You could easily walk past one of the best cocktail bars in Tokyo without even knowing it was there \u2014\u00a0Daisuke Ito\u2019s nine-seater speakeasy-style joint, Land Bar Artisan, is hidden behind a heavy door inside a nondescript Shimbashi shopping complex.<\/p>\n
Shaven-headed and dapper, with chunky black glasses, a gap-toothed smile and a bow tie, Ito could be found quietly holding court inside the bar recently, talking about his last trip to New York \u2013 the one where he was drink-slinging at a private party that Jeff Bezos had flown him in to work. The tech tycoon is one of Ito\u2019s regulars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t promote myself \u2014 everything comes only through personal introductions,\u201d he patiently explained to The Post, via a translator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Daisuke Ito at work inside his Tokyo bar \u2014\u00a0the boldfacer-beloved mixology master will soon open a spot on Greenwich Street in Tribeca. @hkfoodfuss<\/p>\n
At the Bezos bash there was a small crowd, maybe fifty people max, but the story goes that they all raved about Ito\u2019s cocktail jockey skills. <\/p>\n
Soon, his newfound fans were encouraging the preprandial pro to consider something he\u2019d never dreamed of doing \u2014 if they built a permanent spot stateside for him to his Olympic-level martini-making and more, would he come?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI took a moment to think \u2014 and I\u2019m turning 50 this year, so I\u2019m just going with the flow,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to show them how grateful I am, repay my friends like that and take those opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
A little bit of wheeling and dealing later, and the result is Land Bar New York, which will open this fall on Greenwich Street in Tribeca. It\u2019s bigger than the original \u2014 a 40-seater joint, tucked away upstairs from a Tokyo-style Wagyu spot, Nikuya Tanaka.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The arrival of the Bezos-anointed bar in the Big Apple is part of a tsunami of Japanese gin-slinging going on around town, offering an alternative to conventional cocktail culture in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s Nomad\u2019s Stone & Soil, for example, and Kintsugi in Flatiron, as well as the award-hogging Katana Kitten in the West Village \u2014 co-owner Masahiro Urushido has another bar in the works, Winter\u2019s Coming, due in Chelsea before year\u2019s end.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ito\u2019s presence in the Big Apple kicks things up a notch in a Tokyo-style scene where spots like Kitana Kitten in the West Village are making significant waves on the nightlife front. @katanakitten_nyc<\/p>\n
Sitting in Tokyo and watching Daisuke work, it\u2019s easy to see the appeal of the Japanese approach to drinks. He makes fresh peach juice with a hand blender, silently somehow, spiking the liquid with a glug of fresh lime juice as a flavor booster.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first taste is the most important,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fans know when coming to Land Bar not to fret over what to order \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s far better just to put yourself in the master\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not make requests, I only listen to them,\u201d he says of his drink-making mindset. <\/p>\n
Ito\u2019s ethic is all about the ingredients and the process \u2014\u00a0the original Land Bar isn\u2019t flashy, but rather a quiet spot behind a heavy door in a midbrow shopping complex. @hkfoodfuss<\/p>\n
Ito\u2019s planning to come to New York for a month or so when Land Bar opens, to train staff and also source the farm-fresh ingredients he relies on in Tokyo. So far stateside, he\u2019s a big fan of the Union Square Greenmarket.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Drinks at spots like Land Bar can offer better value than most Manhattan spots, he promises \u2014 because Japanese bartenders don\u2019t adhere to the typical formula which makes cocktail bars so profitable. Drinks will start at $20.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn New York bars, they often use only about 10 percent of the selling price on the actual ingredients and sell it for ten times that,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you organize everything around cost and optimization, there will be no surprise. That only happens when you go above and beyond cost for the customer \u2014 then customers support a place because they want it to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Yorker Greg Boehm is in agreement. He just opened NYC\u2019s Cocktail Omakase and Bar 7, both in partnership with another legendary Tokyo spot, Bar Libre.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the former, you get four cocktails and four bites over an hour \u2014 for just $59 per person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI look at margin less on this,\u201d said the longtime bar owner (he\u2019s also a driving force behind Katana Kitten with Masahiro Urushido). Boehm\u2019s long been obsessed with Japanese bars \u2014 he says he\u2019s been to 200 or more in Tokyo \u2014 and wanted to partner with Bar Libre to bring that singular approach stateside.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe style of hospitality is incomparable: very calming, buttoned up and with an attention to detail so every drink is perfect,\u201d he explained of his experiences.<\/p>\n
Boehm says it\u2019s the perfect time for Japanese joints to take over New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c15 years ago, people wanted bigger is better, but now it\u2019s about being more refined, and very experiential,\u201d he said, of the pleasure he wants drinkers to take in watching their cocktails made. \u201cWe\u2019re more open minded to a bit of a show.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Japanese bars are as adroit at making booze-free drinks as a stiff martini, too \u2014\u00a0which syncs up with the shift in mindset so evident now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the showy Katana Kitten, the classic grasshopper cocktail gets a Japanese-style spin \u2014\u00a0with matcha added to the mix. @katanakitten_nyc<\/p>\n
