On a recent business trip to New York my colleague Dave Hauser and I dropped by Robataya in the East Village for a late dinner. Dave is originally a west coast guy where they know a bit about Japanese food so I was looking to show him some of New York’s best. Robatya was definitely [...]
It’s had to believe that it’s 2010 and that I haven’t made a post in Sake World since before Thanksgiving! The combination of the holidays, some crazy travel, and an insane year-end at work has unfortunately kept me away from the blog, but the good news is I’ve had several great sake experiences and thus [...]
Sakagura restaurant is the reason I love saké. This past week while attending the Ad Tech conference in New York I had a chance to take a couple of clients there. Sakagura is located in midtown East in Manhattan and has over 500 sakés on the menu. I’ve been going there for over five years [...]
Best Sushi in Canada – believe it or not….
When I scheduled a dinner meeting with friend and client Bill Sweetman in Toronto two weeks ago, I knew the restaurant would be a good one. To call Bill a “foodie would be a complete understatement. Bill prides himself in being up on the best restaurants in [...]
Fall in New England is my favorite time of year. The temperature is perfect for outdoor activities like hiking and mountain biking, soccer season starts and I can watch my kids remember how to kick the ball again after a crazed summer of trips and vacation, but most of all I love fall because it’s [...]
Mark Umphrey was my fraternity brother at Phi Gamma Psi at the University of Lowell. While I hadn’t seem Mark in quite some time, I was terribly saddened to attend his wake this past Friday. Later that evening we toasted Mark with good friends and sake and shared memories of the Ump.
Cold sake and mountain biking are two of my favorite things to do. On the surface they seem like total opposite ends of the leisure spectrum. Sake is best consumed in a relaxed environment with food and friends. It’s very social and the high alcohol content means you don’t generally want to be moving at [...]
Is sake a wine or a beer? Actually sake is neither, it’s a beverage in its own class. The sake fermentation process has evolved over thousands of years and is completely unique from any other beverage. While sake is based on rice, it uses a special kind of rice that lends itself extremely well to the creation of sake. This post gives an overview of how sake is created from the harvesting and preparation of the rice through to bottling.
Chris Johnson is a sake sommerlier and the owner of Bao Noodles, a Vietnamese-style restaurant in Manhattan. I came across his video on Urban Sake, a nice sake site run by Timothy Johnson. Chris shares some of his experiences with sake and food pairing in this interview with Saveur Editor-in-Chief James Oseland.
The next time you’re at a sushi bar sharing a hot flask of sake between friends, or at a high-end sake bar sipping a daiginjo, keep in mind that the beverage you are enjoying has a history dating back several thousand years. Sake has a rich tradition dating back to 4000 BC. Over time the brewing process has evolved and there are many different types of sake available today. This post explains the different types of sake.
