CITADEL — Restaurant in Fukuoka

Incredible bar with some very innovative cocktails, amazing atmosphere and fantastic bartenders to boot.

If you love creative cocktails then this is the place to hit up without a doubt (honourable mention for Notime as well)! Some of the cocktails you know are going to be superb from reading the description, whereas others you can’t really imagine what they’ll be like due to how unique the ingredients are, but I’m pleased to say of the 7-8 cocktails I had over 2 visits, all were incredible! My personal favourite was the grunge rock pig, but you can’t go wrong with any of them it seems!

Another really cool thing about this bar is that they have a menu with loads of homemade liqueurs ranging from blue cheese vodka to soba gin and everything in between! You can get a tasting set and choose any 3 for 1800 to drink straight, on the rocks or with a mixer, and the really amazing thing is that you can actually buy small bottles of any of the liqueurs; I got 100ml bottles of sweet potato bourbon and maple/walnut whiskey so I could take them back to Tokyo on the plane! I really love this concept and wish more bars would offer this service as it’s ideal for amateur bartenders like me who try to recreate their favourite cocktails at home but don’t know how (or can’t be bothered) to make the homemade spirit at the bar they visited.

Finally, the bartenders I spoke to, Seiryu and Mao, were both very friendly and welcoming, as well as being great bartenders. This is what sets a great bar apart from a good bar for me; it’s not so difficult to find high quality cocktail bars in Japan, but it can sometimes be tricky to find amazing bartenders who make you feel at home regardless of how many times you’ve been or where you come from. I spoke to them in Japanese but they seemed more than capable of bantering with the customers and explaining the menus/drinks to them in English, so don’t hesitate to stop by if you don’t speak any Japanese.

If you only get the chance to visit one bar in Fukuoka (and especially if you’re a solo traveller like I was) I thoroughly recommend Citadel, you won’t regret it and may even leave with some amazing...

To describe the cocktails as experimental is a harsh understatement. The owner must be pretty close to being a slightly crazy genius and this is meant as a compliment.

The drinks are not very large but then also affordable in price especially given their exotic nature. This allows to try a little more, which is very good.

Why do I still not give 5 stars? The menu makes - in a very polite way - clear that you cannot order 1 drink and than hold on to that for 2 hours. This is totally fine in Japan where restaurants and bars often have very few seats and depend on customers actually consuming and I agree to that concept because it makes these tiny, cosy places possible.

But first, this bar has space for more guests and second, our table was monitored in a way that I did not even see in places with less than half the space. When I drank the last sip of my first drink and the glas touched down on the table the waitress asked in exactly that second what else we would like to have while the others still had something left. We constantly felt a certain push to either continue to order or leave.

This left an unfortunate shade on an experience that could have been pretty close to perfect else. As I said, I understand and appreciate the concept of the small places in this country. But it was definitely a little over the top in this bar.

I still recommend to drop in, because the owner created cocktails you will not find anywhere else and he is a very nice and open...

Excellent bar! Felt like there was a hundred home made infused liqueurs, and you can even purchase to take home! The very impressive part is that they take really unique savory flavors to create cocktails too. Ex. Green curry or iced butter. As patrons arrived, it was getting packed and I noticed the espresso martini was most ordered. I had the ice butter rum coffee and it really did not disappoint. 2nd drink was the green curry drink which is worth trying to experience such a unique flavor,p and I ended with Dill Thunder, very refreshing. If I could, I would’ve kept trying other drinks and asked if they were open next day (Sunday) but they are closed.

Every bartender was super friendly and all speak English. Owner was also there and runs a tight ship at this bar. Definitely recommended to anyone going...