That aside, he has few pages on chilling glasses. He doesn't show how but for sure he is not storing them in a freezer. He says the glass should only be chilled until it fogs up. I don't think he is using ice and water since that leaves water in the glass. I would think he is sticking them a few minutes into the freezer or stores them in a fridge. Edit, actually further on he is saying to store glasses in a fridge not freezer.

If I understand the hard shake right, he is limiting the ice movement by stuffing the container completely. The long shaking with the little movement produces finer ice crystals. I would think if I shake longer in a boston shaker where the ice has much more room to move I get similar fine crystals. Aeration is a different story. He mentions the Boston shaker in the book but doesn't go after these details.

Edited May 15, 2010 by jk1002 (log)

[EvergreenDan]

It kind of makes me want to go to the store and get some blue curacao.

I shouldn't let this blue curacao thing bug me, but it does. "Gee this ketchup sure makes my sauce look purdy, so I'll dump some in". Surely it would be more aesthetically pleasing to add a drop of blue food coloring without the crappy low-end flavor of rot-gut blue curacao (and up the quantity of, say, Cointreau) than it would be to use that awful ingredient. Or forgo the unappealing color altogether. I don't find blue slushies appealing, either.

It offends my aesthetic sense in the same way that, say, beautiful watches with illegible hands do. Design sticking its tongue out at utility.

Apparently I suffer life's small indignities without grace. Different values, different cultures, I guess.

Edited May 16, 2010 by EvergreenDan (log)

[John Rosevear]

While booze-shopping yesterday, I noticed that Bols makes a blue curacao. I haven't tried it -- as far as I can recall, I've never owned a bottle of the blue stuff -- but I have used their non-blue curacao and it isn't bad. It's not up to the level of Brizard etc, but it's significantly better than the bottom-shelf alternatives, certainly something that could be served in, say, tiki drinks without embarrassment.

[slkinsey]

I was going to mention this later on in the section about color, but one should keep in mind that the Bols liqueur products available in Europe and Japan are very good quality, whereas the Bols liqueur products available in America are crap. So, adding a teaspoon of Bols blue curacao to a 2-ounce cocktail for color isn't quite the same as dumping in a bunch of crap. Of course, cooks add all kinds of things to sauces to modify the color, including but not limited to prepared ketchup.

As for food coloring, Dave Arnold asked exactly that question during the color session Q&A: why not just use food coloring? Or, for that matter, why not add food coloring to a different clear liqueur to get the desired color? Uyeda said that wouldn't be challenging.

[thirtyoneknots]

Wrt domestically available options, the senor curacao is quite decent. Provided, of course, the blue color isn't an outright hangup itself. Idle question: anybody out there have any insights on the origins of blue curacao?

[jk1002]

I don't think that the bols products are better quality in Europe. 22 years ago or so i started drinking and within the first few month i did hit bols and even back then when we would not stop at 2$ wine ( for a half gallon) we were aware that this was bottom shelf stuff.

The bols bottle i touched at Astor Winestoday looked awefully similar to what is visible on the Ny Times picture of him inside tender bar.

I am not so worried about e taste, i can see that one can make a decent cocktail with crappy ingredients. In the end this is what we did in cooking school with rotten vegetables whipping up decent meals. I have just didficulties signing up for the artificial color train ..... Very seventies.

I might the the bols curacao a whirl, is just 14$ for a bottle.

[slkinsey]

I don't think that the bols products are better quality in Europe.

It is a fact that the American Bols liqueurs are not made at the same place or using the same ingredients as the Bols liqueurs available elsewhere. Many Americans are surprised to learn that Bols liqueurs are held in high regard by non-Americans, given the overall low quality of the product sold in the United States.

ETA: To be clear, the Bols liqueurs sold in the US are not produced by Bols at all, but rather are produced in North America by a different company under license from the European company. The American producers, in other words, purchased the rights to the brand name in the US (they probably also pay for a non-compete in this market from Bols) -- but they are not making an equivalent product.

Edited May 17, 2010 by slkinsey (log)

[Chris Amirault]

Uyeda says that one should choose a combination of ice cubes with medium and large pieces of cracked ice, so that there are no large voids (I should point out that "cracked ice" in his terminology means pieces that have been cracked from a block of clear ice, and none are as small as what we would consider "cracked ice"). And he also points out that it's unwise to put more ice in the mixing vessel than the level of the liquid you will be stirring, because this ice can only contribute dilution through surface melting and cannot contribute any chilling. In stirring, you only want to use as much ice as will touch the liquid, and anything more is at best superfluous and at worst adds more dilution.

