Breakfast in Shibuya: Guinness at On the Corner No. 8 Bear Pond, plus Bottling Technology

Breakfast and beer. Not just any beer, but Guinness!

One Woman was very, very happy to encounter breakfast and Guinness at 10 pm on a Friday night, after a strictly okay concert of pieces by the most famous musician with the least number of pieces people have actually heard.

The breakfast venue: On the Corner No. 8 Bear Pond is a cute café near Shibuya station with a really weird name. Don't ask. I have no idea.

The meal: Power Breakfast. Two eggs fried to perfection, mashed potatoes with melted cheddar cheese, sautéed spinach, roasted chick peas, baked tomato, house sausage, bacon, and a golden slice of generously buttered homemade toast.

The beer: Guinness Extra Stout.
Let me just tell you why the Guinness is such a lovely breakfast bear  beer. Dark roasted grains give the beer its color and as well as a hint of coffee aromas. Guinness has a wonderfully dense, dark, color with just the tinniest hint of a reddish hue. Basically, it's so powerful that a little bite of charred sausages isn't going to overpower it. In terms of taste, unlike whiskey, it's not the high alcohol that cuts through all the gooey breakfast smoke and grease, but the slight acidity of citrus. A whiff of lemon peel and mandarine orange does the job so well. There's also a subtly sweet base of light molasses and marmalade. And then there's a gentle scent of crisp hops that balances all of it out. It's like it was made for breakfast.

Guinness is a beer that serving style affects quite a bit. The can is a marvel of beverage bottling technology and it contains that awesome nitrogen-filled white ball. This device, called the widget, gives Guinness from cans get that thick cappuccino foam.

The widget exposed! (Image from wikipedia)

The cans with widgets hit the markets in the late 1980s. Tap is time consuming but wonderful (love watching the bartender slowly, slowly, filling the glass, watching the top settle). But some experts argue that the nitrogen injecting taps that have been around since 1961 take away from the real flavor a historically true Guinness. I'm sure Guinness on cask is quite dreamy, but what are my chances of finding that 6000 miles away from Dublin?? That leaves the plain old bottle a perfectly respectable candidate.



Musical Pairing: In my post-Cage hours, it's somewhat tempting to pair my breakfast with Cage, but Cartridge Music doesn't exactly make me feel like digging into my heap of breakfast power. So my tribute is to On the Corner No. 8 Bear Pond. Song: Miles Davis, "On the Corner / New York Girl / Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another / Vote for Miles" on On the Corner (1972). It's a much forgotten album from his controversial fusion experiments in the 1970s, but it's pretty funky: delicious grooves, sunny side up, sizzling and all.

Bonus Nutritional Information and Diet Tip: There's a commonly held misconception that Guinness is a really heavy beer, but the only thing weighty about it is the dense color. Other than that, at around 6%, the amount of alcohol in this Irish dry stout is about the same as your average American pale ale (Sierra Nevada), and the calories too--around 160 kcal per 12 ounce bottle. Compare that to something like a Dogfish Head IPA at 294 calories a bottle! Drink Guinness, dieters!