This Philly Bar Embraces Japanese Craft to Create Incredibly Thoughtful Cocktails

Almanac is an ambitious Japanese-style speakeasy that’s a love letter to all things local and seasonal.
Lead bartender Rob Scott making a drink
Almanac's head bartender Rob ScottPhotograph by Paolo Jay Agbay

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Located above Ogawa Sushi & Kappo, an unassuming omakase restaurant in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood, is a similarly discreet cocktail spot, an apothecary-like bar serving Japanese cocktails and snacks. A host guides you to the second-floor walk-up, where behind a curtain reveals shelves lined with mysterious ingredients in mason jars, two bartenders doing long pours and pulling highballs.

Almanac splashed onto Philadelphia’s cocktail scene in late 2024. The 21-seat cocktail bar above Vy To and Victor Ng’s Ogawa Sushi & Kappo, would become the platform for Slow Drinks’s author Danny Childs to tap into both the American and Japanese bar zeitgeist. Childs is an ethnobotanist and bartender who’s traveled the world sharing his farm-to-glass practices, teaching at-home bartenders and pros how to create versatile, unique drinks.

Childs’s former The Farm & Fisherman Tavern colleague, Rob Scott, was fresh off his first trip to Japan where he saw ginza- and izakaya-style bartending at acclaimed spots like Nayuta in action. Shortly after returning, he got the call to join Almanac as head bartender. There, he learned ginza bartenders were meticulous in craft and formal in service. Izakayas: casual, high-quality cocktails, lively crowds. Almanac is largely a mash-up of both styles. Kismet timing, Scott recalls.

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A view of Almanac's housemade ferments and foraged ingredients.

PAOLO JAY AGBAY

“How do we make a technique-driven, seasonal, ingredient-centered Japanese cocktail bar? What does Japanese seasonality look like in cuisine?” Childs recalls. He modeled Almanac as a culinary program executed through the lens of beverages with inspiration from his book and Japan’s moon cycles. Slow Drinks recipes are roughly planned out by micro-climates and nature, resulting in drinks that fuse foraged, farm-sourced, and fermented ingredients. He saw an opportunity to connect this ethos with ancient Japanese culture, where the lunar calendar and changing seasons are intertwined.

Childs and Scott recognize there’s a growth moment happening across Philly’s hospitality scene right now: How can high-end experiences thrive in a working-class city? Can a cross-cultural cocktail program in Philly attract international and national attention like The World’s 50 Best Bars or James Beard Awards? Is the region's beverage industry poised for the same level of recognition as its culinary scene?

What ties Almanac to Japanese culture, American speakeasy culture, and Ogawa downstairs is the omakase cocktail, notes Scott. The dealer’s choice on the menu prompts guests with the question, “What season would you like your drink to represent for you?” From there, bartenders and servers ask guests how sweet or dry they’d like their drink, whether they want their drink shaken and refreshing or stirred and spirit-forward, and if there are any flavor aversions or dietary restrictions. With a menu that rotates by moon cycle, Almanac bartenders have of-the-moment ingredients to play with for these custom cocktails.

For example, if a guest wants something shaken, refreshing, semi-sweet, and autumnal, with no restrictions on it, Scott might offer up a Penicillin riff by leaning into barrel-aged spirits like apple brandy, Calvados, rum, or cognac and lemon.

“Ours is a little smoky with tartness from citrus and a bite of ginger. I’ll use our honey syrup, shio koji for savory notes, pull back on scotch, and throw in barley shochu in there for earthiness,” Scott explains.

In less than a year, Almanac has scaled up from being a reservation-only spot helmed by one bartender three nights a week to being a walk-in-friendly industry hang open six nights a week, with a growing bar team, Japanese American bartender Chi Yorizumi, who was previously at Philly mainstay, The Franklin Mortgage & Investment Company.

We recently caught up with Childs and Scott to learn how seasonality and locality show up on the menu, and how Almanac is meeting this dynamic moment in drink culture.

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DC: So much of what I and the Japanese do is oriented around seasonal ingredients. We're using nocino from walnuts I harvested last year. The lemongrass we use in our highball is from my backyard. I did a ton of sourcing from Suzuki, a Japanese family farm in Delaware, and Kitazawa Seed Co., an Asian seed purveyor. I planted Japanese mugwort, mitsuba, momotaro tomatoes, and shishito peppers. At Almanac, we ferment our own sodas and kombucha. We make quick applications of koji fermentation for products like shio koji and amazake. We utilize the preservative nature of alcohol to make our own things like tinctures, bitters, liqueurs, amari, aromatized wine and vermouths.

DC: Our motto is we have it until we don't. [Almanac] is very much a pantry approach; the menu changes every two or three weeks. When things get low, we ask, ‘What is a good seasonally-appropriate drink using this ingredient?’ In the winter, is it for something dark and strong or warm? In the spring, is it light, bright, and effervescent? Rob and I will come together and think that a highball would be great, or a Todavía Viva (preserved strawberries, lemon, tequila, and shochu), or it could work well in our “Hey Mami,” an ever-changing umami martini with different fermented ingredients.

RS: A huge part of our program is highballs. They’re a fun carbonated beverage that is lighter, brighter, more effervescent, and fits into the shift in drinking culture where people are really into bubbly, ready-to-drink’s, and canned cocktails. We’re developing more interesting ones here with osmanthus, chrysanthemum, or barley teas, and shochu. We get funky with it. It’s a fun learning curve.

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DC: Ceremonial drink-making is a slower process with so much thought going into sourcing ingredients, manipulating them with integrity and respect, and ultimately concocting something delicious. We use a lot of lower-proof spirits like shochu, fermented kombucha, and ginger beer, so we're able to offer a more sessionable cocktail.

RS: Omotenashi hospitality at Almanac starts when a guest enters the Ogawa lobby on the first floor. A host will greet you, check if you have a reservation before going over house rules for upstairs: No flash photography, no noisy phone calls, don’t play loud videos on your phone, no parties bigger than four. The guest is then provided with an oshibori (a warm towel), water, the menu, and a welcoming sip, which is typically tea or tea-based. We're creating a very specific vibe, which is largely walk-in more than reservations. We try to blend traditional Japanese and modern American bartending: a little higher energy, but you still get a high-quality cocktail.

RS: Kodawari in Japanese is an obsession about continuing to improve your craft. Like craftsmen in Japan, a woodworker who makes one thing his whole life. On my trip to Japan, my friend named the concept of kodawari for me. I knew the concept in my heart, but to hear it given a name was empowering. I'm happy because at Ogawa and Almanac, we have that focus on craft. I feel super lucky here because it’s so rare to have every member of the team share a vision. Everybody's just like, ‘How do we do better?’

DC: Slow Drinks means seasonal cocktail making. I think it’s the next frontier of beverage making and bartending, period. It's infinitely adaptable. [Almanac] is a really cool opportunity to teach people that in a really fun and approachable way through drinks. Not only is it very interesting and engaging for guests, but it also leaves our industry better than we found it.