Pick Up The Flashpoint — Pigalle Beer Bar in Setagaya City, Tokyo
Tokyo is a bit of a nightmare. The largest city on the planet takes no prisoners with its jostle and bustle; a polite chaos of 37 million people. The air drips with hot, steamy humidity. For a big, bumbling lad from Teesside, it's a bit much. I need a beer. Actually, I probably need three. Darting down an alleyway, I dip through a door, waiting for the icy blast of AC to slap me in the face, which it does, at the same time revealing a tiny, living room sized bar. And there, hanging from the ceiling, are 500 freshly-cut crimson roses.
Pigalle is not just a European themed bar in Setagaya, Tokyo. It’s a canvas, and base, for owners Chie and Hide Yamata to express their love for European beers, ciders and wines, projected through the kaleidoscopic lens of their vibrant personalities, into something entirely new.
Outside, a drumming Scottish figurine welcomes folks in off the alleyway, under a candy cane striped canopy into a tiny hideaway closet—part Victorian curiosity shop, part dive bar. Swathes of beautiful fresh flowers, art, handmade pottery, glistening baubles, and hordes of creepy taxidermy populate the bar’s eclectic interior. “It brings life to the place,” Chie tells me with a smile.
With seating for just 14, and standing for maybe half a dozen more, it's a fascinating, deeply enjoyable bar, where the hosts are boisterously welcoming.
Photography by Reece Hugill
Just as the walls and surfaces are laid out with care and intention, the beers, wines, and ciders available are not simply picked from distribution lists. Once a year Chie and Hide close Pigalle for a whole month, during which they travel across the world, finding talented drinks producers, interesting bars, while also working at vineyards and cideries. They often travel separately to cover more ground, despite language barriers and at no small expense. The results of this effort are precious treasures, bottles, cans, and the instilled passion of their makers, which Chie and Hide relay to their regulars upon their return.
“They make a point meeting the brewers they work with, in order to understand the way they make their beers, and equally important, the philosophy behind it,” says Yvan de Baets of the Brussels-based Brasserie de la Senne—himself a long time supplier of Pigalle.
You might catch a reflection of a denim-clad regular watching baseball while enjoying a lager in a Bass-branded mirror. But you're just as likely to see a suited salaryman shrugging off the long day with a Skyborry Cider, where Chie journeyed to one rainy Welsh February in 2020. Among the selection are bottles of Mills, frothy glasses of Saison Dupont, and the freshest Japanese IPA from breweries such as Passific and Yorocco. You'll also notice, however, most customers are drinking the most popular beer-by far: tall bronze and cream coloured pints of Greene King Old Speckled Hen.
I, too, was a bit taken aback by this. Memories of warm bottles drunk in my youth, often a misguided Christmas present, are not positive. Forced-down, tepid pints in suburban chain pubs with dirty lines are even worse. It took me two visits to Pigalle before I overcame this, and plucked up the courage to join the locals in their favourite beverage.
But listen: you have to believe me. It's sound. It makes sense. The smooth, creamy comfort of a plain, easy, cold English bitter really takes the edge off what is by all accounts the most overstimulating place in the world. Tokyo is an ADHD simulation of lights, noise, smells, and unfamiliar culture. The safe haven of this little quiet bar reshapes the unremarkable beer into a soft pillow of simple satisfaction. Of unceremonious joy. Surely that's the spirit of English bitter.
““Pigalle is regarded as a special presence by beer lovers all over Japan.””
“It may not be a flashy beer, but it has a quiet, deep flavour, something that stays with you—truly irreplaceable,” Chie tells me.
Hide says the Old Speckled Hen is their “toriaezu biru” which means that it’s the initial beer you order to start yourself off, without thinking, or looking at the menu, before diving into whatever you fancy next. Something to shrug off the world with.
Sometimes the whole bar is drinking it, perhaps before opening a fresh bottle of Saison Dupont or Japanese cider. It was their first beer they ever had on draught when they opened in 2010, when imports were rare, and Japanese craft beer fans were rarer still. As a house beer it’s far-removed from the rice lagers huge domestic breweries like Kirin, Sapporo, and Asahi flood Tokyo's streets with. Even selling locals on a simple keg bitter required no small amount of perseverance, but Hide never gave up on bitter.