The varied ice size really makes sense to me. I have always added about 25% more ice than liquid by volume because the ice settles as it melts, but if you have the right shapes of ice placed in there, then you won't have the same settling effect. Interesting....

[slkinsey]

At home I have always liked stirred cocktails with pretty much 100% hand-cracked ice from the freezer and no big pieces, using a frozen heavy glass mixing vessel. I feel like this allows me to get the coldest result and the right amount of dilution. Hand-cracked ice, of course, also leaves very little in the way of void spaces between pieces, so the ratio of ice to liquid is as high as possible. I suspect that working bars using 0C ice and a less thoroughly-chilled mixing vessel need to include more large pieces in order to avoid over-dilution.

[John Rosevear]

Most or all of the US-market Bols products are made -- for Bols -- by Brown-Forman, probably in Kentucky. US distribution is handled by Wm Grant & Sons (Balvenie, Glenfiddich, Hendrick's Gin, etc.)

I can't attest either way to manufacturing processes for the US products vs those used for EU-market products, but clearly their market positioning and pricing in North America suggests ingredients and processes closer to, say, Hiram Walker than to Marie Brizard. That said, the 2-year-old bottle of Bols orange curacao that I have is a little sweeter than I'd like but not at all unpleasant or artificial-tasting, with a distinct orange-peel character -- it's certainly several levels above "crap".

Speaking of Brizard, they list a blue curacao, though I don't recall seeing it for sale. If you've gotta have a blue one, theirs should be worth trying.

[slkinsey]

To continue, the first day closed out with a section on Japanese shaking techniques and philosophies. Uyeda was emphatic that this first session was not the hard shake, but rather a discourse on generalzied Japanese shaking. However, as noted above, the extent to which Uyeda has a basis on which to make generalized statements on Japanese techniques is anything but clear considering that he doesn't exactly make the rounds. Those with a better understanding of the Japanese bartending scene may be able to contribute more information here where my notes are not entirely accurate...

Shaking, says Uyeda, is to be used instead of shaking when the ingredients are dissimilar and more difficult to combine. This mostly includes juices, cream and egg. The primary goal of shaking the cocktail is to aerate the liquid and form tiny bubbles in the liquid. Chilling will take care of itself, so mixing is the primary goal. Unlike stirring, where you only want to use as much ice as will contact the liquid, with shaking the goal is to use lots of ice. Indeed, use as much ice as you possibly can, because the shaking method moves the liquid around in the shaker to touch all of the ice and therefore every piece of ice can participate in chilling and aerating the liquid.

Ice is important. As with stirring, Uyeda stressed the importance of using a mixture of ice cubes and different sized pieces of ice that has been cracked from clear block ice in order to minimize the voids inside the shaker. Also, as with stirring, the process begins with "washing" the ice with water and shaking out the excess.

Now we come to some of the most notable differences between Japanese style shaking and Western style shaking. First, almost every Japanese bartender uses a three-piece cobbler shaker rather than the usual Boston shaker sets used by Western bartenders. Among a number of differences, using a cobbler shaker minimizes the headspace in the shaker (the area inside the shaker that is not filled with ice). A smaller headspace means that there is a smaller amount of air trapped inside the shaker during shaking, which Uyeda says is good for aeration. I note myself that a smaller headspace and a tightly packed shaker also has the effect of limiting the extent to which the ice can move around during shaking and the relative violence of any collisions inside the shaker. This is important because one thing Uyeda streses is the importance of considering the movement of the ice inside the shaker: you want to move the ice as much as possible, and you want to move in in a way that minimizes any hard collisions against the bottom of the shaker. I am not convinced that the ice moves all that much with this technique. Rather, I think it moves in a kind of cocktail shaking

due to the fact that there is very little room for it to move around. Uyeda does admit that he has no idea whether or not his idea of what the ice is doing in the shaker actually happens, but rather that this is how he likes to conceptualize it.

Other than the shaker, there are some other notable differences between typical Japanese and typical Western shaking techniques. Most Western shaking is done with the shaker in a vertical position and the fundamental shaking movement being up-and-down (or slightly angled). This is often done one handed if the bartender's hands are large and strong enough to grip the shaker securely:

Japanese shaking, on the other hand, is done in a side-by-side motion with the shaker held in a horizontal position and using both hands always. The dominant hand is on the cap end of the shaker, with the thumb on the cap, the index finger resting on the top and the middle finger on the bottom of the shoulder of the strainer piece, and the other fingers grasping the body of the strainer like a football. The off hand is held fingers together and palm up, with the last two joints of the fingers curled up around the end of the shaker and the body of the shaker resting in the slightly cupped palm of the off hand. The dominant hand is on top of the shaker and the off hand is below the shaker. The cap end of the shaker is facing the chest, and the shaking movement is in a push-pull motion away from the chest on a horizontal plane.

