Shingo Gokan: Playing with Fire and Vodka

Monday night I learned just how a mixologist and chef working together can create a dazzling ensemble performance. Behind the bar was Shingo Gokan, who directs the cocktail program at Angel's Share in the East Village and has been in demand for guest bar-tending gigs and master classes around the world since winning a Bacardi global cocktail competition in 2012. Invisible until his curtain call at the end of the night was the man working the kitchen, Chef Takanori Akiyama of Saka-Mai on the Lower East Side, where the dinner was held. Akiyama belongs to a family of sushi chefs from Miyazaki, Kyushu, and specializes in a seductive brand of European-inflected Japanese cooking. 

The starter: Ao, Dassai 50 sake, and cucumber.

Gokan, not afraid to play with fire. 

Gokan seemed half magician during an evening in which he mixed ten drinks, all featuring Suntory's recently released Ao vodka, brewed from Japanese rice with waters that originate from the volcanic rocks of Sakurajima in Kyushu. He torched clove and cinnamon and allowed it to smoke braised Mugi Fuji pork belly and the accompanying Brulee Sour, a concoction of Earl Grey tea, Ao, lemon juice, orange blossom water and egg white. He did the same to the thyme that perfumed a drink of Ao, pureed orange, and Pedro Ximenez sherry (Gokan holds a sherry sommelier license from Spain), which accompanied Akiyama's dish of Long Island duck with a balsamic reduction. 

Tasmanian Ocean Trout and Mushroom Rice Pot

Rice pot kamameshi and Ao hojicha kotsuzake.

There were many other stunning combinations, including a Corn Nog of Ao, nigori sake, sweet corn, milk, shoyu and sansho pepper served with a lobster and lardo croquette, and a dessert cocktail of banana-infused Ao, raw coconut water and sugar paired with maple walnut gelato and Okinawan black sugar kuromitsu syrup.

The combination I loved most was a twist on a very traditional Japanese preparation: kamameshi, or clay pot-cooked rice, this version made with ocean trout, mushroom, salmon roe, mitsuba leaf and Tokyo scallions. The mixologist paired the dish with his take on kotsuzake, warm sake that has been infused with a roasted fish skeleton. (Here's a fascinating post I found on this exemplar of tip-to-tail fish consumption.) For his drink, Gokan torched air-dried snapper--filling the room with the scent I most associate with Japan--while pouring a mixture Ao and roasted green tea (hojicha) over the fish. He let the fish infuse the liquid briefly, then poured small cups of the drink to accompany the kamameshi. Gokan explained that in Japan, a meal often ends with o-chazuke, or hot tea poured over rice and sprinkled with nori and other seasonings. "The idea here," Gokan explained, "is to create o-chazuke in your mouth." 

The making of a bespoke watch

It was Dedegumo CEO Bob Guest's idea to take the design from the back of my business card and use it as the taking-off point for a watch design.  Dedegumo's first U.S. store opened recently in Manhattan's Lower East Side, and specializes in handmade watches.

My friend, former Japanese classmate and Dedegumo artisan Kai Bailey took on the challenge of translating card design to watch. He took the negative white space shape of the card's design and reversed it to create the two swooping boomerang-shaped images on the watch's face, outfitting it with jagged-edged black hour and minute hands and an elegant curving red second hand. The gold face is scored with ray-like lines and stamped with the Dedegumo cloud logo. The overall effect is Deco meets industrial, and it's very handsome.

The wrapping up of a Dedegumo watch is an art form in and of itself. Kai arranged the watch's double-length band around a plump beige pillow and placed it in a cloud-emblazoned cedar masu, or sake cup.

Then, he channeled memories of his mother tying furoshiki, and began wrapping. Tied properly, these Japanese-style cloth squares make beautiful and practical satchels, with their knots serving as handles. I picked out this flame-orange and cream colored furoshiki; all of Dedegumo's are made in Japan. "We tried making them here but they just weren't the same quality," Kai told me.

Here's the finished package, looking cute as a button.

Dedegumo: Bespoke Japanese watches come to New York

The other day I visited a recently opened Japanese shop on the Lower East Side called Dedegumo. It's the first U.S. and first foreign branch of a Kyoto-based handmade watch shop, founded by designer Izumo Senko. For anyone interested in Japan and/or Japanese design, it's well worth a visit.

Atlanta entrepreneur Bob Guest fell in love with the shop during a business trip to Kyoto and decided to bring Dedegumo watches to New York. He found a tiny space on Orchard Street just south of Houston, hired Brooklyn-based woodworker James Harmon to craft gorgeous shelving for the tiny workshop/showroom, and installed reclaimed wooden floors from a Buster Brown shoe factory in Missouri.

The result is a Japanese-style jewel box of a shop that embodies the simple yet subtle aesthetic of shibui.

Guest hired six artisans, all of them designers or jewelry makers, to work two shifts in the tiny, well-laid out workshop at the front of the store, where visitors can observe them at work. One of them is my former Japanese classmate and friend, Kai.

A Nippy leather skiver and a built-in anvil fit snugly between two work spaces. Kyoto artisans from the main store flew in to train their New York counterparts, while Guest stocked up on watch parts from Japan and four miles worth of Italian leather for watch bands.

Bands, faces, and even the color of the watch hands can be customized, and each watch is made from start to finish by a single artisan, usually taking about three days to complete and quality check. Dedegumo’s 150 designs ($350-$650) range from the delicate to the quirky to the masculine, featuring hand-stamped brass frames and numbers, and intricately buckled leather bands.