Bar TRIAD

Section 1·Tokyo by District

Tokyo has several districts where bars cluster, and each seems to draw a slightly different crowd by age. Ginza skews forty and up, mostly fifties, it feels, while Ebisu and the Shibuya area around The SG Club run broader, twenties through thirties.

The city's bar map breaks sharply by neighborhood. Ginza, reduced to ashes by the air raids of 1945, rose again to become the most influential bar scene in Japan, the stage on which Suntory's Torys Bar chain cemented the after-work drink into Japanese life. It is still dense with formal, serious authentic bars where suited veteran bartenders turn out the classics without a flaw. Asakusa, by contrast, holds the strongest trace of old Tokyo: Kamiya Bar, reckoned the oldest Western-style bar in Japan, and tachinomi standing bars that will pour for you from early in the day, a working-class, retro mood. Shinjuku's Golden Gai is the pilgrimage site of bar-hopping, hundreds of tiny rooms that fill at five or six people, packed along narrow lanes, each flying its own theme from punk to jazz to horror. Against all that, Ebisu and Shibuya are the most modern and international axis, marked by creative cocktails and a comparatively young clientele.

Section 2·In Ebisu

Ebisu, where Bar TRIAD sits, differs a little from the Shibuya of The SG Club. Ebisu felt like twenties, students even, and mostly young people early in their working lives, while Shibuya gave the impression of a crowd that starts in the early thirties and up, at the age where some income has arrived.

Ebisu is best known for beer, but to me it is more familiar as a neighborhood thick with serious Italian restaurants. On a year-end trip in 2023, a bar enthusiast told me the bars here cluster together, so I went to see. I liked the easy, light mood more than I expected, and came back once more with a Japanese friend before the year was out, two visits in all.

Section 3·The T Bars

If Ebisu's restaurants are arrayed east of JR Ebisu station, the bars gather to the northwest, at the mouth of the road toward Shibuya. There is one very entertaining quirk: the names all begin with T. Bar Triad, Bar Trench, Bar Tram, Bar Track, and so on.

These four are, in fact, one family. It began with Bar Tram, which started as a whisky bar and, in the mid-2000s, began pouring absinthe to set itself apart, becoming the most renowned absinthe bar in Japan. A regular there, the Brazilian-Japanese bartender Rogerio Igarashi Vaz, joined the team, and in 2010 they took over a former curtain shop nearby and opened Bar Trench. Trench, with repeated appearances on Asia's 50 Best Bars, became the group's flagship, and Bar Track and Bar Triad followed in the same line. I could find no official explanation for why all four begin with T, but it reads naturally as a family signature carried on from the initial of the first two, Tram and Trench. Fittingly, the fifth floor of the same building as Bar Triad houses Trench's annex, the TRENCH ANNEX, open only on Fridays, Saturdays, and the eves of holidays, so it is no surprise that Triad and Trench felt like one and the same place.

Section 4·The Taste Map

The room I went to was Bar TRIAD. There is something entertaining visible from the moment you reach the building: the cocktail menu drawn out like a metro map by character.

The further down, the stronger; the further up, the lighter; the further left, the more sour and dry; the further right, the sweeter. Sorting the drinks into four traits along these lines struck me as a clever, playful idea, and when I had a sense of what I wanted, I ordered by following the map. At a bar you usually ask for "something along these lines" in words; here you can pin the image at a glance and choose from it.

Sorting the drinks into four traits along these lines struck me as a clever, playful idea

The menu ran dense with cocktails that drew in tea and herbs, Darjeeling and Earl Grey, Marco Polo tea, hoji-cha and rooibos, chai spice, alongside twists on classics like the Negroni and the Manhattan.

Section 5·What I Ordered

The first drink I chose by following the map that night was number three, the Monkey Tonic, a gin and tonic built on Monkey 47, the craft gin from Germany, with lemon and tonic. It was a wonderful opener, cool and alive with carbonation.

The second was number thirteen, the Catrina, mezcal laced with Earl Grey, elderflower, and cardamom bitters. Sitting close to the center of the map, I had expected it not to be very sweet, but the sweetness came through more than I thought, which left me a little disappointed. It was, I think, my first taste of smoky agave, of mezcal.

Section 6·A Few More Glasses

There were a few more glasses besides. One came in a ribbed wooden tumbler packed with crushed ice, a sprig of rosemary, a wheel of dried citrus, and a bamboo straw; another arrived up in a coupe, pale gold beneath a few dried rose petals and a fine red thread. Not one of them was casual about its presentation.

Section 7·A Time Capsule

Another reason I would recommend Bar TRIAD is its classic interior and atmosphere. The room is said to be modeled on an old train station, and perhaps for that reason it gave me the feeling of stepping into some bar or dining room in twentieth-century New York, a place I have never actually been.

The building also has a dedicated elevator that reaches only the fourth floor where Bar TRIAD sits, and you really must ride it: for a brief moment it is like stepping into a time capsule, the retro mood beautifully preserved.

Section 8·The Lineage

What makes Bar TRIAD more than a neighborhood bar is its lineage. It is a group venue of Bar Trench, Ebisu's world-renowned room, and it inherits the command of herbal liqueurs built up at Trench and Tram.

On my visit, absinthe and other herbal liqueurs were displayed in variety, and the bar turns out original cocktails that even seasoned bar-goers nod at. The coffee and tea martinis are held to be the house's signature in particular, layering bitterness, sweetness, and a bright aroma within a single glass.

And yet the threshold is low: because you can choose from that taste map alone without knowing a single spirit's name, it is known as a fine place for a cocktail novice to take a first step.

What makes Bar TRIAD more than a neighborhood bar is its lineage

The drinks are good and the prices and mood easy, which makes it, to my mind, a fine bar to drop into while traveling. And if a more serious glass calls, you can carry the Ebisu night onward to the Trench annex upstairs or to the original Bar Trench nearby.