Now Pouring: Papaya King and Salt + Charcoal

Congos to two restaurants that are now rocking liquor licenses. The first, Papaya King, opened sans booze last year on St. Marks Place but is now offering 12-ounce cans of Heineken Light and Brooklyn Lager, with a wider selection to come. Beer will be sold till 11pm, which means this’ll be a decent place to stop in for a round of vintage video gaming if the ones across the street at the new Barcade are ocupado.

Still more exciting: Salt + Charcoal, which soft-opened late last month, celebrated its grand opening on Friday. A tipster tells us that partner Kei Sugimoto and chef Jiro Iida, previously of Yakitori Totto’s sister restaurant Aburiya-Kinnosuke, took a hammer to a wooden sake barrel and smashed the lid open, to the delight of the friends and fam that got to drink from it.

The ambitious Williamsburg izakaya is now serving up an impressive array of sake, beer, wine, shochu, and cocktails featuring exotic ingredients such as chestnut-infused armagnac, yuzu juice, and lava salt. It’s also offering multiple varieties of chu-hai, the mixture of shochu, soda water, and juice (or in a couple of cases here, tea) that’s served in canned form in Tokyo vending machines.

Have a look at Salt + Charcoal’s food and drink menus. Kampai!