Food & Drink Jan 9, 2022

The lines blur at Hakone’s Bar Hotel

The Bar Hotel Hakone Kazan can be viewed as a bar-themed hotel or a hotel-themed bar. Staying there is a luxurious experience either way.

Food & Drink Aug 14, 2021

How to stock your home bar (with a Japanese twist)

It’s quasi-prohibition time once more in much of Japan, and if ever there were a time to build a home bar, it’s now. Here's how to get started, with tips from some of Japan's best bartenders

Food & Drink | LIQUID CULTURE Jun 25, 2010

Drink infusions: from fungi to bile

Fourteen years ago in a parking lot in the aptly named city of Lebanon, Tennessee, a gentleman who called himself Jellybean and claimed to have killed 26 people allowed me a swig of his homemade whiskey. His drink had a nose, palate and finish ...

Food & Drink | DRINK Mar 26, 2010

Great coffee: It's all in the brewing

Espresso "has the potential to deliver more of the incredible taste and aroma of roasted coffee than any other method (of brewing)," wrote Jeffrey Steingarten, food critic for U.S. Vogue magazine. Science says the torrent of pressurized water captures more of the aromatic oils than ...

Food & Drink | DRINK Feb 26, 2010

A receptacle for the respectable

I ordered a shot of George T. Stagg's fiery Hazmat III in Shot Bar Bourbon, a tiny subterranean bourbon paradise in Ginza, and the bartender served it in a wine glass. I asked why. "For the flavor," he said, and to demonstrate, he tipped ...

Food & Drink | DRINK Jan 29, 2010

Chocolate bars for whisky lovers

A tawny port pairs wonderfully with Stilton. Grand Marnier tastes great on vanilla ice cream. Chianti seems to suit a Margherita pizza. And whisky? Well, that goes with haggis. But haggis is a sheep's stomach stuffed with a mash of its offal, and tastes just ...

Food & Drink | LIQUID CULTURE Dec 25, 2009

Japan's favorite hangover cures

Tis the season to be jolly. And when you've finished being jolly, tis the season to wake up with veisalgia, more popularly known as a hangover. The punishment begins when alcohol reaches your brain and tells your pituitary glands to stop producing a hormone known ...

Food & Drink | LIQUID CULTURE Nov 27, 2009

Society's whiskies hit the high notes

I've found a new whisky to love. It's a 26-year-old single malt from Hokkaido's Yoichi distillery. It's got oak and a gentle, sweet smokiness, a touch of leather, cherries, toasted almonds and I'm just making this up now, because after "oaky" and "a bit ...

Food & Drink | LIQUID CULTURE Oct 23, 2009

This obscure liqueur may save your soul

This isn't a story about Chartreuse, but let's begin there. In Voiron, near Grenoble in southeast France, Carthusian monks distill a liqueur from 130 medicinal herbs, roots and leaves. The recipe is a tightly guarded secret, known only to three holy brothers. It was conceived ...