News & Events
Rocky Aoki ’63 Pens ‘Sake: Water from Heaven’
City Tech hospitality management program graduate Rocky Aoki ‘63 is a former Olympic wrestler and founder of the Benihana of Tokyo restaurant chain after expanding his father’s coffee shop into an acclaimed international Japanese steakhouse. There are now nearly 100 Benihana restaurants worldwide. Aoki is also the proprietor of Haru, of which there are four restaurants in New York City, where he lives.
Aoki’s new book, Sake: Water from Heaven, which he co-authored with Pierre A. Lehu, touches on how he built his father’s small eaterie into one of the world’s best-known restaurant chains. It was all about taking risks, not unlike the risks he regularly took years ago when racing boats and flying balloons.
But the book is mainly about sake, a Japanese alcoholic beverage derived from rice that is rapidly becoming one of the “coolest” international drinks after 2,000 years of popularity in Japan. The current nationwide increase in sake bars and sake-influenced drinks such as the “sake martini” speak to its rising popularity. In fact, there are today thousands of varieties of sake and more than 400 different flavors.
Sake: Water from Heaven explores this relatively unknown beverage
and provides a full background on this still-mysterious product of the
East. With the same zest and appeal he brought to his phenomenally successful
Benihana chain, which entertainingly introduced the world to Japanese
cuisine, Aoki, with this book, extends the same zest and appeal to his
enthusiasm for the joys of sake.
