The Joy of Sake 2011

The Joy of Sake truly brought me joy! There is no other way to say it. If you can appreciate sake, then this is the event to check out. With more than 300 sakes available for tasting and great bites from some of Honolulu’s best restaurants, all you need to bring is the great company!
Held at the Sheraton Waikiki, plan a few extra minutes to get through their parking lot, or better yet… pony up the extra couple of bucks and valet park! In either case, plan some extra time at the end of the event since there are quite a few people all leaving at the same time.
The sakes are lined up by style and you can easily enjoy the sakes the tingle your palate. If you have no idea what you like, simply sample a few from each section till you find the right one! Be sure to check out the key on the guide for specialties and hard to find sakes that may be some of the highlights of the show! Also, you won’t be drinking a full serving (although I suppose you could…), you will be just pouring a small pipette worth into your glass.
There are a number of great food establishments that served up tasty noshes. There were certainly some highlights such as Chai’s escargot and shrimp brushetta and ahi carpaccio from Rumfire, while there were also some other lows that made me go hmm… It wouldn’t hurt to have a small bite to eat before going.
Is the ticket worth the price? Heck yes! If you also decide you want to play it safe, be sure to check out the hotel specials that the Sheraton offers. Although, the kamaaina rate (for locals only) might be just a tad better!

The Joy of Sake was held in the Sheraton Waikiki for the first time this year. What a perfect host for such an event!
The bf and I consider ourselves to be sake lovers. We are always on the lookout for «new» ones to try, so attending the Joy of Sake was a real treat. We are more of the Junmai Daiginjo type — preferably more on the dryer side; not too sweet, but definitely smooth; a little floral is not bad either.
The only reason why we ended up going this year was honestly bc I got a free ticket from Unilocal (Thanks Emi!)
If it weren’t for that Unilocal privilege, I think we would have skipped this year. Never having gone before, I didn’t know what I’d be missing.
*Even though 2.5 hours of sake tasting sounds tempting, $ 80 does not.
I’m very thankful and appreciative for the opportunity to have gone.
After doing some perusing on the Joy of Sake website, I found that there’d be food vendors there as well! (Yay!)
Morimoto’s, Genius Lounge, Chai’s, Doraku, Gyotaku, and more. So not only would there be sake to look forward to, there would be food as well!
Once let through the doors, everyone kind of dispersed. I bee-​lined it towards the food first and then made my way to the sake after touching base with the bf.
There were so many types of sake that it was almost overwhelming. The bf and I took our time lingering around the Daiginjo tables. And, of the Daiginjo variety, there were quite a few that we liked with little black stars next to the name (on the name card). However, we later found out that the black star next to the sake name meant that it was only found in Japan. Great. I thought the star meant that it was a favorite or something… Smh.
Anyway, the food was superb and the sake was excellent. All in all, great times were had. I’d do it again next year!
Highly recommended.
Unilocal 365 — #061/​365

This was my second time to the Joy of Sake so I am going to compare 2011 to 2010.
300+ sakes, some of which you can’t get outside of Japan! Just awesome. Whoever thought up this event needs a medal. Or a statue. An award or something! This part was the same as last year and is 5 stars!
The food is good. I only wish there was more of it. I think there needs to be more stations because there is so much sake! The ratio of food to sake could have been better. Personally I liked the food last year more, but there was really nothing to complain about.
The location this year really couldn’t be beat. Last year it was at the Honolulu Academy of Arts which is outdoors. That made for a very sweaty night of drinking. This year it was in the Sheraton Hotel. I hope they continue to have it here or at another hotel. It definitely needs to be in an inside venue. I really appreciated having the air con this time around.
I would recommend this event to all Sake lovers!

Joy of Sake 2011 was awesome. Hopefully, they’ll continue to have it at the Sheraton Waikiki. The venue was great — huge, air conditioned, lots of validated 12 hour parking and restaurants galore when the event was over.
If you’re planning on going next year, also plan to have dinner afterwards. The food portions at Joy of Sake this year were bite size. You’re still going to be hungry and are probably going to need sobering up. Our party ended up at Doraku to finish off the evening.
Funny event of the night:
To the group that attended Joy of Sake 2011 and ended up at Doraku as well, I had to laugh at your ignorance when you asked for Ty-​Ku. Why would Doraku carry a sake developed by two Columbia University grad students? It’s not a traditional sake. So funny how the promoters brainwashed you into thinking Ty-​Ku was a mainstream and/​or known sake. Just because some rapper is being paid to promote it, it must be good huh? Another slave to trends.
Like I said, I had to laugh.

