Gento Torigata Runs the Best Counter in Shoreditch
A twelve-seat Japanese cocktail counter on Scrutton Street where the drinks track Japan's seventy-two micro-seasons and only one table takes bookings.
A bartender halves a British strawberry, sets it on a Baccarat coupe, and turns the glass a quarter-inch so the fruit faces you rather than him. Bill Evans is on the turntable — Waltz for Debby, which is where the room got its name. This is 5:30pm on a weeknight and every counter seat is already gone.
Waltz opened on Scrutton Street in 2025, run by Gento Torigata, formerly the bar manager at Kwãnt. The template is Japanese cocktail bar in the strict sense — the theatre of the pour, the seasonal menu, the counter as the whole point — and the reference set is Angel's Share and Bar Goto in New York, not the modern London cocktail axis. In 2026, its first year, Europe's 50 Best Bars placed it at #23, which tells you how quickly the trade noticed.
A Japanese counter bar run with real discipline, wedged into a Shoreditch street that had no business getting one this good.
Editorial Deep
The menu runs on two tracks. The Evergreen list holds the signatures Torigata will make any night of the year — the Waltz Vodka Soda built on Japanese vodka and distilled shiso leaf, the Matcha Old Fashioned, the Bitter Gimley with Nikka Coffey gin. Alongside it sits a rotating seasonal card tied to Japan's seventy-two micro-seasons, updated with one or two new drinks most weeks. Ask what has just come on. It is the fastest read of where the kitchen's head is that fortnight.
Twelve stools at an eight-metre elm counter, one communal table off to the side, navy-blue walls with a mural of starling murmurations pulling across the ceiling. Jazz plays from a turntable — Bill Evans, mostly, at a volume where you can hear the person next to you without leaning in. Pendant fixtures are aimed at the bar top rather than the room, throwing the light onto the wood and leaving the walls in shadow. The counter itself does most of the atmospheric work: you are watching drinks being built two feet from your glass, and the choreography is the show.
Trade regulars, industry people on nights off, and Shoreditch couples in their thirties who know what they came for. It fills at 5:30pm on a Monday and stays full, which means the counter is gone by six most nights of the week. The energy is talkative but contained; nobody is shouting, nobody is doing shots, and the crowd's respect for the room is part of what makes the room work.
The trap is treating this like a session bar. Two drinks a head and a slow read of the seasonal card is the right shape; a third and fourth round pushes the tab into territory the room does not justify against London's cocktail peer set, and the pricing is already meaningfully above an average Shoreditch bar. The venue does not publish individual cocktail prices — worth asking before you commit to a long night. Come for the craft, not the volume.
Come back for the seasonal card. The Evergreen list is the anchor, but the rotating drinks tied to the micro-seasons are the reason to make Waltz a repeat visit rather than a one-off — a drink that lands in the second week of November will not be on the menu in December, and the pleasure of the place is watching how Torigata reads the calendar. The limit is the format itself: if you want a long, loose evening with a group, this is not that bar. It is a counter, it is disciplined, and it wants you paying attention.
Order this
Drink this.
British Strawberry, then whatever has just been added to the seasonal card
“Best Japanese counter bar in London. Walk in early, sit at the counter, order from the counter-only list.”
Waltz is a Japanese cocktail bar run with a discipline that London's modern cocktail scene rarely commits to — a twelve-seat counter, a seasonal card tied to the Japanese micro-calendar, and a bartender who cuts ice properly and stirs on a stopwatch. The counter is the whole point, and it is walk-in only. Arrive at 5pm on a weeknight, take a stool, and ask for the counter-only list. Two rounds is the right shape; the pricing rewards attention rather than volume. Skip the table booking unless you are a party of four or more, and skip it altogether if you wanted to be near the bartender rather than across the room from him.
The Verdict
