The star-studded bar ‘so incoherent that it’s coherent’

Holly Graham has tales to inform. She’s ridden the Trans-Siberian Railway alone, watching the Russian panorama unfold in a vodka-fueled blur. She’s danced on seashores in Thailand, sipped cocktails on rooftops in Hong Kong and nursed hangovers in Seoul. She’s even been recognized to climb up on a bar occasionally, cheered on by a crowd of revelers.

These days, the journey that excites Graham essentially the most is the one going down at Tokyo Confidential, the buzzy new watering gap she launched within the capital’s upscale Azabu-Juban neighborhood. In an area that feels equal components fashionable speakeasy and neighborhood dive, the British-born bar maven is shaking up inventive cocktails and utilizing her business clout to carry a number of the world’s prime bartending expertise to Tokyo.

On a current night at Tokyo Confidential, a various crowd of locals and vacationers fills the house. A colourful phalanx of maneki-neko (fortunate cat) statuettes from Graham’s private assortment stands sentry among the many bottles, whereas a custom-made Godzilla sake dispenser looms above the vintage wood bar. Behind the counter, head bartender Waka Murata mixes bourbon with candy vermouth, strawberry mistelle (a fortified fruit juice), Campari and habanero — this elixir she presents in a glass cradled in a baseball glove. The subsequent drink, cheekily dubbed “Only Fans,” is a riff on a martini made with vanilla vodka, shikuwasa (a type of citrus from Okinawa), passionfruit, candy potato shōchū (Japan’s indigenous spirit) and Champagne. An enormous foam finger hangs on one wall because the playlist jumps from Sophie Hunter to Talking Heads.