Why the Japanese Highball Is the Perfect Grill-Food Drink

Let us get the awkward part out of the way in the first paragraph, because everything else in this post depends on it.

We cannot sell you a Japanese highball. The word "whisky" appears nowhere on any of our three menus — not the food menu, not the wine and sake card, not the cocktails and drinks card. We pour bourbon in exactly one drink and no whisky at all. And the word "highball" appears on our card precisely once, inside another cocktail’s description, not as a product you can order. Two of our earlier posts already did the counting, so we will not do it a third time here: the shochu highball post and the umeshu one both walk through it.

So this is a restaurant arguing for a drink it does not stock. That is a strange thing to do, and we are doing it anyway, because the highball is the single most correct idea about what to drink with charcoal food, and once you understand why, you can order better here even though the specific glass is not available.

What the highball actually is

Whisky, ice, soda. That is it. The interesting part is not the recipe, it is why Japan built a national drinking habit on it.

Suntory tells the story on its own site for Kakubin, the square bottle the drink is usually made with, and it is worth quoting rather than summarising. Kakubin was created in 1937 by the company’s founder, Shinjiro Torii; the name is descriptive, since kaku means square and bin means bottle. Then, in their words: "In the 1950s, Suntory opened thousands of ‘Tory’s’ bars, celebrating Japanese whisky in mixed drinks — inspired in part by American bar culture, and the Highball became the most popular of these drinks."

Two things in that sentence matter. It spread through bars attached to eating and after-work drinking, not through cocktail programmes. And Suntory themselves describe the Kaku Highball as "the ideal meal-time refreshment" — a drink defined by the food next to it, which is not how most spirits are sold. The same page makes the broader point that "many traditional Japanese spirits have long been lengthened with ice and water to soften their profile and allow more complex flavors to shine through."

Lengthening is the whole idea. The dilution is not a compromise on the whisky. It is the product.

Why that shape beats a cocktail next to charcoal

Here is the mechanism, from the receiving end of a charcoal grill.

Food cooked over live fire leaves three things behind on your palate: fat, salt and smoke. All three are cumulative. The fourth bite of pork collar tastes less vivid than the first, not because the cooking changed but because your mouth is coated. Everything a grill kitchen does is aimed at the first bite; the drink’s job is to keep giving you first bites.

A long, cold, carbonated, low-strength drink does that better than anything else. Cold and carbonation physically scrub; dilution keeps the alcohol from stacking up over a two-hour meal; low sweetness means the drink does not compete with the food for the same receptors. A 90ml cocktail with three sweet modifiers in it does the opposite — it is delicious, it is also another rich thing on a table that already has too many.

This is why the highball won in Japan and why it keeps winning wherever people eat over fire. It is not a lesser drink. It is a differently engineered one.

What we hand you instead

Our card answers the same question in a different alphabet. Three of our eight signature cocktails are built long with soda, which is the highball shape without the whisky.

Olive or Nothing is the closest thing we have, and our own menu says so. Its printed description reads: "A refreshing and umami reinterpretation of the highball. Rich bourbon served with smoked olives for that final umami hit." The build is bourbon, olive, brine, soda, and the card tags it UMAMI, REFRESHING, SMOKINESS and STRENGTH. Bourbon rather than whisky, brine rather than nothing, and our wood-smoked olives doing the job the charcoal does on the plate. If you came in wanting a highball, order this one and we will not have wasted your evening.

Levant is cucumber, mint, whey, lime, rum and soda — described on the card as a twist on a mojito, tagged REFRESHING, CITRUSY, BOTANICAL. It is the lightest long drink we make and the one to have while the mezze is still arriving, before the grill dishes land.

Aomori Amazeballs is aomori apple, shochu and soda: "Crisp Aomori apple meets smooth shochu and light soda. Clean, bright, and elegantly balanced." By construction that is a fruit-and-soda long drink built on a Japanese spirit, which is about as close to the original architecture as our card gets.

And then there is the unglamorous answer, which is often the right one: beer. Our entire beer list is Suntory The Premium Malt’s, a pilsner and a black, and it does the cold-long-carbonated job without any interpretation required.

What to drink with what

Concretely, if you are here for the fire:

With the Lebanese charcoal chicken and its green harissa, the Levant — the cucumber and lime handle the heat better than anything sweeter would. With the Margra lamb rump, its méchoui spice rub and its caraway, Olive or Nothing, because the brine and smoke meet the rub rather than dodging it. With the wagyu karubi, the Black beer, since roast against roast is the pairing and nothing else on the card is built for that much fat. And with the mezze board, before any of it starts, the Aomori Amazeballs or a glass of something from the wine list.

If what you specifically want is a Kakubin highball made properly, go to a whisky bar and have one — it is a genuinely great drink and we are not going to pretend a substitute is the same thing. Then come and eat here afterwards. That is not a joke; izakaya evenings are supposed to move between places.

Two housekeeping notes. Our drinks card prints no prices anywhere, so ask whoever is looking after you rather than trusting a number online; the card is on the cocktails and drinks page. And we serve pork and alcohol, so we are not halal — the FAQ has the rest of the dietary detail.

Everything quoted from our own menus above was read off the live cards on 2 September 2026. The room is in the gallery, the food is on the menu, and if you want to argue with us about the highball in person, book a table.