Holly Graham, Tokyo Confidential

Tokyo Confidential - Holly Graham 2 (© Millie Tang)

Chaos is Holly Graham’s favourite word. That’s plain to see if you’ve ever attended one of her takeovers around the world, where you might find her wielding a tequila-filled Pikachu water blaster, or smashing a row of cocktail-filled sugar glasses. But it’s just as essential when operating a diverse space like Tokyo Confidential; and generally maintaining a serious commitment to bringing some levity back to cocktail bars. It's, ultimately, an indispensable competent of Graham's approach to hospitality

“I think somewhere along the way, we lost the art of fun,” she says, although there’s a considered side to the chaos too. “When I do guest shifts I always respectfully say to people, ‘Can I jump on top of your bar? Can I use my water blaster to blast tequila in people's faces?’ Don’t think, when there are pictures of me getting on top of bars, I'm just like, ‘Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me.’ Yes, I'll put Rage Against the Machine on, but I've asked if I can be on top of that bar,” she says.

It is, she explains, a kind of respectful, controlled chaos, and it extends to aspects of hospitality such as reading the room and giving people what they want. This is particularly relevant at her bar in Tokyo, located as it is near a number of embassies, resulting in a diverse crowd of expats, alongside both locals and tourists – a complex, multicultural room to read.

The bar, approaching its second birthday, deliberately offers something distinctly different. “Japan has an incredible, well-established bar scene, but it's a very set style. I'm not a quiet person. If I'm going to go somewhere, I'm going to make noise,” she says. “It's not about saying anything needs to change. It was about saying, respectfully, that I wanted to add this ingredient to the cocktail that is Tokyo.”

The original concept for the bar – Tokyo House Party – was a reimagining of the bar that Graham and her husband, who also works in hospitality, built at home during the Covid pandemic. This evolved into the idea of a confidential place, where guests could be themselves. “Maybe you have to be this stiff, suited and booted person in the office all day, and then you come to the bar and shed all that.”

The result is a stark contrast with much of the Tokyo bar scene. “One of my best memories was when we opened our doors for the first time, and it was mostly Japanese people, and their faces lit up, because they’d never seen anything like it. It was joy. It was relief,” she remembers.

That interior is a contrast between minimalist Japanese decor and what Graham describes as “bright, crazy trinkets”, including her collection of lucky cats, which are also the theme of the current menu. Here, a balance is struck between simple, flavour-led cocktails and more theatrical serves, such as a drink served tableside from an old-school ketchup bottle. There’s also a focus on using uncommon Japanese ingredients – think Okinawan spirit awamori or unfiltered sake doburoku – and providing a little education in the process.

It’s all secondary to the vibe though. “I like to say that Tokyo Confidential is like choose your own adventure – drink what you want. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable. The drinks are a bit secondary to that.”

Tokyo Confidential - Cheung Fun Old Fashioned 1 (© Millie Tang)

A master in showmanship, no doubt, and hospitality too, but Graham is also well versed in another element of the industry – drinks journalism.

Initial plans to work as a producer and scriptwriter in London having been foiled by the financial crisis of 2008, Graham began to travel, teaching English along the way. After time in rural Thailand, followed by Seoul, she fell in love with Hong Kong, and ended up living there for a decade. Here, she combined her love of both F&B and writing to begin a career in journalism, eventually landing a job at Time Out.

“It was a dream job – I got to write, and I got to eat. I called myself the not-so-starving starving artist, because I was earning fuck all, but eating at Michelin-starred restaurants,” she remembers. All the while, she was becoming more immersed in the city’s bar scene, including pulling the occasional shift.

Graham went on to be the magazine’s food and drink editor, but over time the publishing industry changed, becoming more focused on SEO and listicles than the first-person reviews that were her stock in trade, and with significantly smaller teams too. On the day she quit, she went directly to celebrated Hong Kong bar The Old Man for a drink, where co-founder Agung Prabowo asked her what she planned to do next. “I don't know. Do you want to give me a job?” she asked.

What followed was a whirlwind few years in which The Old Man was named number one on the Asia's 50 Best Bars list in 2019. Meanwhile, Graham also began working for Drink Magazine Asia, and published a book, Cocktails of Asia, in 2022.

When she moved to Japan to open a bar of her own, she felt the support of those she’s been writing about all these years. “I'm very fortunate that I’ve spent a lot of my career celebrating everyone else, and being passionate about putting Asia on the map. As a journalist, it's hard for the people that we support to support us, and when I opened the bar, people had a way to do that.”

Her way with words has its practical uses at Tokyo Confidential too. “Recently a customer was like, ‘This menu is really well written.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s like it was written by a writer…’.”.

Tokyo Confidential - Dead or Alive 1 (© Thomas Shagin) 

Since opening in Tokyo, Graham and her team have since opened an additional site, Niseko Confidential, in Hokkaido in the north of Japan. The seasonal site offers visitors to the ski resort the same playful approach as Tokyo Confidential, but with a distinct concept and drinks, and this time with a restaurant component too.

For its second season starting in December, Niseko Confidential is joined by the new Tepache, a celebration of agave spirits accompanied by modern Mexican food. “It's a lot of people just on ski holidays wanting to have fun, but we're hoping to educate them a little bit, without getting too nerdy – maybe just be their gateway into agave.”

Meanwhile, there’s plenty more in the pipeline. Work has begun on her second book, a follow up to the first that will focus on the bartenders of Asia. She has a role with Brown-Forman too. And then there’s the travel and takeover schedule that’s become so much a part of the cocktail bar scene in recent years.

“I’m not a homebody. I’m built for the road, always champing at the bit to get out there,” she says.

All in the name of spreading her brand of controlled chaos further afield and bringing some fun back into the bar. In her own words: “I hope that maybe I'm one of the pioneers of what I like to call silly shit.”