The Joy of Sake was fun!
I went there and the Sheraton guest parking lot was almost full I park on the second highest floor! Where there is no roof!!! I never park that high there before.
We went down to the Sheraton hotel and when I saw the crowd I though maybe the event was sold out! When you get to the event they were asking for tickets and helping putting wristbands on people. It is a good thing I asked one of the workers if we can still get tickets for this events. They directed us to one of the table far off to the left side.
$ 80 a person! I know it sounds expensive but it was fun!
They had around 300 different bottles of Sake!!!
Prior to this event I have tried around 10 different Sake but now I sample maybe around 200+ types.
I really like the different booths with food! All of them had tasty food! Even Hawaiian Airlines was serving food that was great!
I wish they had more food booths with a diversity of Japanese food!
I am happy that they focused on Japanese types of food!
I will definitely go again! Tons of fun!

The Joy of Sake was excellent this year. I loved that it was at the Sheraton in the ballroom. My friends were hesitant to dole out $ 80 each for «such a short amount of time» but after this year, i will never miss a Joy of Sake again! It was totally worth the $ 80. It was the perfect amount of time to walk around, sample all the different sakes, learn more about the process of making sake, and, well– get a nice sake buzz going. I went more for the sake tasting than anything, but the food booths were good too. I thought that traffic management was optimal– the lines weren’t ridiculously long as they have been in past years (though Morimoto’s was pretty busy!).
It was also a fun, diverse crowd. I loved seeing girls in kimonos walking around :) Also, it was neat to be able to taste sakes that you cannot buy in the US (they were marked with an asterisk) and the best sakes were identified by gold and silver stars on the signs. This made it easy for me to work my way around, sampling only the best! The staff that work the event are really knowledgeable too– and I had some tough questions!
I would have given it five stars, but the setup of the booths was a little odd– some of them were out in the «lobby» area while the rest were inside. Thus, I completely missed them!

«The Joy of Sake» — touted to be one of the events of the year, with 300+ sakes available for tasting and delectable morsels of goodness from restaurants around the island, including Chai’s Island Bistro, Morimoto’s, Hakkei, Lewer’s Lounge (?! Yup, you read that right), Gyotaku, Rumfire, Yoshi-​ya and even some «out-​of-​town» guests, like Banzai (Haleiwa) and Marian’s Catering (Wahiawa).
The event was *packed*! Sake connoisseurs, aficionados and newbies alike all filed into the second floor ballrooms of the Sheraton Waikiki. 6 – 8 tables scattered across the ballroom and the foyer displayed bottles upon bottles of sake available for tasting. «How does one manage to taste sake with reasonable pours with that many people wandering around for tasting?», you ask. By tube droppers straight out of chemistry lab class. Each fill was probably around a ¼ to ½ ounce, and was probably just enough to get the flavor of the sake, while still allowing you to try as many sakes until you … well, yopparai ni natta.
Junmai, Ginjo, Daiginjo — all of the different grades of sake available, from different prefectures and different regions of Japan — an amazing variety! Some attendees took a scientific approach to tasting, documenting their tastings with notes and/​or pictures of the bottles. To be honest, it was really the only way to effectively get much information out of the tasting — after that much sake, how much do you *really* remember?
As varied as the sake selection was, so too was the variety of food samples available! I’ll hit just the few personal highlights of the event:
— Hakkei: my personal fave. Chicken dumpling, with assorted vegetables, immersed in the «famous» Hakkei oden dashi. This was delicious. I couldn’t get enough of the dashi. After our first taste, Kyle H. and I were already planning out the next time we could make it to Hakkei for dinner! Delicious, delicious stuff. It’s a must try.
— Rumfire: Chad Y. and Kyle H. were also in agreement here — the spicy ahi sampler was amazing! (Pic:
) It’s a shame that the appetizer would probably cost you ~$ 15 at Rumfire, though. (Joking … but not by much.)
— The Kahala: the Kahala (formerly known as the hotel that had the word «Mandarin» in it somewhere) had two dishes available — a butterfish dish and a beef medallion with a lotus root chip over a potato with gravy. The butterfish was «ok», and the beef medallion was good — a bit savory, good texture with the lotus root chip.
— Yoshi-​ya: a new (?) Japanese restaurant located in the front of the Sheraton Waikiki, this booth was popular, with the familiar post-​imbibing scent of deep fried tempura. The batter was light and crisp, the shrimp tasted great — was ono! This was another item that had us talking about the next time we’d be going to dinner! Reality hit when we passed by the menu on the way out and noticed that the shrimp tempura was about $ 4/​pc.
Positives: … are you kidding me? 300+ SAKES AVAILABLE FOR TASTING, 15+ RESTAURANTS SERVING FOOD. Try *not* finding a positive there!
Drawbacks: Unfortunately, it’s only during this 2 ½ hour alcoholic trek through the country of Japan that this spread is available. Leaving the event was bittersweet — as though saying goodbye to a friend you won’t see for a while and who you’ve only been able to spend a few blurry hours with.
Props to Emily & Thomas for tirelessly running the Unilocal area and bringing in people to take pictures under the Unilocal banner (and if they didn’t, to come back in an hour, lol). And big mahalo goes out to Emi — THANK YOU!!!
The Joy of Sake 2011 was an impressive event, living up to the hype created. The wide variety of sake was virtually a guarantee that one would walk away with some good memory (ies) of the event, taking away the name of their new obsession. Unfortunately, for this wet-​behind-​the-​ears sake taster, most of them starting tasting the same after a while. (Obviously, your experience will vary here.) Loved the company, loved the food, loved the sake … I just wish I could remember all of them.
Ah, well … sho ga nai. (Cannot help.) Til next year!

