Katana Kitten: There Will Be Wild Nights and Japanese Cocktails

The cocktail bar and pseudo-izakaya we present you today (look around) comes from the minds and work ethics of a trio of men who’ve respectively put in time at Saxon + Parole (real good cocktails), Cocktail Kingdom (no reason to bother getting your cocktail supplies anywhere else) and Boilermaker (still wish Golden Cadillac hadn’t closed, but Boilermaker’s always a good time). 

Take that pedigree and be sufficiently impressed to stop by Katana Kitten, a Japanese-American mixed-drinks and bar bites specialist. It’s open now in the West Village.

The drinks menu is broken up into highballs, signatures, boilermakers and Japanese whiskys. In the signature category, they’ve invented what we’re already calling the cocktail of the summer in New York; it’s called the Yuzo-Shio Daiquiri, and it’s got rum, yuzu, shio-koji (a Japanese umami seasoning), lime and wasanbon sugar, and they’re putting that boilermaker experience to use with the Ichi Mas, a Negroni paired with Sapporo Black Label. 

Now we know what you’re thinking: “what should I and the friends I brought with me do about our burning desire for grilled cheese?” Well, their version includes muenster, parmesan dust, nori and yuzu koshu. 

You miss 100% of the grilled cheeses you don’t ask about.