Please note that this isn’t a sake tasting tour type guide.
This article is written for parents who would like to choose a family-friendly restaurant in Tokyo – somewhere yummy for the whole family BUT THEY ALSO want to be able to sample some different types of Japanese sake with their dinner.
While at the kid-friendly Tokyo restaurants I have listed below – I recommend trying these types of Japanese sake.*
*Please note that I am not a sake connoisseur, by any means. These are the equivalent to me telling you “while in a pub in Australia, be sure to try a cider, a pale ale, a shandy, the local house white, a glass of bubbles, espresso martini, gin sour etc….* (so, in short, this is the “basic b” guide to trying sake… I just want to give you the basics and you can google around or talk to actual experts about actual sake information for people who actually know a lot more – and care a lot more – than I do.) If you’ve come here for tips on the kinds of potatoes in your sake selection – you’re talking to the wrong lady… and if I tell you that “this has orange undertones.. ” or something like … I’ve had TOO MUCH sake and I’m now completely just on a tangent and am making up complete rubbish. (!)
Okay – so the most important thing to realize is that the word “Sake” in Japanese – actually just translates to the word “liquor.”
So if you want to try sake as in rice wine etc… it’s easiest to say that you’d like to try “Japanese sake” (there are other variations of this but this is the easiest way to get directions to the part of the menu you want to see.) Especially if you mean the type that comes in the little baby-sized vase looking bottle with the little tiny cups.
The easiest way to try a few different types of sake while also having happy children in tow – is in an izakaya. This is a casual Japanese style restaurant/pub kind of deal. The food is all meant to be shared. You order lots of little dishes for the table to share and then you re-order something you loved and/or add on as you go – it’s not really the done thing to pour over the menu and make all food decisions in one go. The normal thing to do is probably sit down, choose a drink and get some edamame or fried chicken etc while you kind of settle in and have a look at the menu from there. The wait staff expect to see you many times over the evening as you refresh drinks and add to your selection of nibbles.
An easy way to start is to order a “sour” or a “chuhai”
At almost all izakaya in Japan, you’ll find a range of sours – they are written with the flavour + sour on the menu. Eg. Lemon Sour. Lime Sour. Plum Sour. This just means it is a mixed drink. The alcohol in a “sour” is shochu. Shochu is a hard liquor made from sweet potato, barley, rice, buckwheat and sugar cane. So a “Lemon Sour” is lemon flavouriing (like a cordial) with soda water and shochu.
A chuhai is a shortening of the two words shochu + highball. It’s basically the same as a sour but the term “sour” is more popular in restaurants. Most Japanese people expect a sour to be made fresh while a chuhai is like a pre-mixed drink (usually in a can sold at convenience stores.). Sours are usually a fruit flavour or fruit juice + a soft drink while chuhai allows for more pre-mix ingredient flexibility such as mixing softdrinks like coke or tea etc.
The drink is an alcoholic peach flavoured chu-hai.
Shochu can also be ordered on it’s own (it’s a hard liquor like vodka) and it’s usually ordered with a water or soda mixer. If you’re just having a shochu with water- ask for a mizu-wari. With soda? soda-wari.
*My friend @flying_foodlover. helped me out for some of these suggestions, by the way. As she ACTUALLY knows what she is talking about with this stuff *
For rice wine (Japanese sake), I recommend ordering Nihonshu. Nihonshu is served hot or cold. If you’d like to order it hot (my fave!)- please say you’d like to order atsukan. Understandably, it’s more popular in cooler months. Hot or cold, your nihonshu will appear in a little vase like jug with small cups (some restaurants will bring a tray of little cups and you choose your own.) As much as you may be tempted – it’s NOT a shot glass. You are meant to sip.
If you are dining with Japanese friends or colleagues – remember that no-one is ever meant to fill their own glass. Do it for them first. They will most likely offer to fill up yours for you too.
A lovely little sweeter sake you may like to try is Umeshu. Umeshu is a plum wine and is almost always served over ice. Appearance wise, it looks a bit like apple juice – but it definitely tastes alcoholic. It’s a little on the sweet and a little on the sour side. I, personally, can really only have one of these before I go back to another drink as it feels a bit like having sweets to me. Some restaurants make Umeshu-based cocktails.