There is also a "snap" motion that can be made, where the shaker is rotated up to a vertical position with the cap facing up, and then back down to a vertical postition where the cap is facing down (I have only illustrated one half of the movement, but I think it's pretty easy to get the general idea).

Of course, hardly anyone does a simple horizontal push-pull shake. According to Uyeda, the most commonly taught and practiced shake in Japan is a "two-tier shake" where one "throw" of the shaker does diagonally up a bit, the next "throw" of the shaker goes down diagonally a bit, and so on back-and-forth between the two tiers of the shake:

Most shaking techniques also incorporate a certain amount of "snap" as well in the two-tier shake, so you end up with something like this:

Different bartenders operating under different shaking disciplines and paradigms may emphasize various elements of the basic push-pull, snap and tier techniques, some to such an extent that the other elements may hardly figure. For example, Uyeda spoke of a bar that was said to shake cocktails with a motion that was almost exclusively snap.

The shaker is often held at a slight angle to the direction of movement in order to minimize the effect of the ice slamming against the bottom of the shaker and breaking off large pieces. The idea is that the ice will sort of slide down against the curved side wall of the shaker and curl around the bottom in a kind of "rolling motion."

[slkinsey]

Now on to the hard shake. I'll begin by describing the technique, then set forth Uyeda's claims and thinking with respect to the technique, then add some of my own thoughts, reactions and observations. For those who have familiarized themselves with the various options available in mainstream Japanese shaking as described above, the hard shake technique may be somewhat anticlimactic. It is fundamentally the same as a mainstream Japanese shake, with one elaboration and one new element.

First, for what is the same: The hard shake is a horiztal shake with snap, and the shaker is held at an angle relative to the direction of movement so that the ice doesn't slam into the bottom of the shaker and crack.

Second, for what is an elaboration: The hard shake is a three-tier, four beat shake rather than being a two-tier, two-beat shake. What does this mean? In the two-tier shake described above, there is one throw to the top tier (beat #1) and one throw to the bottom tier (beat #2), and then back to the beginning. In the hard shake, there is a top tier, a bottom tier and a middle tier. So the movement is: one throw to the top tier (beat #1), one throw to the middle tier (beat #2), one throw to the bottom tier (beat #3), the final throw to the middle tier (beat #4), and then back to the beginning. The shaking sound should be smooth and uninterrupted, and there is an emphasis on the first beat (just as there is with the first beat of a 4-beat bar of music). So the sound should be something like: "SHUCK-a, shuck-a, shuck-a, shuck-a, SHUCK-a, shuck-a, shuck-a, shuck-a, SHUCK-a, shuck-a, shuck-a, shuck-a, (etc.)." There is usually a medium tempo start accelerating to "as fast as possible" by the beginning of the second sequence, and the final sequence usually decelerates to a gentle stop.

Finally, for the innovation: The first throw is in the sequence is not snapped, but rather given a 1/4 twist on its longitudinal axis. This is accomplished by raising the dominant-side shoulder and elbow to rotate the shaker in the opposite direction. This movement also has the effect of changing the motion of the first throw. Whereas the other three throws in the sequence are more or less straight out from the center of the body, the twist maneuver pushes the "twist throw" over slightly to the off side.

Side View

Front View Facing Towards the Bartender

One thing I noticed from watching Uyeda is that there is not all that much difference in the height of the various tiers. In some other demonstrations of this technique, the top tier almost seems to be head-height with the bottom throw being somewhere in the vicinity of the belt. With Uyeda, everything seemed to be between shoulder height and sternum height -- a range of about 12 inches.

Edited May 20, 2010 by slkinsey (log)

[David A. Goldfarb]

Beautiful diagrams, Sam.

[KD1191]

Shaking, says Uyeda, is to be used instead of shaking [sic] when the ingredients are dissimilar and more difficult to combine. This mostly includes juices, cream and egg. The primary goal of shaking the cocktail is to aerate the liquid and form tiny bubbles in the liquid. Chilling will take care of itself, so mixing is the primary goal.

Emphasis added.

Is the primary goal of shaking mixing or aeration, or are they coequal?

Secondly, if aeration is a good, why would you ever stir? (Stirring, as previously described, combines with the least aeration possible.) Or, is aeration only a good in cases where juices/cream/eggs are involved? In which case, is it possible that there would be a better way to make a drink that involved aerating those components that benefit from such treatment before incorporating those that do not in a less violent way?