“Fifteen years ago, in Japan, all beer was lager, paying more than ¥1,000 (£5.50) for beer was too shocking for customers,” Chie says. “Sometimes we would throw kegs away as the beer was too slow selling. 30 litres a month was impossible. Now we do two kegs a week. We’re really glad we never gave up and kept going all these years”
The simple act of opening caused a legislative nightmare. As both a takeaway shop and a bar, Pigalle was apparently the first place to hold both licenses in Japan, paving the way for many others to follow in their footsteps.
“Some of the new-generation craft beer boys, they call us parents: mum and dad,” she adds.
***
A stammtisch—or regular’s table—sits by the bar, a tradition imported from Germany from their yearly trips. A couple sit at the bar with branded earthenware mugs and drink Stammtisch helles, Pigalle’s other house beer.
“We brewed it with Chie and Hide, to express gratitude to Pigalle’s regular customers on the bar’s 10th anniversary,” Akio Kichise, head brewer at Kamakura’s Yorocco Brewery tells me. “[It’s] a helles that you can drink as much as you want!”
Chie points out to me which customers of hers she says are stammtisch, each of them smiling and nodding in my direction with pride.
When I catch up with Yvan De Baets, an annual visitor himself, he praises the vibe of the bar. Which I too have felt every time I have entered; one that is uniquely warm, relaxed and filled with stories.
““Some of the new-generation craft beer boys, they call us parents: mum and dad.””
“Chie and Hide succeeded in creating a super cosy bar that has the feel of a family place, where everyone feels completely at home,” Yvan says. “A lot of customers are women, which is fantastic to see in an industry that is far too often male-driven.”
Stammtisch, both the concept and the beer, is a great example of the essence of Pigalle—European culture as inspiration, pastiched rather than parodied. Here you can order a beautiful plate of french-style cheeses, but all made in Japan. Snappy local hot dogs, stuffed inside baguettes, are passed out over the counter, echoes of Franske hot dogs enjoyed in Copenhagen. Perhaps best enjoyed with a glass of elegant Pigalle Cider, made locally in Nagano.
This cider, their third and final collaboration with cidery and winery Les Vins Vivants, came from Chie and Hide’s desire to recreate wild fermented French cider they've enjoyed on their travels. However, once they tasted Japan's big, delicious eating apples, they knew they couldn't make the same drink as produced from France's small tannic cider apples without serious intervention, cultured yeast, and other additions, none of which appealed to them.
“Because cider is a drink made from agricultural products, we now believe that what matters most is not making it similar to something else, but allowing it to reflect the character and place of origin,” Chie says. “Our initial desire, simply to make something that tastes like ‘that’, wasn't really aligned with who we are.”
The result is something that takes cues from French and British cider, but is something uniquely Japanese, reflecting the soil, fruit and ideologies of its makers. And it’s absolutely delicious.
***
At the dead centre of the bar, a tongue-in-cheek sign written in English sign lays out the house rules:
“NO BAD WORDS
NO TOO MUCH DRUNK
NO SLEEPING
THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING”
Chie clarifies to me this is mainly aimed at Hide. She then directs my attention towards a second, and far more serious set of advice is glued to the wall next to it.
“DONT JUDGE
JUST DRINK YOUR BEER
ENJOY
THESE AWESOME THINGS”
She tells me that in the height of craft beer’s new-wave, too many customers would religiously check canning dates on imports, obsess over the newest release, and just simply forget to enjoy themselves, and what's in front of them. This sign was very much needed to preserve the spirit of the bar.
That isn’t to say Pigalle doesn't still attract huge attention from devoted beer enthusiasts. In 2019 over 200 people queued up in the alley for the ‘Omnipolloscope’ beer launch from the Swedish brewery Omnipollo, with some waiting over two hours for a beer. I myself served a long shift here at an event for my brewery—Donzoko—pouring lager from a gravity cask for hordes of thirsty folk with ceramic mugs. I didn’t close the tap until the tiny bar was drunk dry and the street was filled with revellers. Everyone I spoke to that summer afternoon told me about the trust they have in Chie and Hide, and that whatever they are serving, whoever they are hosting, it’s going to be worth it.
“In the Japanese craft beer scene, which is heavily influenced by America, Pigalle is regarded as a special presence by beer lovers all over Japan,” Akio tells me.
Craft beer is now, unfortunately, not new, and to some not as exciting as it once was. A growing number of people are losing the enthusiasm that once drove them to build, brew and create wonderful things. To see such raw passion in people like Chie and Hide is rare. But to see it materialised with such finesse, into Pigalle, and all its associated events, drinks, food and friendships, is inspiring, life affirming, and truly infectious.
