Bartender Glass of God, Ep 12: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Sasakura helps an author find motivation. Edenhall finds a home for the Glass of God.

Episode 12 — “An Important Job”

Hmm. Bartender Glass of God Tasting Notes.

How often does overserving happen in a bar charging twenty bucks (or more!) for a single cocktail? I could understand Kitakata dealing with barflies at the North Wind. Having to cut off a patron for drinking too much at a high-end counter bar should be a rare event. However, bartenders still receive training to recognize the signs. For Bartender Glass of God’s last episode, I enjoyed the twist that a man was staggering and stumbling from depression instead of intoxication. No, that’s not better for the patron, but one state of mind often accompanies the other. So that was a fun twist in an alcohol environment, but it wasn’t the only one.

The whole premise of the Glass of God is that it soothes the soul. That language evokes a comforting, peaceful experience with notes of nostalgia. But what if the customer needs a punch in the gut? I loved how Bartender Glass of God used that twist to provide Sasakura his chance at redemption from serving a suicidal customer. Compassion is not always soft. Sometimes, a soul in trouble needs a kick in the pants instead of a lap pillow. I’m glad I saw Sasakura learned to mix his observation skills with an extra dose of iron in his soul-stirring drinks. He perfected the Glass of God just in time for a promotion!

Sledgehammer. Bartender Glass of God Applies it Directly to the Forehead!

The potent cocktail containing vodka, lime juice, and ice has a nonstandard recipe. I found concoctions using the Sledgehammer moniker basing themselves on brandy, apple brandy, poured into a Collins glass with Sunny Delight, and even one with orange liqueur. People looking for a pounding hangover headache can be terrifyingly creative. But in Bartender Glass of God, the drink Sasakura made for the lazy author driven to suicidal ideation through impostor syndrome is fundamentally a cold lime-favored shot of vodka. Quit your whining and go back to work!

Sasakura’s counsel about maintaining professionalism when you’ve lost your usual enjoyable drive is a call for creating a disciplined system. But what about artistic or artisanal work that feeds off creativity? What do you do when the well runs dry? Or when you feel you shouldn’t be taking a brush in hand, tapping at a keyboard, or mixing ingredients for a specific customer? Artisans, by definition, are artists whom customers pay for their art.

Bartender Glass of God shows us all the steps a bartender takes to mix a simple cocktail. If the creative spark doesn’t happen at the first step, it might happen at the second. Or the third. Or not at all! Kuzuhara, a.k.a. Mr. Perfect, never worried about the Glass of God’s problems. But if Sasakura employed the Perfect System, even on his off days, he could still satisfy a customer’s soul in need of soothing. That is what maintaining professionalism means.

Gentleman’s Brandy and Imperial Nikolaschka

The portable mixed drink from Hamburg, Germany, named after Czar Nicholas II’s favorite drink, usually calls for coffee grounds and granulated sugar atop the lemon wedge. But Sasakura’s version of the outdoorsy cocktail is an acceptable variant. This is how you make a brandy sour in your mouth!

Sasakura calls it a Sidecar in your mouth, but that’s only because of the brandy. I see no orange liqueur anywhere! And what a disappointing way to add a signature cocktail to Bartender Glass of God before the season’s end. The International Bartenders Association’s Sidecar recipe calls for Triple Sec (a clear orange liqueur), differing from the episode’s recipe using a single curacao (orange liqueur from the Caribbean Antilles island nation). I saw no mojitos anywhere!

Men of alcohol culture need to be flexible, prepared, and adaptive to their environment to mix the appropriate drink. Hip flasks have been an expensive accessory to carry the party with you wherever you go. Have there been others? Yes! Kurushima’s flask cane has been one the English favored for centuries. Hip flasks and specialized canes are customary for gentlemen. But, if you’re an American college graduate of a certain age, you might tell stories of bringing Ziploc bags of vodka into home football games stuffed into your socks. Hypothetically!

The Aftertaste of Bartender Glass of God.

Sasakura’s impromptu bartending with Kurushima turned into his contract negotiation. He only had one condition that Kurushima had to fulfill if he were to take the job at Hotel Cardinal, and he demonstrated it with two things a bartender can’t make. The first is a Nikolaschka. And the second is another thing a customer creates in the bar. In my review of the Bartender Glass of God episode that called a bartender the secret ingredient, I wrote that a bar’s main ingredients are the customers. Sasakura knows this, too.

Could Hotel Cardinal create a space for guests to meet their old selves? A place where memories of good times mix with new experiences like a delicious cocktail? Regulars make the bar and leave their marks there, like Norm Peterson from Cheers and his reserved bar stool. Only one pair of cheeks could comfortably sit there because Norm had shaped the cushion to his own. Sasakura asked Kurushima to promise him a bar “where everybody knows your name.” Oh, and one other request. To call the counter bar “Edenhall.”

Did you know Bartender Glass of God’s Edenhall is a real place? Maki chose the name of his bar because of a legend about it. Historically, the Luck of Eden Hall is a glass cup that a nobleman (probably a Crusader) brought back from Syria or Egypt in the 1500s. It also has an entertaining fairy tale about Fairies leaving it behind after a night of carousing. The Fairies flew off after curious people surprised them, with one crying out as it disappeared:

If this cup should break or fall
Farewell the Luck of Edenhall!

Bartender Glass of God Finishing Notes.

Tasting liquor, wine, or beer involves an order of steps in evaluating the libation in question. The last (or second-to-last) is to notice what you taste after you’ve swallowed the drink. For Bartender Glass of God, what are its flavors in the aftertaste? The first sip of the season felt like a reboot of the 2006 version but changed its focus to recurring characters and its main cast. The 2024 anime became Ryuu Sasakura’s story of perfecting the Glass of God recipe in himself. That’s not surprising if we consider how episodic storytelling relies more on characters these days instead of a compelling long-form saga.

As Bartender Glass of God’s season wore on, it became less about the drinks and the parables they evoked. The ultimate cocktail was Sasakura himself. And Kurushima’s aim for the Glass of God was to replace the son he lost. Was Miwa’s father the first Glass of God, and her grandfather had been searching for the next one? The story of how Kurushima’s son chose a bottle of whisky to convince him to move into Western-style resorts is a huge hint.

Still, the recurring characters in Bartender Glass of God fashioned an enjoyable slice-of-life drama. I heartily enjoyed Yukari as a comic relief character. She didn’t know CEO Kurushima was Miwa’s grandfather! The Ogura Boss, who served cheap chuhais and potstickers, acted like Yoda in a swamp for the young service industry members. Now that Hotel Cardinal has firmly installed Sasakura and Edenhall as its signature counter bar, could a second season be far off? I could see a version that turns its attention to hotel guests, with the bar regulars garnishing the base story ingredients.

Mixing Friends with Liquor Completes the Perfect Cocktail

I have one last point — Bartender Glass of God succeeded at its two primary goals. First, Suntory displayed its liquor labels at a bar and advertised them to the max. Second, the anime convincingly argued its overarching theme: Cocktails taste better with companions. Find a friend and tip one back together. But if you’re alone, your bartender will always be there for you. Kanpai!

Bartender Glass of God (Bartender: Kami no Glass) streams on Crunchyroll in Japanese audio and multiple language subtitles. Bartender (2006) also streams on Crunchyroll in Japanese audio and English subtitles.

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Did you enjoy Bartender Glass of God? Do you have a favorite cocktail from Sasakura’s list? Did you try one after you saw it in the show? Let us know in the comments below.

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