In good company: let's fix your sake order

Hi in-betweener,

We've all been there — standing in the sake aisle at Marukai squinting at labels, trying to figure out if junmai and nigori are actually different or just marketing. Or showing up to LACMA jazz night with a bottle we grabbed on vibes alone, hoping it pairs okay with the snacks. It's not that we mean to pick the same bottle every time, it's just that we're not sure where to start.

This is our chance to actually figure it out — with people, not alone in an aisle.

OTOTO is a sake-focused izakaya in Echo Park with one of the most serious sake selections in the country — serious enough that in 2023, they became the first and only sake-focused restaurant to win a James Beard Award for their beverage program, under sake expert Courtney Kaplan. Between the sake and Chef Charles Namba's farm-driven Japanese comfort food, a night well-spent at OTOTO is one we'll waddle out of. It's the kind of place chefs, sommeliers, and hospitality people quietly go to on their own nights off — the iykyk spot, except now we know too.

We're joining OTOTO's own Chris Wolf — aka sake wolf — for Sake School: a guided tasting through 3-4 sakes. After that we’ll dig into some small bites, and a conversation about the in-between that tends to sneak up on us once the second glass hits. That's the actual point of the evening: good sake gets us in the room, real conversation is what we leave with.

Chris is a full-time sake obsessive who's spent years studying behind the bar and at breweries in Japan alongside some of the country's top experts. He's a certified SEC Advanced Sake Professional and Sake Scholar, and he's going to make sure you leave knowing the difference between a junmai and a nigori without ever making you feel like you should've already known that.

Good sake, better company, zero pressure to know what you're doing — and a big thank you to Courtney Kaplan for making this one happen.

See you there,

Lauren