The Suntory Kakubin Food Guide is an online gastronomic directory listing Japanese izakayas offering some delectable food and highball pairings.
If there’s one drink we’d always order at a Japanese izakaya, it’s the whisky highball. And not just any highball, but a Suntory Kakubin highball.
Whisky highballs came into fashion in Japan during the 1950s, when the Japanese found that mixing soda with whisky was a relatively inexpensive way to drink. It was popularised by Suntory, whose founder Shinjiro Torii opened a chain of bars – Tory’s – that promoted its bestseller, the Kakubin highball.
More importantly for the Japanese, the highball paired fabulously with food. Refreshing and crisp enough to cut through fat and grease, yet delicate to a point where it worked with even raw sashimi, the highball became the go-to drink in izakayas.
To prove the point, Suntory recently launched its Kakubin Food Guide, an online directory pointing to various Japanese izakayas the whisky maker has tied up with to promote food and highball pairings.
The first installation of the Kakubin Food Guide is specially curated by the Suntory team, putting together almost 30 partner restaurants each presenting a special highball pairing. And while your highball is almost guaranteed to work with any dish on their menus, these specialty dishes are designed specially to work with your fizzy Kakubin highball, and offered as a set, no less.
Specialty delicacies include some scrumptious mackerel fish and chips at SABAR in 100AM, delectable pork katsu at YEN Izakaya, Teppan Works’ spicy teppan butakimuchi, oden at Oden Izakaya by Kai, and the shabu-shabu sando at Gyu San, among many others.
So if you’re looking for a great night out Japanese-style, visit an izakaya. And then do what they do – order highballs.
And not just any highball, but a Suntory Kakubin highball.
You can find the full list of partner restaurants of the Kakubin Food Guide at: https://www.suntorywhiskyfoodguide.com/.
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