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.