Hungry Enough
Following Taste, Finding More
An elegant oasis, Salon Du Vin Ivresse Wine Bar in Tokyo’s Ginza District
Salon Du Vin Ivresse | Tokyo, Japan
I was more stressed than starving when I took my chances and dropped in at Salon Du Vin Ivresse wine bar in Tokyo’s Ginza District. I would be in Tokyo less than 24 hours, which translated in Taste terms to maybe two or three unforgettable meals. That is only if, and it was starting to feel like a big if, I could actually find an open and irresistible spot to rest my aching feet and feed my monstrous appetite.
Tokyo is a food city like none other, and my expectations were unusually high and more likely, unreasonably restrictive. I had a history, too, in Tokyo of crashing and burning under the city’s size, and seemingly infinite consideration set. Did I feel like Ramen? Sushi? Yakitori? Maybe I’d finally get Pork Tonkatsu?
But as I moved down one street after the other, I felt like a 47-year-old Goldilocks. This restaurant was too fancy. This one too touristy. And this one too empty.
Under pressure, I never could seem to find, across any of the three times I’d been to Tokyo, those little flavor-packed alleyways where a run-in with out-of-this-world taste was a given. [I did nail that for lunch the following day.]
What I did have a useless but self-grating knack for was finding the reservation-only gems, from which I had been turned away in shrinking defeat too many times that afternoon to count. I needed to force a reset. And that’s exactly when I saw the sign: Wine Bar.
I didn’t want to get my hopes up too quickly, as the other nearly insurmountable obstacle I had come up against that day was that it was a National Holiday in Japan, which fell in 2025 on a Monday no less.
Still, I sized up the building in front of me. It sat on a sleepy street amongst a row of other unassuming commercial buildings. Would this wine bar even be open on a night like this?
As I took the elevator to the fourth floor, I foolishly let my mind wander back to Hong Kong. There I had found, after all, lurking behind some pretty modest facades and doors, some pretty spectacular surprises in mixology and design. I pushed the door open.
Salon Du Vin Ivresse did not disappoint. It was as elegant as it was unexpected. I had two glasses of French white. As I sipped and regrouped, the bartender and his attendant helped me find and make a dinner reservation. I had found an oasis of taste and kindness.
I first wrote about finding the Salon in Tessera Ed. 39: Translating Life’s Signals in Tokyo. I regarded it then, as I do now, a nudge from Taste, My Compass. I had also found meaning in my drawn-out struggle to get there.
When I reflect on that Monday evening now, I realize there is something else, too.
The stories in taste that lie in wait for us behind closed doors can never really begin until we get hungry enough to walk through them.
