Rice, Noodle, Fish Read Online Free PDF Page B

out his dream. “I wanted to try something that you can only do in a city like Tokyo.”

    Gen Yamamoto pours the next round.
    (Matt Goulding)
    Japan has a rich cocktail culture, one studiously built around classic drinks executed with precise technique. Mixologists invest a lifetime in learning how to perfect the hard shake, the gentle stir, the crystalline sphere carved from a giant block of ice. You will find textbook Gibsons and definitive Manhattans in drinking dens from Sapporo to Kagoshima, but you won’t find many bartenders in this country pushing the limits of freewheeling cocktail creation.
    Gen holds the same respect for refined technique as his colleagues, but he sees an untapped resource in Japan’s cocktail culture: the country’s bounty of vegetables, citrus, roots, and herbs. “We have amazing local citrus with soft flavors, but they don’t mix well with gimlets so you don’t see them in other bars. I don’t make gimlets.” Instead, he draws on the full reach of Japanese climate and topography to build a menu that changes almost daily. Today he’sworking with papaya and passion fruit from Okinawa, tomato and wasabi from Shizuoka, corn from Miyazaki—almost all of which he sources directly from the farmers themselves. At other moments of the year, you might find Hokkaido squash, Kanagawa carrots, Nagano quince, and a host of rare roots and esoteric herbs with seasons as fleeting as a full moon.
    You can order à la carte, but it’s the six-course tasting menu that best showcases Gen’s vision. As with a great kaiseki feast, there is an arc to the stories he tells with his drinks, drawing heavily on the rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony, where technique, aesthetics, and an unwavering focus on microseasonality combine to create a vivid narrative.
    To bring these liquid tales to life, Gen eschews the highfalutin tinctures and technologies favored by many Western bartenders—no volatile distillations, no blowtorched garnishes, no advanced equipment to speak of. He works with three primary tools: a strainer, a stirrer, and a long wooden muddler. It’s the latter that allows him to transform seasonal produce into magic potions, using the blunt face to work fruits and vegetables down into smooth purees that form the base of most drinks. He uses no measurements, choosing instead to build the cocktails slowly, doing little half-stirs with his metal stirring spoon and tasting constantly as he creates.
    No music, no wall decorations, nothing to take your attention away from the drinks and their methodical creation. I watch as Gen reduces lipstick-red tomatoes to a fleshy mass with the muddler, then strains the pulp and mixes it with rye vodka from Lithuania, using a tiny spoon and quick, short strokes to emulsify the tomato and vodka. He tastes, adjusts with a splash of vodka, stirs, tastes again, adjusts, adds a pinch of salt, stirs, tastes. He pours the drink into a clear glass cone, then cracks open a passion fruit and spoons the seeds onto the layer of tomato foam that has risen to the rim of the glass, dark orbs hoveringdelicately on the surface. He sprays a piece of black slate with water, arranges a few loose flowers at one edge and the cocktail at the other.
    â€œThank you for waiting.”
    The flavors bloom like a sunrise in my mouth, evolving with each sip: rich and mellow at the top, sweet and acidic in the middle, thinner and stronger with a heavy kick of rye as the drink disappears. It’s not simply a tale of taste, but of texture and temperature.
    As I journey through the glass, he sets about making the next drink—muddled kiwi from Wakayama, high-proof sake, and a splash of milk. In the foam of kiwi and dairy that settles on the top of the drink he suspends a spoonful of minced fennel, which punctuates each sip with crunchy licorice bursts.
    Despite the fireworks in the glass, there is nothing loud or flashy about this man: no