Kenny Colvin, 44, is the loquacious and warmhearted owner of Sanita, a cocktail bar in Tokyo’s Hatagaya neighborhood that opened in 2020. A born and bred New Yorker, he worked in hospitality consulting before moving to Tokyo in 2017.
1. What brought you to Tokyo? I was working with this Australian restaurant group, doing their design and branding, and created a concept for them that got popular in Australia. (A Japanese friend) said to take it to Tokyo — because “Japanese people love sweets, cool branding and waiting in line.”
2. How long have you been in the cocktail business? Since 2007, when high-end cocktails were becoming popular in New York. I started doing letterpress printing for (several bars), and then more branding and design work. That’s kind of what led me into the cocktail world.
3. Did you always see yourself as a bar owner? No, when I first came to Tokyo, I had thoughts of opening up a small tequila or mezcal-focused bar and taco truck or taco stand. Tokyo is very, very reasonably priced — everything from rent to construction is a fraction of what it would cost in New York City, London or Sydney. An acquaintance told me that 93% of Japanese businesses are considered small businesses. It’s really wonderful.
4. What’s your favorite part of Hatagaya? Almost all of the businesses around here support each other. Everyone’s always asking me where to go eat and drink, and I recommend my favorite spots like Will o’ Wisp and Cyodo off the Rokugo Shotengai on the north side.
5. Could you tell us more about the name of your bar? I named the bar Sanita after my grandmother, who was the first of her family to be born in New York, but was from Napoli. I grew up Italian American in New York. The Italian side (of my family) shaped my worldview and the style of food that I enjoy and cook. My grandmother had a very large influence on that.
6. Can we see her influence in the food you serve at Sanita? The meatballs are actually my grandmother’s recipe. Coincidentally, we also serve a style of New York pizza known as “grandma pizza,” which is what Italian grandmothers from the New York area used to cook in their home ovens.
7. Do you have any favorite memories of your grandmother? There’s a Neapolitan summertime dessert of peaches and wine. They take fresh peaches, macerate them with a little bit of sugar and red wine and leave it for a day or so. Then you eat the peaches, drink the wine. My grandparents were eating peaches and wine once and asked if I wanted some. So I was 11 years old, and said, “Oh, it’s wine. Maybe I shouldn’t.” And my grandmother just scoffed and said, “I’ve been drinking wine since I could walk. That’s how you do it in Italian families.”
8. Who designed the logo of your grandmother? When I lived in Gakugei-daigaku, I went to a local wine shop and saw this cool vintage portrait on a bottle. It was just such a cool label that I bought the wine. The winery is called Cascina Tavijn, from Torino, and the illustrator who made the labels is a guy by the name of Gianluca Cannizzo, better known by his Instagram handle @mypostersucks. I’m a designer — I designed this entire bar, but I can’t draw to save my life. So I went to Gianluca and asked him to make a logo for my bar. I gave him pictures of my actual grandmother, and then he drew it based off of that.
9. Where did you source the interior decor? All the posters on the wall, with a couple of exceptions, are my own posters that I designed and printed for rock and punk bands.
10. Are you solely responsible for the food and drink menu? In terms of the everyday food and drink menu, I take care of everything, but we do collaborate with people. Since last spring, we’ve started doing brunch here pretty regularly on the weekends — breakfast tacos and burritos, smash burgers, bagels, lox and cream cheese. Our brunch chef, Johnny Batz, used to bartend here.
11. Do you consider Sanita to be an “American”-style bar? I would say that it is an Italian- or Italian American-style bar. Actually, our customers are 60% to 65% Japanese, and most are people from the neighborhood.
12. Was there a lot of red tape when setting up Sanita? I think there’s very little bureaucracy compared to other places in the world, even America. Japan has a reputation for being slow-moving and bureaucratic, but things can get done very quickly and easily. What I love about Japan is that it feels like the Japanese government wants you to succeed.
13. How do you select the wines, liquors and beer for the bar? Pretty much everything that comes into this bar, I have personally tasted. I know what it tastes like and how to talk about it. My business partner and I are not sommeliers; we just buy wines that we enjoy and want to share. We have about 30 different types of mezcal at any time.
14. Is mezcal your favorite? It’s a very interesting spirit. Tequila and mezcal are kind of analogous. They’re both made from agave, but tequila is only made from blue agave, whereas mezcal can be made from any kind of agave that you can harvest enough in order to make it into alcohol. Technically, there’s like 200-plus different species of agave. Only about 20 grow big enough that you could theoretically make alcohol out of them.
15. How many days a week is Hobbes (Kenny’s dog) on-site? Hobbes has basically become a mascot for the bar. Usually I leave him at home on Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday nights. Hobbes is very, very calm and easygoing, and amazing with kids.
16. Do you find yourself going back to the U.S. often? Not really. It’s hard when you own a bar. Luckily, we have wonderful staff, though, so I don’t need to be here all the time.
17. Where do you like to travel within Japan? I really enjoy Osaka — it reminds me a lot of New York, like the attitude of the people there. I’ve had really good times in Matsumoto, been up to Sendai a few times. I haven’t gotten the chance to travel a lot in Japan.
18. Do you have a favorite musician? The posters on the wall of various bands speak for themselves. A lot of people who come to Sanita comment on the music, which is very dear to my heart, because all the playlists for the bar I make myself. Garage rock, punk rock, indie surf, jazz, ’90s hip-hop — all those things combined is what you’re going to get at Sanita.
19. How does Tokyo compare to New York? Tokyo is exactly like New York — if everything worked the way that you wanted it.
20. What about life in Japan in general? One of the things that I say about Japan, or the lifestyle here, is that everyone does everything hard. People work hard, drink hard, eat hard — but also they relax hard. The opportunities to relax are so plentiful here, and that’s what I love.
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