If you have fallen under the charm of cocktails that cost $12, contain at least one ingredient you’ve never heard of, and involve a show of vigorous shaking or deliberate stirring, then you’ve surely seen this ritual:
The bartender dips his long-handled spoon into the just-mixed concoction, places a drop on the fleshy part of his hand between his thumb and forefinger, tastes, and determines it perfect before straining it into a beautiful retro-modern glass.
Now, imagine a bartender who repeatedly determines the drink is not quite there. He adds a few drops of juice, bitters or vinegar, tasting and retasting until he finds that knife-edge balance.
Such is the mesmerizing experience of watching Shingo Gokan behind the bar. Gokan was in Atlanta recently to meet with the owners and staff of Himitsu, a new cocktail lounge scheduled to open in June.
Small enough that it may be necessary to take reservations, Himitsu (which means “secret” in Japanese) is the new project from the team of Farshid Arshid and Fuyuhiko Ito of Umi sushi restaurant. It will open just down-mall from Umi in Two Buckhead Plaza and likely will appeal to the same mix of stylish Buckheaders and Hollywood royalty camped in Atlanta for film shoots.
The 32-year-old Gokan, who will devise the bar menu and train the staff, is the managing director at Angel’s Share in New York. The speakeasy-style bar has been widely credited with kick-starting the craft cocktail revolution. Beyond that, Angel’s Share managed to imbue the bar experience with a uniquely Japanese sense of mastery, an appreciation of simple things done exactly right.
As Gokan recalled of his early days in New York in 2006, “There was no way to get proper ice. Nobody used a martini glass (canister) to mix the martinis.”
James Bond was wrong, very wrong. A proper martini should be stirred (and stirred, and stirred) in a glass to prevent the gin from “bruising” or developing a bitter aftertaste. Angel’s Share offered a quiet corrective to our degraded cocktail culture from its barely noticeable second-story perch.
Now, nearly 10 years later, Gokan travels a cocktail-crazed country talking at seminars and occasionally consulting at projects such as Himitsu. (He also is an owner of Speak Low, a speakeasy cocktail lounge in Shanghai.) I met up with him at the bar at Umi on the afternoon of his visit and asked him to prepare a drink. (What? Never too early.)
“Because it’s the daytime, I thought I would give you a Japanese twist on the Bloody Mary,” he said as he began mashing fresh tomato in the bottom of a shaker with organic tomato juice. “The key to getting the most interesting flavor and consistency is by mixing fresh and bottled,” he said, forever changing my Bloody Mary game.
He strained out the solids, and returned the thick juice to a fresh shaker. Then came a period of intensive mixing and tasting. In went olive juice, pickle vinegar, lemon juice, salt and yuzu kosho, a Japanese condiment made with hot chilies and citron zest.
Taste, taste, taste. He ripped up shiso leaves and added them to the mixture, along with Grey Goose vodka, mounding the top of the shaker with fat, perfect ice cubes. Apparently there can never be enough ice in a shaker. Before punching down the lid, he added a flurry of katsuobushi, the smoked and dried bonito flakes that Japanese cooks use to make soup stock.
And then he began shaking. “You need to shake when you have juice and heavier (liquids),” he said, his arms a blur of motion. “They’re different weights, so you need to get that aeration.”
Strained again and served over ice, this drink was unlike any Bloody I’ve had — perfectly smooth and layered with subtle flavors, from citrus to smoke.
Gokan has become famous for the ways he brings Japanese flavors seamlessly into cocktails. In 2012 he won the Bacardi Global Legacy Cocktail Competition with his signature creation for Speak Low, a cocktail that mixed two kinds of rum with dark, syrupy Pedro Ximenez sherry and matcha — the astringent green tea powder used in the Japanese tea ceremony.
I asked Gokan about the two or three things he notices in cocktail bars he visits that he’d like to see changed. Do they need better spirits? More classic recipes? Do the bartenders not stir or shake the drinks enough?
“Actually, hospitality is more important than technique,” he answered. “And cleanliness. A dirty bar cannot provide good drinks.”
Soon thereafter, Atlanta Journal-Constitution photographer Hyosub Shin asked Gokan if he could prepare another cocktail in order to videotape his fluid shaking technique, made with seemingly boneless arms that flapped in a blur around the shaker.
Gokan made the simplest of all cocktails: a classic daiquiri. It was nothing more than white rum, lime juice and sugar. And yet. Gokan tasted and tasted and tasted until he deemed the balance of sweetness and acid just right. He shook his concoction to a fare-thee-well, strained it into a coupe and presented me with a cocktail that kind of blew my mind. (Dear AJC editors: please don’t read the next sentence.) Hyosub and I passed it back and forth, marveling at the perfection of taste and temperature, and the way even the tiny fibers of lime pulp added to its character.
If the drinks at Himitsu are anything like this, Atlanta will be one lucky city.
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