A Two-Minute Walk from Tsuta and a Different Reason to Come
The Yoyogi-Uehara sake bar where you describe what you like, hand the list back, and let the sommelier build the flight.
The glass refrigerators behind the counter are the first thing to look at, and the sommelier standing in front of them is the second. Bottles stacked deep, labels facing out, the door opening and closing all night as a flight for one table gets built, then another. The room is small, bamboo along the walls, brighter than a Tokyo izakaya has any right to be. A businessman at the end of the counter is smoking. A couple two seats down is on their fourth pour and has stopped reading the menu.
Sasagin sits a minute from Yoyogi-Uehara station and two minutes from Tsuta, which is the geographic fact that matters. It is a neighbourhood sake bar with one of the largest nihonshu lists in Tokyo and an Anglophone sommelier who will, if you let him, do the work for you. The food is izakaya-plus rather than destination cooking. The drink is the reason.
Hand the sake list back, tell the man what you like, and Sasagin becomes one of the most useful counters in the city.
Editorial Deep
What was cleared first was the mentaiko with kombu — cold, salty, doing exactly the job a first plate at a sake counter is meant to do, which is to give the sommelier something to pour against. The sashimi went next, clean and cut for the drink rather than for its own showcase. What sat longest was the grilled fish with miso dressing, which is the plate the room is proudest of and the one paired most deliberately with whatever the sommelier has just opened. It is a cut above the yakitori-and-fried-things floor of the format, without pretending to be a restaurant that happens to sell sake.
The bamboo runs along the wall at counter height, pale and lacquered, catching the overhead light in a way that keeps the room from ever going dim. This is not a hushed basement. It is bright, clean, small enough that the door opening reaches every seat, and loud in the specific way a Japanese sake bar is loud — cutlery, glass on wood, the sommelier walking a bottle down the counter and naming what is in it.
Do the one thing that separates a good night here from a fine one: hand the sake list back. Tell the sommelier what you tend to like — dry, fruity, something that will hold up to the grilled fish, something you have never had — and let him build the flight. The English menu exists and works. Using it is the tourist move. The man behind the counter has spent a career doing this for people who cannot read a Yamagata label, and the reason to sit at his counter is to let him.
The food is fairly priced for what izakaya food is; the sake list is where the money goes and where the value lives, because a pour from a bottle a sommelier has hand-selected from across Japan, poured for your specific plate, is not something the equivalent spend buys in a wine bar in this city. A Gassan Sanroku from the 1.8-litre bottle, poured with wine-like attention, is the moment the bill starts to make sense.
Bring the friend who drinks wine seriously and has never worked out sake, and this becomes one of the most useful counters in Tokyo — the sommelier will run them through a flight in an hour that would take a year of reading. Do not bring the group of six who want a full dinner and a loud table; the room is too small, the kitchen too focused, and the format will not stretch that far.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Mentaiko with kombu, grilled fish with miso dressing, and whatever sake flight the sommelier builds for the table
“Hand back the list, let the sommelier pour, and this is one of the most useful sake counters in Tokyo.”
Go for the nihonshu program and the man who runs it; the food is a supporting cast, not the reason. Skip if you want a full-scale dinner or a smoke-free room on a Friday night.
The Verdict
