Hẻm Gems: The Izakaya Where Happiness Is Wrapped in Pork Belly and Grilled

The useful part

It took a few visits before I noticed that the music at Sakaba Sasuke was always the same. It was a male Japanese artist, and the songs that consistently drew my attention had twinges of what I could only describe as a 1980s-esque combination of Jon Bon Jovi and Paul Stanley. Exceedingly friendly and polite, they did their best to find out but could only intimate that The Boss was in control, and he was not around.

How it works

• My nagging curiosity led me to finally ask The Boss myself, whom I suspected was the person on the other end of the Facebook messages I sent to make reservations.
• Eikichi Yazawa was the musician, he told me, and upon a cursory scan of the internet, his longevity, prominence and style seem to be much more David Bowie than KISS.
• While the black noren is instantly recognizable for Star Wars fans, Takamura-san has no particular fondness for the sci-fi franchise and just likes the font.
• What even is cool can be so easily argued, but for my version of cool — and I'm guessing Takamura-san's as well — I felt it immediately on my first visit.
• Before opening Sasuke in 2019, he came to Vietnam a few years prior to lau...

What to take from it

The izakaya that "cool" builds The Boss is Shumpei Takamura, and when I had the chance to ask him why Yazawa dominates the speakers at Sasuke, his answer was simply "because it's cool." Because it's just cool would be part of the reason why Sasuke is one of my favorite restaurants.

Details worth keeping

More than once, I asked the staff if they could tell me what was playing.