1964 Saketini at Benihana

After our cocktail escapades at Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar and Grill, Momma-San and I headed over to Benihana's for dinner. Since they were so kind to send me a $30-dollar coupon for my birthday (Domo Arrigato Benihana) we decided to cash it in. Unlike the last time we went to Benihana, the place was packed to the gills with other people celebrating birthdays. So we had to forgo the show at the Hibachi grill and just sat off in the lounge area. Which was fine since we had already experienced it once before. We could get the same service in the lounge area without a major wait. While we waited to order, I decided to peruse the cocktail list and decided to keep with the decidedly Asian flavor of the evening.

Now my experience with Sake is limited to the long forgotten Bleecker Street Bar holiday party at Bond Street a few years ago. Forgotten because I can't remember what and how much we drank that night. Given that, my slate in terms of Sake is clean and decided to order one of Benihana's featured cocktails: The 1964 Saketini. Here is how it is described in the menu:

To honor the year Benihana was founded and where the Saketini was born. Grey Goose shaken with Benihana Sake and fresh cucumber.

Before I go into the cocktail, I wanted to touch on what Sake is. According to listing for Sake on the Encyclopædia Britannica website:

Sake, also spelled saki,  Japanese alcoholic beverage made from fermented rice. Sake is light in colour, is noncarbonated, has a sweet flavour, and contains up to 18 percent alcohol...The manufacture of sake began sometime after the introduction of wet rice cultivation in Japan in the 3rd century bc. The first written record referring to sake dates from the 3rd century ad, and the first reference to its manufacture dates from the 8th century. In ancient Japan sake was produced primarily by the imperial court and by large temples and shrines, but from the early 12th century the general population began to manufacture it. By the early 16th century the modern process for making sake had been nearly perfected. Sake is the drink of the kami (gods) of Shintō, the indigenous Japanese religion.

For more information on the different grades of sake, refer to John Gauntner's Sake-World listing for the different grades of sake with definitions and reviews.

The cocktail was very interesting. First I wouldn't have been able to tell that there was any cucumber flavor to it. Cucumber tends to have a distinctive flavor, especially in cocktails that was not found in this drink. Second, it had the consistency of a Vodka martini with extra dry vermouth or "Wet to Very Wet". It tasted like it had a fair amount of dry vermouth in it. I'm not sure if the sake has the same kind of flavor profile that a fair dry vermouth would tend to have when mixed with a spirit like vodka. It was definitely the kind of cocktail that I needed right before dinner. It had a nice way of cleansing the palate. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

For an interesting article on Sake, check out An Intro to Sake by David Wondrich from Esquire Magazine's website dated October 13, 2011.

For the next post, I highlight the other two cocktails I decided to try during and after dinner: The Strawberry Saketini and the Emperor's Bellini.

Until Then Happy Drinking,
Sisco Vanilla

The Lucky Lychee

The second stop after The Stone Rose Lounge was Benihana. I've wanted to go there for many years and now finally I had my chance. I was not disappointed. The food was amazing, as well as, the presentation and preparation. In terms of cocktails we decided to keep it light, preferring to have a couple of different Japanese beers with out meal. But we did have one cocktail that was called the Lucky Lychee. Momma-San was unfamiliar with the fruit so before I go into the cocktail, allow me to describe what a Lychee is.

The Engineered Lifestyles website in their entry for Lychee says that Lychee is translated from Chinese as "gift for a joyful life" (Click Here for a listing of some health benefits attributed to the Lychee fruit). According to Merriam-Webster dictionary a Lychee is:

the oval fruit of a Chinese tree (Litchi chinensis) of the soapberry family having a hard scaly reddish outer covering and sweet whitish edible flesh that surrounds a single large seed —called also lychee nut

As you can see in the image on the right, the fruit is the white almost translucent colored part of the fruit, with the brownish seed and the red outer coating surrounding it.

Now that we've established what the fruit looks like, here is what was in our cocktail:

The Lucky Lychee
Absolute Vodka
Sweet Lychee Puree
Fresh Muddled Limes and Mint
Lychee Fruit

The cocktail had a pale yellow color and on first taste it was sweet and very tasty. Momma-San seemed to like her cocktail. I also liked mine but it wasn't what I expected. I thought that it might have been a little drier since I had never tasted a lychee either in fruit or cocktail form. The bottom of the cocktail had a little Lychee fruit. I really couldn't taste the lime juice or the mint. So I would assume that the Lychee Puree overpowered all the other ingredients in the cocktail. I would have to see what the Lychee would taste like with a spirit such as Gin, Sake or Soju.

Considering that Banihana is located on 56th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, the prices on the cocktails are very reasonable. The Lucky Lychee was only $10 dollars with the Specialty Cocktails in at the same price and the Signature Martinis in at $12. The priciest cocktail on the list was The Blue Ocean Punch Bowl which serves two or more people at $32. What's in the Blue Ocean? Well it is listed as Malibu Rum, Skyy Pineapple Vodka, Sake, Blue Curacao and a combination of tropical fruit juices.

Here is a picture of our Teppanyaki chef Mizen taking a bow after an entertaining show and a filling meal.

非常に多くの紅花をありがとう。次回まで。Domo Arrigato Benihana. We had an awesome time.

The next and last stop was to the classic old school New York City bar/lounge experience known as The Monkey Bar to see my good friend Michael Harper.

Until Then Happy Drinking,
Sisco Vanilla