Los Angeles' cocktail revolution begins again at this Tokyo-inspired Long Beach bar

A bartender pulls a daikon radish from a sink behind the bar at Tokyo Noir, a small speakeasy on 4th Street in Long Beach. The vegetable is more than a foot long and the width of the barrel of a baseball bat.

“Is that for my cocktail?” asked.

He nods firmly and then proceeds to grate the radish, releasing its pungent, tangy aroma into the air. Its snow-white shaft seems to glow in the dark. The room is dark enough that your pupils dilate.

The daikon in question is a garnish for Dirty Soba, a cocktail served in a kind of soup bowl reserved for miso soup at the local Japanese restaurant. Remove the top of the bowl to reveal a square of smooth, shiny ice swimming in a mixture of bonito dashi, Iichiko shochu, buckwheat shochu, gin, sake vermouth, and yuzu. On top of the ice is a small pile of freshly grated daikon. The bartender instructs me to first take a sip of the cocktail neat and then use the wooden spoon provided to add the daikon.

The drink is intensely flavorful, almost bordering on too earthy, but the yuzu brings it back into balance. Each sip is beautifully layered with the woody mushrooms and konbu of the dashi, and the warm, nutty notes of the buckwheat. Add the daikon and there is a burst of freshness in the radish, its bitterness cutting through the heavy layers of shochu.

The Dirty Soba, like the other dozen cocktails at the bar, has all the intricacies and spectacle of a multi-course tasting menu.

Tokyo Noir is a speakeasy located about halfway down an alley behind the El Barrio Cantina restaurant, with a green door beneath a glowing red lantern.

Co-owners Kevin Lee and Jesse Duron opened the bar in late 2024. Duron is the restaurateur behind El Barrio Cantina and Lee is a bartender known for his innovative bar programs highlighting his house-made bitters, amaro, vermouth and liqueurs. Lee previously ran Wolves in downtown Los Angeles and designed a cocktail tasting menu for its sister concept Le Néant.

“The reason we created this bar is because we thought it would be something interesting to bring to California, and there aren't many Japanese-inspired cocktail bars,” Lee says. “Jesse is half Japanese, I'm familiar with Japanese cocktails and when he and I started talking we got really excited about making something that looked and felt Japanese.”

Lee and Duron source Japanese whiskey, shochu, gin and umeshu for the cocktails. Yuzu, Okinawan sugar and shiso also frequently appear on the menu. If you want to splurge on a finger of Hibiki 30 Yr or Yamazaki 25 Year Single Malt, this is the place.

The entrance to Tokyo Noir in Long Beach can be found under a bright red lantern in the alley behind El Barrio Cantina.

(Wonho Frank Lee)

The drinks are made with crystalline ice blocks from the Japanese city of Kanazawa. Lee, who claims to be the only “certified ice master” outside of Japan, uses a knife to carve blocks of ice into spheres, squares and diamonds. The shapes are visually striking, but the curves and size of the ice also contribute to how quickly or slowly the ice melts into the drink.

The first sip of Dirty Soba transports me to the dawn of the cocktail revolution in Los Angeles. It was 2009 and Varnish had just opened its doors in the back of Cole's in downtown Los Angeles. Founders Sasha Petraske, Cedd Moses, and Eric Alperin introduced drinks made with hand-cut ice, craft spirits, and farmers market produce and, in doing so, turned cocktail-curious Angelenos into true connoisseurs.

Tokyo Noir embodies that same spirit of discovery and meticulous craftsmanship, with no limits to what Lee will do to achieve the desired alchemy in a glass. When Lee opened his first bar, Puzzle in La Mirada, he made all his own bitters, amaro and vermouth. He experimented with different varieties of mint from local farms to make fernet.

The dashi used in Tokyo Noir's Dirty Soba is vacuum-prepared overnight and made with matsutake, bonito, and konbu mushrooms. The bar makes all of its bitters from scratch.

Tokyo Noir's menu is presented like a magazine, with illustrations and tasting notes for each cocktail.

(Jenn Harris/Los Angeles Times)

The drinks menu resembles a food magazine, with intricate illustrations and tasting notes for each cocktail.

“It was a big debate, because there are so many ingredients,” Lee says. “We didn't list everything because you would get like 12 ingredients and five you won't even try because a lot of them are for layering the cocktails.”

Lee and his team tried to limit and highlight recognizable flavors in the drink descriptions.

The text accompanying Dirty Soba says: Umami. Refreshing. Complex. A little simplified but accurate.

He

Tokyo Noir's Initial B cocktail in Long Beach.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

The initial B is: Bright. Dry. Bitter. The drink is actually a play on a Boulevardier, made with bourbon, white miso, Campari, sweet Japanese vermouth, and banana liqueur.

“We use homemade aromatic bitters and also a little bit of our citrus bitters,” Lee says. “Oh, and we also added a little tomato bitters. It was based on a miso banana bread that I really liked.”

The drink is surprisingly warm, pleasantly bitter and balanced, with the banana mostly floating in the background. It is topped with a square of Castella cake on top. The bouncy Japanese sponge cake adds a touch of sweetness and another fun textural element to the cocktail.

You could spend an evening savoring the dinner menu (with a designated driver, of course), starting with something light and refreshing like the Okinawa Gimlet before moving on to the Dirty Soba or the Spine and Silk, a salty drink topped with sea urchin foam.

Ulises Pineda-Alfaro, chef at El Barrio Cantina next door, also prepared a short snack menu to complement Lee's cocktails.

Tokyo Noir's Okonomi Corn Dogs in Long Beach.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

The spicy tuna temaki are dressed with macha ponzu sauce. Corn ribs are spread with butter and soy and garnished with cotija chips. Japanese corn dogs are zigzagged with Okonomiyaki sauce and Kewpie mayonnaise, then garnished with bonito flakes and serrano peppers.

With seasonality in mind and a creative ambition that never wavers, Lee is already starting to pivot ideas and flavors for a cooler climate. It's intended to replace the Dirty Soba cocktail with a drink inspired by chawanmushi, Japanese steamed egg custard, although I'll be sorry for its absence.