From the tiny ant to the elephant: Little Venues Vs. Big Venues

10 years since I jumped from casually seeking out better bars on my travels to actively hunting them for the purposes of guiding you, I’ve visited Europe’s smallest and largest drinking holes, from the world famous to bars even the city’s own residents aren’t aware of.

Their core purpose is the same: hosting somewhere you can socialise with a drink. The experiences, though? Quite different.

In this article we compare the sights, sounds and sensations in big cavernous venues with the experience at compact little bars.

Beer Halls

Something about the best beer halls provide a collegiate atmosphere, akin to belonging to a fraternity, guild or a sports club. Yes, possibly elements of a boarding school refectory too. A strange sense of nostalgia is suffused during your visit to a beer hall, because other than residents of cities such as Cologne or Munich, these are not spaces of a kind adults routinely visit. The mind, always striving for reference points does inevitably drag you back to the last time you were in a hall to eat and drink: school days.

While a beer hall is vast, the sheer quantity of people provides a shared, communal experience that shrinks the space. Interiors are palatial, ceilings sometimes high-vaulted like a church. The scale and spectacle is designed to make you feel like one small element in a tapestry. Some go further in their efforts – not only the oversized beer mugs, which we all know from Bavarian stereotypes (though the beer halls of Nord Rhein-Westphalia with their small Stange glasses will be huffing and puffing at being yet again overshadowed) but in the case of Hofbräuhaus, novelty giant Pretzels that seem to have emerged from a savoury version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Not all beer halls have their indulgent sense of whimsy, but nonetheless feel like a clear departure from the ordinary.

You may be thinking ‘why would I go somewhere to feel small?’ Well, the nature of socialising in a beer hall completes that which could otherwise be isolating and unsatisfying. You’re tempted, urged and compelled by the atmosphere and surroundings to feel part of a satisfying whole. You share large tables and benches with strangers, often making conversation and enjoying the transience. Yours and your acquaintance’s lives overlap for an hour or so before decoupling as you – or they – depart and the experience drifts into the ether. Among a group of friends the experience in a busy beer hall can be the epitome of convivial without feeling insular or cliquey.

Across the room you can spy groups across rows of tables, their subtly different moods and whims – a hall is big enough to absorb swells of laughter and gregariousness without becoming overbearing. Even if that isn’t the case, then there are beer halls such as Augustiner Bräu Mülln in Salzburg that are so big you can simply move to one of their other enormous rooms to escape irritants. There is a shared experience even among people who you will never meet and possibly never even make eye contact with, as their afternoon or evening runs parallel to yours, the echoes and murmurs collected in these secular cathedrals to beer and socialising.

A good beer hall contains layers of patronage – a first time visitor can be rapt by its awesome size and atmosphere, delighted by the novelty of a 1l Maß and indulged, waited hand and foot by ever willing servers (if they’re lucky). A more frequent visitor can enjoy breaking through to first name terms with some of the staff and regulars, a nod and a wink here and there breaking the ice. A regular patron is often endowed with their own shelf space storing their personal Maßkrug – few signs show you’ve ‘made it’ at a German pub more than this. If you haven’t seen these, they range from practical in design to the ornamental kind you’ll have seen in souvenir shops and the display cabinets of provincial museums. The above mentioned Munich beer hall boasts shelf space for 616 and can seat a capacity of 3500. I have been present where the building was more or less at capacity and you could sense the pistons pumping at full speed! You could also sense an operation reaching its zenith, optimally performing the function it was designed for.

Further examples:

Augustiner Stammhaus, Munich

Früh am Dom , Cologne

Radniční sklípek, Liberec

Spiż, Wrocław

Caru’ cu Bere, Bucharest

Pivnice HS, Sarajevo

For many more, jump straight to our Beer Halls section.

Tiny Venues

The flip side to mass socialising.

Large drinking venues are almost always beer halls/brewery taprooms, grand cafés or beer gardens. By contrast, tiny venues are diverse.

These can be microscopic concept bars like the cocktail vendor Backdoor 43 in Milan, one-man shows like mini wine bar Le Volcan in Toulouse, old-fashioned Knajpa type pubs like U Jelinku in Prague (where, ignoring its backroom, most drink na stojáka, on the stand among regulars), drop-in kiosks for shots like A Ginjinha in Lisbon, busy tapas bars like Bodega Carol in Barcelona, singing pubs like In De Karkol in Maastricht or Circus Tavern in Manchester, British micro-pubs like Hop & Vine in Hull, and historical quirks like The Blue Bell in York.

