East Meets West At The Bar With Uyeda-San
By Jason Littrell
All photos courtesy of Lush Life Productions
Over the course of two days I was side by side with some of the greatest cocktail minds in the country who sat quietly in the Hiro Ballroom in the Maritime Hotel (www.themaritimehotel.com). These bartenders, mixologists, writers, scientists and all around mega-nerds surrounding me all came to check out the cocktail master himself, Kazuo Uyeda from Ginza, Japan, owner of the Tender Bar, and learn the famed Hard Shake from the man who had created it.
Uyeda-san’s visit to New York, courtesy of Greg Boehm’s Cocktail Kingdom (www.cocktailkingdom.com), Beefeater Gin (www.beefeatergin.com), Suntory Whiskeys (www.suntory.com) and Smirnoff Vodka (www.smirnoff.com), drew this collection of America’s brightest drinks practitioners together in anticipation of learning the precise ways of Japanese bartending from this internationally known cocktail-zilla who has spent the last 45 years behind the bar perfecting the art of cocktail deliciousness – his ultimate goal. We didn’t know it then, but an eye-opening cultural exchange was about to take place.
Over those two days we sat listened, percolated, drank, and laughed with this man who has spent the last four decades perfecting his craft. The style he taught us was as specific, detailed, exacting and considerate as the Japanese tea ceremony or the hand-crafted Samurai sword. To the drop, and in absolute detail, he explained the minutiae of every element of his cocktail execution.
That first morning I was introduced to Uyeda-san’s concept of executing cocktail perfection. He discussed the intrinsic and philosophical elements of his style that are embodied by drink after drink being delivered with the same stance, same shake, same pour, and same snapping wrist motion that releases the last drop from the shaker. His decades of research and experimentation have been driven towards a singular goal: the pursuit of perfection and deliciousness.
He first discussed the “Japanese Mindset” which introduced me to the idea of putting your mind into your cocktail. This was interesting in the respect that the process was the product. The concept of creating the anticipation with your guest was something I tried to picture myself doing, with little immediate success. This, he explained takes time and “training yourself to concentrate.” He went on to explain that one’s technique and performance are a direct expression of one’s self. Now, I always knew
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