Hisashi Kishi's Basement and the Ice That Made a School
Hisashi Kishi has been cutting ice in this Ginza basement since December 2000. The classics land the way the canon says they should, and Bar High Five's Hidetsugu Ueno was one of the two behind the counter when it opened.
A hot towel first, then an amuse-bouche, then the drink you asked for served over a cube of ice that has been cut by hand somewhere behind the counter. This is the sequence at Star Bar Ginza and it has not changed materially since December 2000, when Hisashi Kishi opened the room down a narrow staircase off Ginza's 1-chome. The ice is the argument the bar wants to have with you — three kinds are in play at any given service, hand-cut 'ninja' ice, natural ice and machine ice, plus faceted cubes cut brilliant on request — and the argument holds up.
Kishi is one of the reasons the modern Japanese bar looks the way it does. Hidetsugu Ueno of Bar High Five worked under him, one of the two behind the counter when the bar opened. What that lineage buys the room is a version of the Ginza classical school delivered by the person the school partly runs through, in a basement that has seen twenty-six years of after-work Ginza pass through it.
The bar that trained the bartenders you already book — and still the one to send someone to for a first martini in Tokyo.
Editorial Deep
Order a dry martini, a sidecar, a margarita — the disciplined classics are why the room exists and they land the way the Ginza canon says they should. The whisky selection runs deep across Japanese and Scotch, and asking for a pour served over hand-carved ice is the move; the ninja cube is glossy, dense and slow-melting, and it is doing real work in the glass, not decorating it.
Down the staircase, the room opens into a small basement dressed with dark leather couches and Victorian-style detailing, with seats split between the counter and the banquettes. All seats are non-smoking, which is not a given at this tier in Tokyo.
Mature, after-work Ginza — suits from the surrounding blocks, regulars who have been coming for years, a scattering of visiting drinkers who have done the reading. Solo drinkers are welcome and normal, and the counter is built for them. The room is quiet in the way the Ginza school is quiet: talk at the volume of the person next to you, and the night moves at the bartender's pace, not yours.
Star Bar publishes no drink prices on its own site, and the ¥1,100 per-person cover charge applies before you order anything. Ask for the price menu when you sit down — reviewers consistently note it is not always brought over, and the bar takes credit cards but no electronic money or QR payments. For classical cocktails from the counter Bar High Five's founder trained at, in a basement room in Ginza, the ceiling on what you pay is defensible for the format; the friction is that you should know the numbers before the first drink lands, not after the second.
This is a first-drink bar, not a last-drink one — an hour at the counter early in the evening, one martini and one whisky over ninja ice, then out into Ginza before the room fills. Come back on a night when you can take a counter seat and watch the ice work; skip it if you want volume, a group of four, or a menu you can order from without asking. The bar is a short walk from Yurakucho Station, which makes it a clean first stop before dinner in Ginza or a serious opening move on a bar crawl through Chuo.
Order this
Drink this.
A dry martini or a whisky over hand-cut 'ninja' ice
“The Ginza classical school, from the counter Bar High Five's founder trained at. Sit at the counter and ask for the price menu.”
Star Bar is the first-drink bar in Ginza when you want the canon done by the person who taught the canon. Kishi has been at the counter since December 2000 and the discipline has not slipped. Take a counter seat, order a classic or a whisky over ninja ice, and ask for the price menu when you sit down — the ¥1,100 cover applies before the first drink and the drink prices are not always volunteered. Skip it if you want a group table, a loud room, or a bar to close the night in.
The Verdict
