Soothing sojourn to the source of sake
It started at a Tom Waits concert in Berkeley.
It was a chilly, drizzly evening back in the day, when it still rained in California, and a friend sneaked a thermos of hot sake into the show. Sipping discreetly in our seats as Waits rasped neo-Beat lyrics, and smoke from his cigarette curled around his head into a hazy blue corona, the sake worked its magic, inducing a mild buzz and an all’s-well-with-the-world warmth.
I have fancied sake ever since, but I’ve never known much about it. I decided to rectify that on my most recent trip to Sake Central: Japan, specifically Tokyo. I wanted to see how sake is made, how it matches up with food, explore the hot-sake-versus-chilled-sake issue, and find out more about the cultural role that this fermented drink of rice, water and beneficial mold ( koji) plays in Japan, where it has been brewed for 2,000 years. Additionally, I figured my forays around
Tokyo would help shrink the megalopolis (population 38 million) into manageable portions.
I thought I might drink a little sake, too.
“This is an exceedingly pleasant mission,” I muse to myself as I settle in at Sakeria, a coolly casual, 17-seat restaurant and bar hidden away in central Tokyo. I am seated by the owner, Tomosan, who doubles as cook, sommelier, maitre d’ and dishwasher. Tomo-san is tall and slim, with a shaved head and neatly clipped jawline beard. He’s about 30, a laidback, big-city hipster.
Indeed, Sake Boru is itself decidedly laid-back. The only indication it’s here is a small, subdued sign set on the sidewalk outside a nondescript apartment building.
Inside, Tomo-san hauls out a wooden tray of perhaps 30 unique cups of various sizes, colors and materials.
“You choose the sake cup you want to use,” explains Kimiko, a Japanese acquaintance who brought me here. I pick one. “What do you want to eat?” she asks, scanning the small menu, all in Japanese.
“How about a fish dish and a meat dish?” I say.
“What kind of sake do you like — fruity, sweet, dry?” Kimiko asks.
“Um, full-bodied and semidry,” I reply.
With that, Tomo-san pulls one of 70-some sake bottles off the shelf and pours an amber-yellow, chilled sake into a ceramic carafe. It is Sasanigori Nama Chochin from Aichi prefecture. I take a sip and savor the subtly assertive drink as I nibble a grilled sardine marinated in fish sauce; it’s a perfect match. The coolness of the sake allows me to savor its flavor.
Blasting sake with heat can obliterate the flavor of premium sake and disguise inferior sake. There’s a place for warmed sake in Japan, particularly in winter, but it’s most often taken gently chilled or at room temperature here.
For my second dish — lamb with wild green seri and udo mountain vegetables in vinegar miso sauce — I drink a richer sake chosen by Tomo-san: a super-premium Junmai ‘pure rice’ sake made without added alcohol and aged for five years. I take a few slow sips as Sonny Rollins blows moody saxophone on the restaurant’s sound system. I could stay here all night.
It helps to know some Japanese in tiny haunts like this, which abound in Tokyo, or have a local person help you order and pay. (Heads up: Many small places are cash-only.) The smile-andpoint method can work, too. Me, I enjoy myself most when I can tap into local knowledge.
In line with that, I board a JR train at Shinjuku Station and ride to the western outskirts of Tokyo, about 90 minutes distant. My destination is one of Japan’s thousand-plus sake makers: the Ozawa Shuzo Brewery, owned and operated by the Ozawa family since 1702 in the hamlet of Ome. Here, city high-rises and neon lights give way to forested hills and streams. As I make the five-minute walk downhill from train station to brewery, I spot a fisherman in the swift-flowing Tama River below.
High-quality water is everything in sake making. Ozawa uses hard water from the surrounding mountains and soft water from a spring on its property and blends the waters with large-grain rice cultivated specifically for making sake.
The rice is “polished” to remove the outer brown husk and other impurities. The more polished the rice, the more delicate and complex the sake. Premium sakes are made from rice grains polished to 35 percent of their original size. “Pure rice sake” is naturally fermented, with no distillers’ alcohol added. Sakes are on average 13 to 16 percent alcohol.
On the free, 90-minute guided brewery tour — in Japanese, with English handouts — I see rice and water bubbling in stainless-steel tanks and sake aging in cedar-wood barrels stacked in naturally chilly heritage buildings walled with mud and framed with huge tim- bers joined without nails. The Ozawas, an old samurai family, inhabit a vintage house on-site, thatched with pampas grass.
After the tour, I taste half a dozen sakes made here, including an appealingly sweet, floral variety called Hanami Shinshu — a new sake, made in fall and premiered in spring. It makes a fine accompaniment to custardy tofu made fresh that morning for riverside restau-
rants in rustic Ome.
Back in central-city Tokyo, I set off in search of distinctive sakes and memorable meals.
I find both at Mocchi, a humble, humming basement restaurant in the Shibuya district. Mocchi consists of a counter fronting a microscopic open kitchen and a cozy side room with two small tables. It is largely a one-man operation. The perpetual-motion owner cooks and serves the food, chats up the customers, wipes down the counter and stove, and pours sake and beer.
As I slip into a chair at the eightseat counter, another Japanese acquaintance, Yoshimi, helps me order. I again choose my own sake cup. I dine on hot fish broth with sweet onion; fried yellowtail tuna in a smoking, sizzling dish; a nutritious vegetable; and tofu hot pot.
As with the aforementioned Sakeria, Mocchi’s menu changes daily. All told, Mocchi stocks 28 types of sake: 23 served chilled, five served warm. I wash down my meal with dry, light, chilled sake, ideal for typically salty Tokyo fare.
Once a special drink reserved for weddings, religious festivals and holidays, sake now so permeates Japanese culture, you can find it anytime and just about anywhere, from street-side vending machines to side-street yakitori joints, and from Tokyo Station’s interior Kitchen Street fast-serve restaurants to the elegant aeries atop posh hotels.
One of the best sakes I taste in Tokyo is Junmai Daiginjo “pure rice” brew, made in Ishikawa prefecture for the Peninsula Hotel and served only in its 24th-floor restaurant and bar, Peter. It’s light and delicious, with a winningly aromatic quality. Taken neat, it makes a terrific aperitif on my last night in town.
From Peter, I walk the two blocks to the elevated rail lines at Hibiya Station and duck into Andy’s Shin Hinomoto, a rollicking izakaya — no-frills drinking establishment — tucked into a brick archway under the tracks. Owned by a Japanese family and run by a British expatriate — that’s Andy — the place hosts an easy mix of Tokyoites and English-speaking expats.
Here, I devour heaping plates of seafood. I drink sake of uncertain provenance, and drink in the afterhours scene as relaxed salarymen, neckties loosened over white shirts, eat, drink, laugh and hold forth amid the soft rumble of overhead trains.