Every semester during final exams, Damoah Grill on Chiswick Road receives an impressive influx of clientele. Damoah, a family-run Japanese and Korean restaurant, enjoys a modest and unassuming niche on the corner of Chiswick and Commonwealth Avenue.
On a normal day, only a few patrons share the tables, munching shrimp shumai quietly to the tinkle of soft Asian music. But as finals start wrapping up, the restaurant explodes with the synchronized bang of fists on the table and groups of up to 20 people chanting as they guzzle from glasses. The glasses pound back onto the table. Boston College has invaded Damoah with the sake bomb.
"Sake" in Japanese simply translates to "alcoholic beverage." Sake liquor is made from rice and boasts an especially high alcohol content (18 percent by volume) due to the increased starch digesting enzymes that make more sugars available to the yeast for fermentation. Sake became popular in the United States after World War II when American soldiers in Japan discovered the exotic beverage. During this time, the Japanese were drinking sake warm because of severe war-time rice shortages. The heat of the drink masked the rougher and less pure flavor that the rice substitutes caused. This trend of sake served at body temperature (around 100 degrees Fahrenheit) continues in the U.S. today.
Sake bombing, actually more popular in the U.S. than in Japan, owes part of its popularity to the drama of its consumption. Usually, the drinker places two chopsticks parallel to each other across the top of a bar glass with a shot glass of sake balanced between them. The sake hovers over the beer (usually the classic Japanese brew Sapporo). In a dramatic and synchronized sweep, everyone at the table bangs two fists on the tabletop to knock the sake shot into the glass of beer. Then, they all race to finish the beer, with the submerged sake bobbing inside.
Urban legend claims that the body can absorb alcohol faster when it is heated to body temperature, but no sake drinker can actually verify the scientific backing behind this lore.
2008 Woodie Awards