[slkinsey]

Shaking, says Uyeda, is to be used instead of shaking [sic] when the ingredients are dissimilar and more difficult to combine. This mostly includes juices, cream and egg. The primary goal of shaking the cocktail is to aerate the liquid and form tiny bubbles in the liquid. Chilling will take care of itself, so mixing is the primary goal.

Emphasis added.

Is the primary goal of shaking mixing or aeration, or are they coequal?

Secondly, if aeration is a good, why would you ever stir? (Stirring, as previously described, combines with the least aeration possible.) Or, is aeration only a good in cases where juices/cream/eggs are involved? In which case, is it possible that there would be a better way to make a drink that involved aerating those components that benefit from such treatment before incorporating those that do not in a less violent way?

Clearly some of this was written in haste and not particularly well proof-read. Of course it should say that shaking is to be used "instead of stirring" when the ingredients are dissimilar and more difficult to combine. If I were to rewrite this more clearly, I think it would be more accurate to say that "mixing is the primary goal of shaking, and aeration is the primary goal of this shaking technique."

In contrasting shaking to stirring, according to Uyeda's explanation, since the ingredients for stirred cocktails are easily combined and because the physical limitations of stirring mean that you can't use nearly as much ice as you can in shaking, the task of chilling the drink becomes the primary goal, and combining/mixing the ingredients largely takes care of itself due to the nature of the ingredients used. The opposite is true when you are shaking.

As far as I can tell from my notes, in this conception, mixing and aeration are largely part of the same thing. The point is that you have some ingredients that don't easily combine, and by moving them around in a way that introduces a lot of aeration and small bubbles, you are able to mix these otherwise not-very-mixable ingredients into a whole. The aeration is part of what lets you mix these ingredients. An element of the hard shake paradigm is the idea that the introduction of these tiny bubbles into the liquid has certain special effects. But that's something I haven't got to yet.

To get to your next question: Uyeda says that shaking is useful when using ingredients that have different specific gravities or that are otherwise difficult to combine, such as when juices, cream and/or eggs are used. It follows, then, that aeration is good and desirable in these situations, but not in others.

The philosophy behind the stark differentiation between the two conceptions (maximum aeration in shaking and minimum aeration in stirring) is to have a complete commitment to whichever technique you are using. The stir should be as stir-like as possible, maximizing the unique qualities of stirring, and the shake should be as shake-like as possible, maximizing the unique qualities of shaking. This makes sense to me: A hastily stirred or lazily shaken cocktail is nothing special. Go all the way.

As to whether there might be a better way of doing these things... that's open to interpretation, and something I will touch upon later. Suffice it to say that I will provide some examples as to how extremely different Western techniques can create an equivalent or perhaps superior result. Uyeda might suggest that this question in and of itself reflects the Western results-driven paradigm rather than the Japanese process-driven paradigm. There are certainly different ways of doing all these things, and also different ideas as to the effects desired. To make an obvious example, dry shaking is a highly effective way to get good aeration and foaming in egg white drinks. Or, to take it to the extreme, instead of shaking one could simply keep all the ingredients chilled to the desired temperature, add water to hit the desired degree of dilution, insert a micro-fine aeration stone into the liquid, and blast through some high-pressure air. That would give you far more aeration than would be possible with any shaking method. Similarly, "stirred" cocktails could easily be produced by measuring pre-chilled spirits and water into a prepared glass and giving it the briefest of stirs to combine. Whether this sort of thing is desirable or not . . . who is to say? Certainly it's not desirable to me.

Dry-shaking, for example, is probably something that would never enter Uyeda's mind. Since it is, or seems like it should be possible to create the perfect frothed egg white drink by hard shaking with ice, then the focus would be on refining the hard shake technique for egg whites to such a degree that it turns out perfect... even if it might be easier to get a peak result by dry shaking everything first. I suppose that this kind of Japanese process-driven paradigm is related to the same mind-set that makes so many of us work and work and work to refine the perfect way of roasting a whole turkey so that the leg meat and breast meat are both perfectly cooked, even though we know that it is easier to do these things when the turkey is broken down and the dark and white meat cooked separately.

