At Cocktail Omakase, Fast-Paced Drinks and Bold Flavors Take Center Stage
When you step through the doors of a certain short, graffiti-muraled building on Eldridge Street, your eyes might convince you a sushi feast is about to take place. The Lower East Side space was, after all, formerly Bar Uchū, a Michelin-starred restaurant with a sushi counter in front and a kaiseki bar in back. The room still captures what you’d expect from a high-end Japanese concept: minimalist, sleek and bright, with a contrast of white and light hinoki wood. But when you settle into your plush chair, a very different kind of experience begins. You’re not here for sushi omakase, you’re here for cocktail omakase.
No one’s pulling any punches on that. This latest venture from Greg Boehm’s Cocktail Kingdom Hospitality Group, in collaboration with Tokyo’s Bar Libre, is named as bluntly as possible: Cocktail Omakase. Boehm, responsible for New York hot spots Katana Kitten, Mace, Superbueno and The Cabinet, as well as the now ubiquitous holiday pop-up bar sensation Miracle, developed the concept for Cocktail Omakase with his wife, Jessica Boehm, and Bar Libre’s Yujiro “Kiyo” Kiyosaki and Kazuaki “Kazu” Nagao. The experience goes a little something like this.
You take your spot at the 12-seat, L-shaped counter and are greeted with a warm towel and a small welcome drink. For the opening night, this was a sort of dashi. Then you choose between three menus: non-alcoholic, low-ABV or “spirited.” Over the course of one hour, you receive four cocktails, created by bar lead Mathew Resler and consulting beverage director Jillian Vose, in collaboration with Bar Libre. The non-alcoholic menu naturally sticks to all booze-free drinks, the low-ABV menu starts with one non-alcoholic drink followed by three lower-alcohol creations, and the spirited menu progresses from zero-booze to low-booze to two full-strength cocktails. They’re each served with an accompanying bite. It’s not strictly a pairing; more like a snack to round out your drink experience. The bites are the same across all drink menus, the one choice being vegetarian or not.
These menus will change every couple of weeks, per Boehm, just as a sushi omakase menu shifts according to what’s in season. The first spirited menu iteration began with the Ember Highball, a non-alcoholic drink that was smoky, sweet, and tart with lapsang souchong tea, cedar, local honey and plum soda. There was something slightly barbecue-sauce-esque about it, but it was both intriguing and refreshing enough to be considered moreish. This came alongside a soy-marinated jammy egg, cooked to perfection—all of chef Phillip Kirschen-Clark’s bites for this experience are successful, but the jammy egg is a triumph that this writer would have liked about six more of.
The second, low-ABV cocktail was the beverage winner. A Tomatillo Shiso Sour with gin, citrus and soda, it was bright and herbaceous, with a hint of sweetness balanced by acidity and effervescence—as refreshing as it was interesting. This came with a satisfying, umami-packed miso baked clam. The third drink, a Sushi Sazerac, was a rare weak spot. I was excited by the menu’s description: shochu, rye whiskey, nori, aperitivo, soy and soba cha demerara, bonita bitters, absinthe and melon aromatics. There’s a lot going on there, and unfortunately, the rye dominated. Not bad, but not the wildly layered flavor journey promised.
A Mizunara Negroni with ume ended the omakase on a high note—it was like a classic Negroni with the Campari’s bitterness rounded out, finishing with oaky, slightly sweet, floral notes. The biggest bite came here: koji-marinated “super-crunch” chicken, followed by a little ume pâté in sour shiso sugar I wish they bagged and sold. Think elevated Sour Patch Kids that melt in your mouth.
Excellent shiso sours and jammy eggs aside, one thing probably jumps out to anyone reading this description: four drinks in one hour? Yes, you read that right, and it’s fast. The cocktails are what Boehm calls “Tokyo-sized,” at about three to four ounces each. They didn’t seem noticeably smaller than a standard New York bar drink, and I began to feel a bit of whiplash as a new drink would land in front of me before I’d had more than three sips of the last one. (I am, admittedly, a slow drinker.) This is not the kind of experience where you’re going to linger and take your time chatting—you’ve got to focus to keep up.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. This entire omakase is just $55, half of what I expected based on the sheer amount of drinks and bites, their quality, and the elevated atmosphere. Greg and Jessica Boehm say they worked hard to stick to that price point to make this experience accessible (it’s all relative, of course), and while I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more for a longer slot, I think this may just take some reframing for guests. You are not settling in for a long, leisurely evening. This is its own event, an hour where you immerse yourself in four different drinks that demand attention with their ingredients and flavors, as well as their accompanying snacks. And when your hour is up, you can go have that more laid-back experience in Bar 7, a hidden seven-seat bar in the back of the space for both reservations and walk-ins, where you can order drinks and food à la carte.
There had been talk of a rising cocktail omakase trend in the last year or so, with omakase options on the menus at New York spots like Clemente Bar and Atomix. But Cocktail Omakase, as its name suggests, stands apart in its total dedication to this kind of experience.
“I’ve been going to Tokyo to visit cocktail bars for years,” Boehm says. “I drink more cocktails in Tokyo in a year than I do everywhere else in the world combined. The bar experience is incredible, and not something you can have in other parts of the world.” Boehm credits this to a heightened emphasis on hospitality, precision in mixology and smaller, more affordable cocktails that allow you to have more drinks and hop around to more bars in one evening.
The Boehms also love sushi omakase, and began contemplating how to bring the experience of a Tokyo cocktail bar to New York through the lens of an authentic omakase. The idea began to evolve once the Boehms partnered with one of their favorite Tokyo bars, Bar Libre, as well as CKHG partner Greg Nolen.
When looking for a space, they specifically sought out former sushi bars to lock in that atmosphere—Boehm says he didn’t need to change much about the location they chose, aside from details like restoring the original wood floors and fitting the back bar for making drinks, not sushi. An enormous wood canopy hangs over part of the bar, rounded and swirling; Boehm loves the way it mirrors a bartender stirring a drink. The room effectively expresses its Japanese omakase inspiration, but when your first drink arrives, you’ll feel the ambiance of a cocktail bar settling in.
That the menu will flip every two weeks isn’t just a nod to sushi omakase’s seasonality; it also promises guests they can keep coming back and discover something new each time. Without that, it might be hard to imagine someone needing to do this more than once—or at most, three times, once they’ve tried the non-alcoholic, low-ABV and spirited tracks. While the hour window is fast, at $55, it feels like a bite-sized, drinks-driven version of the omakase experience, which can easily stretch beyond two hours and seem more like a grand event for special occasions. Boehm wants people to be able to incorporate Cocktail Omakase into any kind of night, whether it’s before or after dinner or a show, or the one thing they pop out for before returning home to relieve the babysitter.
“Cocktail drinkers are looking more for an entire experience now,” Boehm says. “Of course they want a delicious cocktail, but having four drinks with four bites of food in our hour compared to just grabbing one drink is more of this choose-your-own-journey experience…and people can fit it into their busy lifestyles.” At $55 for a concise hour and with the enticement of new drinks each time, I can see adding a Cocktail Omakase visit into an evening’s plans every now and then. I just might let my companion know I won’t be chatting until the hour’s up.