Time Machine
Get drunk on movies at this student hangout in Takadanobaba

Photo courtesy of Castillo

Ever imagined condensing A Clockwork Orange into a glass? The result is sweeter than you’d expect a liquid mimicking Kubrick’s production to be, but thankfully has none of the sociopathic aftertaste. The Cassis-based drink is just one among two pages of movie themed Cinematic Cocktails on the menu at Time Machine, a Takadanobaba dive bar we were lucky enough to stumble upon recently.

Reading a menu is usually a functional part of the bar experience, but at Time Machine we found it surprisingly entertaining. The cover sports a decidedly DeLorean-esque car, wheels tucked in, coasting into a sunset. Open it up and have a look through the list, and depending on your mood, you can drink anything from the What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Midori melon liqueur and grapefruit juice) to the ET (Crème de Apricot, apple liqueur, grapefruit juice and grenadine). Reading over the titles and ingredients at this place is almost as much fun as trying them. Almost.

In addition to the Cinematic Cocktails (all priced at ¥1,000), there is a page of Place Name Cocktails, from Chicago to Warsaw (both ¥1,000), and two pages of Original Cocktails (all ¥945). The menu also takes creative license with more than the drink names by designating prospective drinkers. “For lady” is written after most items, and “For everybody” after a few others. Although male patrons might seem overlooked at first, a shooter called “See You in Hell” is recommended “For the challenger and outlaw.” We assume that includes men.

A variety of bottled beers like Bud Light, Coors, Heineken, Corona and Yebisu are available, and Carlsberg and Guinness are on tap. All are ¥800 or less, which must appeal to the area’s heavy student population.

Time Machine’s food menu includes a host of Italian dishes, all with helpful English descriptions. Excluding the pizzas (¥1,000-¥1,200), each costs less than ¥1,000. We highly recommend the gnocchi with cream sauce—it’s so good you’ll want to travel back and forth in time between when you started and when you finished, creating some sort of eternal, gnocchi-fuelled time-space continuum.

The food and drinks at Time Machine more than justify a visit. But aside from the bar’s name, there’s not a lot about its atmosphere that evokes the feeling of traveling between dimensions. Inside, the scientific mechanisms you’d assume necessary for time travel—lasers, buttons, goggles—have been swapped for a bunch of neon beer signs, some decorative dartboards and a pool table. But Time Machine does have a lengthy bar counter and ample seating space, which perhaps serves to remind people of an age when Tokyo was less crowded and more comfortable.

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