At this point, I am mostly trying to present Uyeda's ideas about these things without too much criticism. Dipping my toes into that water, I will say that I am not convinced that the whole "aeration versus no-aeration" thing makes a whole lot of difference after the drink has sat in the glass for more than around 60 seconds at most. I have my doubts as to whether anyone could tell the difference bewteen a 60 second old Martini that had been shaken and one that had been stirred. Indeed, it may not be possible to reliably tell the difference between 5 second old stirred and shaken Martinis blindfolded. On the other hand, I think Uyeda is correct about the utility of shaking with respect to drinks compounded of difficult-to-mix ingredients. It shouldn't be too difficult to tell the difference between a stirred Sidecar and a shaken one. On the other hand, there is nothing that beats those first few silky sips from a stirred cocktail. Perhaps this is all an argument for smaller cocktails -- so that you finish them while they still display the characteristicts of the mixing method. For what it's worth, the standard Japanese pour is only 2 ounces -- around 1/3 smaller than the standard cocktail pour in America. On the other hand, Japanese imbibers are said to take a long time lingering over their cocktails. This has never made much sense to me unless it's a long drink. I rather agree with Harry Craddock: Drink it quickly, while it's still laughing at you.

Edited May 20, 2010 by slkinsey (log)

[Kent Wang]

Do most customers at Tender sit at the bar, so there's no lag waiting for a waitress to bring you your drink?

[slkinsey]

Kohai can answer that question better than I, but I asked him the same thing. I believe he said that Tender seats around 30 people. So most of them don't sit at the bar. That, in my opinion, seriously limits the extent to which customers who are not at the bar can benefit from the "total experience" factors that Uyeda discussed in the "Japanese way of the cocktail." It's a bit like sitting at a table in a sushi bar... or any bar, really. My wife isn't a huge fan of sitting at the bar when we go out for cocktails. But IMO if you're not at the bar, you're missing out on 50% of the experience. On the other hand, at a bar like Tender I am given to understand that a not insignificant percentage of the customer base is comprised of older gentlemen who want to savor an expensive whiskey and water for a couple of hours and don't really need to sit at the bar for that.

[mkayahara]

As I recall, Tender had about 8 or 10 seats at the bar, and the rest were tables. It was pretty empty when we were there last week; only three other guests, and they all sat at the bar and ordered shaken cocktails. We were sitting at a table (for the same reason Sam mentions), but had a good view of Uyeda as he worked. I was struck by one thing in particular: the waiter brought each drink over to us as it was made, rather than waiting for both to be made so he could serve us simultaneously.

[slkinsey]

So... what did you order and what was your impression?

I've talked to a number of cocktail community friends at a variety of ages, areas and levels of expertise who have had cocktails around Japan and also specifically at Tender. Their reactions vary widely.

[mkayahara]

So... what did you order and what was your impression?

I've talked to a number of cocktail community friends at a variety of ages, areas and levels of expertise who have had cocktails around Japan and also specifically at Tender. Their reactions vary widely.

We ordered a couple of their house drinks, the Pure Love and the Miracle. The former had gin, lime juice, framboise and ginger ale, but was a long drink, so the "hard shake" issue was more or less moot. The Miracle was essentially an Aviation, though it had some other liqueur (Midori, IIRC) as well. I thought it was good, but not appreciably better than cocktails I've had at US cocktail bars. I'm normally a "fine-strain the ice shards out" kind of guy, but they didn't really bother me here.

In retrospect, I probably should have ordered a classic cocktail I was already familiar with, but I balked at paying 1900 yen for my first choice, a Sidecar. Indeed, the overwhelming impression was just how far outside my budget it was, which is why I didn't delve any further into the menu there or the cocktail scene in Japan more widely. The space itself is beautiful, though; my partner remarked that it felt like having a drink inside a lacquered box.

Edited to add: Watching Uyeda work was a real pleasure, though. The panache of his shaking style, especially the way he snaps the shaker at the end of the pour while pulling it away from the glass, was something to behold.

Edited May 21, 2010 by mkayahara (log)

[slkinsey]

I thought it was good, but not appreciably better than cocktails I've had at US cocktail bars. I'm normally a "fine-strain the ice shards out" kind of guy, but they didn't really bother me here.

It's interesting to me that tasting reactions range from "the recipes were a time-warp from 1987 and the drinks were watery" to "pretty good" to "it was hands-down the greatest cocktail experience of my life."

. . . I balked at paying 1900 yen for my first choice, a Sidecar. Indeed, the overwhelming impression was just how far outside my budget it was, which is why I didn't delve any further into the menu there or the cocktail scene in Japan more widely.

One of my overwhelming impressions from the Japanese techniques seminar was that many of the elements of Uyeda's "Japanese way of the cocktail" -- the choreographed bottle opening, slow ritualistic preparation of Mizuwari, etc. -- are really only tenable in small bars that charge 20 bucks or more for a 2 ounce cocktail.