Shuzo Nagumo’s flagship lab, where the daikon Martini was born and never left.
Codename Mixology Akasaka is the flagship of Shuzo Nagumo’s Spirits & Sharing group and has been running since 2014. The basement room is the engine: it is where Nagumo and his team prototype the techniques that move into the rest of the family — Mixology Salon, Mixology Heritage, Mixology Insomnia.
Punch’s 2022 Tokyo dispatch described the bar as “the closest thing Asia has to a working modernist research bench with a customer-facing counter”. Diffords Guide named Nagumo to its Personality of the Year shortlist in 2019. None of which means the room takes itself too seriously; the staff are quick, friendly, and happy to walk a curious drinker through the daikon Martini build.
B1F entry off a quiet Akasaka side street, two minutes’ walk from Akasaka-mitsuke station. The L-shaped bar seats around 12, and the back-bar reads more chem-lab than cocktail lounge — rotovap on the counter, sous-vide rigs on the back shelf. Time Out Tokyo calls the room “cluttered in the most reassuring way”.
Order the Daikon Martini (¥1,800) — it has been on the menu since opening and is the single most-photographed cocktail at the bar. The Tom Yum Kun cocktail (¥1,900) is the savoury statement piece Difford’s called “a course of Thai food compressed into a coupe”. The classics list is also competent — Negronis are textbook — but it would be a waste to come here and order one.
Mixed: hospitality industry early, a wider mix from 10pm onward when the room fills. Reddit’s r/cocktails threads single out the bar as “the must-stop on any Tokyo cocktail tour, but go on a Tuesday if you want Nagumo himself behind the stick”. The bar runs late: 3am close, with the last orders genuinely taken at 2:45.
The bar accepts walk-ins but the eight counter seats fill fast after 10pm; large groups should call ahead through the Spirits & Sharing reservation line. Cover charge is ¥800 and gets you a small bite. Difford’s Guide notes the staff English is strong — Nagumo trained much of the team for international press — and recommendations are easy to ask for. The bar runs an in-house spice cabinet that doubles as a back-bar exhibition, and the bartenders are happy to walk through it on a quiet Tuesday. The room is louder than most Tokyo cocktail counters; if quiet conversation is the priority, an early seating is the right window.
Codename Mixology’s public site and Instagram (verified May 2026); Punch (2022 Tokyo dispatch); Difford’s Guide; Time Out Tokyo; r/cocktails.