I’m glad that they finally came to there sensuous and moved it from Honolulu academy of arts 90 degrees humid weather to Sheraton. We had a great time enjoying the first 30 minutes of the sake tasting while the sake was still perfectly chilled. After that it went downhill.
All the sakes became warm and it ruined the true flavor of the sake’s. I cant believe someone went out of there way to bring in expensive sake only to be ruined by the temperature. Its like fine wine why would you want to drink a $ 500 bottle of opus one at 80 degrees?
Very unprofessionally done. friendly advice would be to at least get ice chilled bucket for all the sake bottles. Ice is free if its hosted at the hotel.

You know you’re in for a rough night when you arrive drunk to an event titled «The Joy of Sake».
Smart ‘ol me, pre-​pre-​gaming at the hotel with Svedka then pre-​gaming with Grey Goose at PF Changs thanks to Roy Y. I was doomed from the start… It was inevitable that the night would end with a hugging session between me and a Marriott Hotel room toilet…
I booked a room at the Courtyard Marriott (thanks to Roy Y. for hooking it up) so I could drink as many different samples of sake my liver would allow me in a night and not have to worry about a DUI. With a hotel room less than 3 blocks from The Joy of Sake, my guard was down and the alcoholic flood gates in my mind swung wide open as I started drowning myself in fermented rice sauce.
The sakes that I tasted all had a black star and a gold star (black meaning available in Japan only and gold meaning it won an award), I didn’t waste my time with middle shelf sake that I could buy at Marukai. I honestly must’ve tried at least 60 different sakes, at about ½ an ounce sample per… that’s at least 30 oz. of sake consumed in 2 hours… think about it this way, fill up a Big Gulp with sake and drink it in 2 hours. I dare you.
The night blurred about halfway through the event and I tried to recover by eating at one of the many awesome food stands, but I was already too far gone. I was just trying to not act a drunk fool and it took every ounce of will power left for me to formulate a sentence that didn’t sound like «I’m dddrrunkk, cheeeee-​hoooooo! raaagee!».
The event itself was awesome, the vendors were knowledgeable about their products and they made sure the sample cups were constantly filled. The lines for the food were never «Eat the Street» crazy and talking to different sake aficionados was the highlight of the night!
Thank goodness this event is only once a year, that gives me just enough time to recover for the next one…
#Yelp 365 — ⁰⁴⁰⁄₃₆₅