A modern izakaya

IT looks like a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street: loud American investment banker types chugging down expensive wine and boasting about big money deals, spitting out profanities in quick procession like they were getting paid $1,000 for each one. There are no naked women but there's plenty of food - artfully displayed canapes that they barely touch.

Such a waste considering that they're in Tokyo and eating at the new Takazawa bar - the brand new offshoot of the acclaimed and hard-to-book modern kaiseki restaurant Aronia de Takazawa.

Although it tends to attract mainly American expats, Takazawa Bar is chef Yoshiaki Takazawa's take on the traditional izakaya but minus the smoke and the whisky highballs. Instead you get a stylish (and pricey) range of tipple from sake to wine, fragrant grape beer and even artisanal Japanese ginger ale which comes in a tiny bottle.