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The SG Club

Tokyo

The SG Club is three bars in one. At entrance level is the informal Guzzle, your starting point for the evening, where the menu of mainly crushable drinks includes the Consommé Fizz, which is just what you think it is, and the Lemons Sour, (gin with lemon, lemon balm and lemon verbena). One floor below is the opium-den chic of dimly lit Sip, where you find head bartender Ryota Tokumitsu serving spirit-forward intoxicants such as the mango-flavored dirty martini or Cold Soba Negroni featuring shochu and dashi.

Cigar lovers, meanwhile, should head upstairs to the cigar room, furnished as a drawing room with retro Japanese furnishings. There you can order a cigar, as well as a cocktail from veteran bartender Takahiro Watanabe that is deigned to pair with the various stages of your smoke, starting perhaps with a Root 75 (shochu, celeriac, pear and champagne), and finishing with a fig and sesame spin on a Negroni.

Whichever floor you choose, many of the cocktails are constructed with founder Shingo Gokan’s own-brand SG Shochu spirit, often with Japanese ingredients, from the familiar wagyu and yuzu to the more obscure, such as the illegal-until-recently creamy proto-sake, doburoku.

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