I went to Sherry Club, a Spanish bar-cum-restaurant in Tokyo's Ginza with a friend on a Friday night a couple of weeks ago.
Sherry Club has true vintage in being 25 years old - something of a rarity in a city where bars and restaurants are opening and closing all the time. Sherry Club began in 1986, and since that time has been bringing the best of Spanish cuisine and drink to Tokyo palates.
As the name suggests, the star of the Sherry Club is sherry. They have so many varieties of it that they even made it into the Guinness Book of Records for it.
We began with one of the three or four Spanish beers on offer: crisp and tawny, and ordered half a dozen small dishes, the most memorable of which being the fried mushrooms and the cheese plate.
When it came to sherries, we started with dry and white and worked our way towards the sweeter and darker as the evening moved pleasantly on.
The cuisine was simply exquisite (in the literal sense of "simply"), the service was professional, manifesting what is another relative rarity in Tokyo: waiters who genuinely know what they're talking about rather than parroting the shop's set "recommendation" patter.
Another refreshing feature of Sherry Club is the lack of pretension. I have never been to Spain (Portugal's the closest I've gotten), but I can easily imagine the atmosphere being pretty similar to that of a similar establishment in Spain, with its laid back vibe, and a buzz to the air that was all about adults genuinely enjoying themselves.
The bill was what you'd expect for food, drink and service of that quality: not exactly cheap at about 10,000 yen per head, but I doubt whether there are many other places in Tokyo that could do anything approaching the same for less.
Every month or so, Sherry Club has a Fiesta night of flamenco music and dance.
Sherry Club
2/3F, Yugen Building, 6-3-17 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
東京都中央区銀座6-3-17 悠玄ビル2F・3F
+81 3-3572-2527
Access from Hibiya, Yurakucho and Ginza stations.
Google Map to Sherry Club Tokyo
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