Tender Bar is an institution in the Ginza neighborhood of Tokyo, Japan, founded by the nattily dressed Kazuo Uyeda (1944–), the originator of the “hard shake.” See Uyeda, Kazuo. This distinctively choreographed and ferociously precise mixing style, developed by Uyeda over his more than half a century tending bars in Tokyo, is said to micro-aerate cocktails for a smoother-than-smooth texture. A 2009 public demonstration of the technique at the Hiro Ballroom in New York City propelled Uyeda to international media attention and sparked debates among New York City’s most serious mixologists. Proponents call the hard shake a quintessentially Japanese form of cocktail Zen; critics counter it is no more efficacious than the usual vigorous shake. Any doubts quickly evaporate when the white-coated Uyeda presents one with one of his signature drinks, such as a velvety, jade-colored Gimlet, or the M-30 Rain, an almost bioluminescent mixture of vodka, pamplemousse schnapps, lime juice, and blue curaçao.
Though Tender Bar, on the fifth floor of a typical Tokyo elevator building, regularly lands on global best-bar lists, establishments of this sort are not intended for casual tourists or those looking for a wild night. Ginza cocktail bars are the product of a very localized business ecosystem, hushed and contemplative spaces where a drink ordered might take fifteen minutes or more to arrive, the better for a salaryman to quietly seal a deal with a client or sort through the latest office intrigue with a colleague without interruption. Tender Bar, with its line of low-backed stools along the bar, its handful of booths, and its low ceiling and lower lighting, is archetypical.
Tender Bar shut its doors in summer of 2020, a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and government-mandated shortened business hours. It has since reopened in a new space nearby, where—Fate willing—Uyeda will be serving up his hard-shaken signatures for the foreseeable future.
Uyeda, Kazuo. Cocktail Techniques. New York: Mud Puddle, 2010.
By: Matt Alt