When word got out last month that Angel’s Share might close after nearly 30 years, the city — or at least a very vocal slice that was devoted to artisanal cocktails — spun into a paroxysm of despair.
Social media was flooded with remembrances of the speak-easy, a softly lit cove of urbanity and elegance hidden in two rooms on the second story of an East Village building. "This hurts more than any other NYC closing I’ve heard in the past 10 years,” ran a typical tweet. Food-obsessed websites bemoaned the news.
In all of these lamentations, there was almost no mention of Tony Yoshida, the owner of Angel’s Share. Despite its outsize importance as a trailblazer in the craft cocktail movement, few, in this age of celebrity restaurateurs and bar owners, seemed to know who was behind the place or that he was the same person who owned a string of Japanese-oriented businesses on the short, angled section of Stuyvesant Street — including the Sunrise Mart grocery, Panya Bakery and Village Yokocho, which acted as a portal to Angel’s Share.