Bar Omakase has three set menus, ranging from standard to alcohol-free via low ABV. The latter\u2019s been his surprise breakout.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought it would be about 10% of our business and it\u2019s about a quarter,\u201d Boehm said.\u00a0 \u201cWe give you a one-hour experience \u2026 you can go on after to do something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Japanese approach to drinking isn\u2019t as new to New York as some might assume.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Take the late, great Sasha Petraske\u2019s legendary Milk & Honey bar, which opened on the Lower East Side on New Year\u2019s Eve 1999 and kickstarted the early aughts cocktail movement here.<\/p>\n
Most folks assume its inconspicuous, insiderish approach was riffing on speakeasy culture. Instead, Boehm explained, Petraske was directly inspired by a pioneering Japanese bar in Manhattan, Angel\u2019s Share, which opened in 1993, in the East Village, hidden above a Japanese grocery store on stubby Stuyvesant Street. (After a high-profile 2022 eviction, Angel\u2019s Share reopened on Grove Street, in the West Village.) <\/p>\n
Takuma Watanabe moved from Tokyo to work there in the last two decades of its East Village run, bringing his expertise with him \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s now the multi-award-winning owner of three cocktail bars in New York, Martiny\u2019s, L\u2019Americana and jazz club Midnight Blue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watanabe is always in pursuit of shokunin, the Japanese term for an artisan who masters their profession \u2014 that obsessive quality-chasing is another reason serious drinkers flock to Japanese bars like these.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a why,\u201d he said of his thoughtful, painstaking approach \u2014\u00a0a stark contrast to the production-line efficiency that\u2019s New York\u2019s default drink method.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Order a drink in a Japanese bar, he explained, and you won\u2019t risk the sniffy judgement so commonplace at high-end cocktail dens here. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to make you happy \u2014 like your mom is cooking something for you,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Takuma Watanabe is a pioneer on NYC\u2019s Tokyo-style drinking scene, working for twenty years at the fabled Angel\u2019s Share, which is said to have sparked the city\u2019s early aughts mixology madness. <\/p>\n
The yen for such spots comes, in part, from visitors to Tokyo \u2014 like Jeff Bezos \u2014 wanting to import the vibes they\u2019ve enjoyed. So many more people are visiting Japan now \u2014\u00a0with 42.7 million tourists in 2025, up an astonishing 116% over a decade earlier.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marielle Lee helps run IntoJapan, specializing in organizing fancy trips to the country \u2014\u00a0she\u2019s seen business boom as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get tons of requests to dip into cocktail culture there, and people constantly say they wish there was a cocktail bar like that in their home town \u2014\u00a0if they could take it home with them in whatever shape or form they could, they would,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A bartender carefully pours a drink from a leather-bound canteen at Takuma Watanabe\u2019s Martiny\u2019s near Union Square. Todd Coleman<\/p>\n
Lee said that because most Japanese bars are phone-free and focus more on conversation than loud music, they wind up feeling a bit like Cheers \u2014 but with better drinks, surely, and bartenders that could teach Sam Malone a thing or two about humility.<\/p>\n
The rise of Japan isn\u2019t going unnoticed in the wider drinks world. The annual Tales of the Cocktail event in New Orleans, considered to be something like the Olympics of bartending, is offering an omakase program this year, and is helping multiple Japanese liquor brands try to break into America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Charlotte Voisey, the event\u2019s executive director, said: \u201cOften, in a London or a New York bar, it\u2019s about the stage and the bartender is performing. In the Japanese bartending culture, it\u2019s all about the perfection of the cocktail. The drink is the most important thing, And there\u2019s a seductiveness to their service.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, that so-called hard shake, considered by high-end bars to be superior to the standard, reducing ice crystals and frothing a mixture far more smoothly? Yep, that was invented in Japan, too, Voisey explained.<\/p>\n
Just don\u2019t expect Daisuke to make any more of a fuss about his soon-to-open New York spot than he has at the OG bar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I really just wanted money, it would be easy to do Instagram promotion and all of that,\u201d he said, wiping down the counter of his Tokyo bar carefully, \u201cBut I thought that would be boring. I have no desire to promote to people I have never met.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You could easily walk past one of the best cocktail bars in Tokyo without even knowing it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2439,29271,8,6869,500,15606,52],"class_list":["post-60111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tokyo","tag-amazon","tag-cocktails","tag-japan","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-lifestyle","tag-nyc","tag-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}