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- [Erina] In order to find Angel's Share, you have to find a Village Yokocho sign,
which is lit up in red neon.
Go upstairs to the second floor.
You are in an Izakaya, which is a Japanese style pub restaurant.
Very vibrant, there are lanterns everywhere, and you feel
like you're in Japan.
And to your left-hand side, there's an unnamed wooden door,
and that is the entrance to Angel's Share.
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My father opened Angel's Share in 1993.
He's originally from Yokohama.
I definitely think he missed his old spot, and that is the reason why he wanted
to open his own Japanese style bar in New York City.
There really wasn't a Japanese style bar.
A lot of the cocktail making was very much so from the movie, "Cocktail"
with Tom Cruise, people are not really using jiggers, not precise in the
cocktail making, not making their juices or syrups and bitters.
All this, he was able to go back to his experience drinking cocktails in Japan and
then decided to open Angel's Share.
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It was very slow at the beginning.
I would say that it was still a little bit foreign.
The rules were made by my father.
Believe that those really did reflect back to Japanese style of drinking.
When you go to a cocktail bar in Japan, there's limited number of seatings.
There's no standing.
Usually, you would see a lot of individuals going there to sit
at the bar counter.
And it really is more of a ceremonial experience, as well.
The bartender would make a cocktail one at a time per guest, never make multiple
drinks at the same time because he wanted to make sure that he was concentrating
on that specific individual.
- [Takuma] Japanese cocktail culture is, like, very strict because I focus, like,
on very specific, like, classic cocktail.
For example, I trained just only martini for three years.
My mentor say, "Oh, this is no martini.
This is no martini.
This is no martini," every single time.
Every single night, I practice.
And so, finally, I got okay martini after three years.
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So, Japanese bartending is, like, we only focus on one cocktail.
Basically, I practice, like, throwing.
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The shaking.
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Stirring.
Like, new bartenders always like to make a sound, you know.
People like it, you know.
People like that.
But I don't make a sound.
So, Japanese way to make stir.
So, you can't make sounds.
You cannot.
So, about like… Yeah, if you make sound, that means, like, you make bubble.
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Stir very well, gently.
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Peel Me a Grape. Enjoy.
A Japanese way to make, like, you know, shaking.
If you want to shake, so you need to put a lot of air
inside a cocktail.
We don't need to use a muscle.
We are not, like, you know, muscle, like, kind of like, you know,
hard shake or something like this kind of shake.
It's more like kind of, it's very important it's flexible.
It's very, very flexible, right?
And snap, hard shake.
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- I would say it hasn't really evolved much.
I think that's why it's amazing how a traditional way of cocktail making has
just been, you know, keeping tradition and making cocktails the
way it has been.
That really does tie in with other parts of Japanese culture,
whether it be the Tea Ceremony, a sushi chef preparing omakase sushi
in front of the guests.
I see the cocktail making in Japan the way it has been for a very long time.
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