In spite of their diversity – is there a common thread?

I believe so. Small venues can be intimidating – for every agoraphobe there is a claustrophobe – but it’s not just that. The confines of a small bar can feel loaded with obligation, namely to muck in and socialise with staff and strangers.

The dimensions of a small bar bring fixtures and fittings and its clientele into focus – literally. The human eye applies focus up to a distance of six metres. When scanning a larger room your eyes are relaxed. Conversely, everything inside a tiny pub is in focus. Even from this sense alone the experience feels more immediate. As other customers and staff are closer to you, you can sense everything about them more keenly. Their body language, their odour (good or bad), their general attitude is on display, as is yours. This is provocative, or inspiring if you wish to use more positive language. You feel inclined, perhaps even obliged to participate beyond simply ‘being there’.

That feeling is going to produce different responses from different personalities. An extrovert will be in their element. As orders fly back-and-forth across the counter in a tapas bar, the energy in the room lifts conversation, adding vibrancy but a sense of importance. The ritual in the location, the intimacy of the space, often feeling partitioned from the rest of the world all gathers a sense that there’s a specific cool thing happening right here and now, and you’re in amongst it.

An introvert may need some persuading to cross the threshold of these spaces. Fear of being singled out, fear of getting the ritual or the order wrong in some way you can’t perceive but locals can spot a mile off, a language barrier, a lack of personal space. Yet, in the end people are frequently glad they did, like eyeing up an intimidating rollercoaster or theme park ride, then filled with the adrenalin rush and sense of release after taking the plunge. Many I’ve met who I wouldn’t describe as the life and soul of the party ordinarily tell me their favourites have been such places. Perhaps they will never choose them as their locals, but for memorable occasional one-offs where briefly they have stepped outside themselves and their imposed limits.

Tiny venues must by their nature eschew certain formalities. Dining, seating for all, table service, sometimes payment at the end. My view remains that pubs and bars generally improve the more formalities are thrown out of the window, with only a few exceptions where they can genuinely add to a sense of ceremony and fun.

For further examples go to our Tiny Venues section.

After all this, we’ve seen how larger venues use a sense of communality, novelty and ritual to bind customers that could otherwise feel unmoored and anonymous within a shared experience. Noise can bubble over into irritation though and service can at times go missing. By contrast, in a tiny venue everything is direct, there are no hiding places until you face the format square on. If it is a success, keep on plugging away, over time turning the bar into your own little hiding place, with your own gang, as the regulars did before you. The cycle goes on.

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August 27, 2026jackanderton Leave a comment

The Pub Decorum Police are back

The second half of the 20th century saw a gradual democratisation of English pubs. Spaces which had been formally segregated by class and gender (with other informal but profound discrimination too), where speech and activity was carefully parcelled into manageable areas slowly moved to open up. They became places people from different backgrounds shared together. In particular, large new-build post-war pubs represented a pragmatic, practical (if not always aesthetically pleasing) reaction to a society moving in a municipal, community-centred direction with a burgeoning middle class, aspects of which came to fruition in some parts of the country during the 1960s and 1970s.

Relaxation of licensing laws, codes on dress, and ease of bar access casualised pub spaces to a great deal. The umbrella of reasons why people might meet in a pub increased dramatically and with that, the needs of the wider audience became better catered-for. By the end of the century, great progress had been made – even confronting the most difficult and stubborn areas of discrimination – sectarianism, sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia. Arguably this was not just a one-way process: there was a call and response. The presence of different sorts of people in a casual atmosphere engendered a tolerance, first hand evidence that things people feared were not to be as feared, but that they themselves could be enhanced, become better people – a lesson people took away with them into their private lives, attitudes, and personal politics, shaping the country in a different direction. It wasn’t utopia, but it was progress.

There is of course plenty still to do in the face of plenty trying to roll this back. As seen in the decades since, some of that progress has slipped, most notably application of an EHRC code applying to trans people which came into force this week.

The very same week, it comes to our attention that Westminster Council have tabled a recommendation in its new draft licensing policy to ban ordering and drinking at the bar of a pub. Westminster Council includes the area of Soho, which you won’t need me to point out is world famous, internationally acclaimed for its theatre culture and nightlife in the West End. Anyone who has been for a night out in Soho can tell you this would be a profound change. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so…real.

This curiously regressive statement of intent takes the conversation about English pub culture back centuries to the fights of the temperance movement and the influence of the Enlightenment on the rich and powerful up to the Victorian & Edwardian age. Always tempted to see themselves as paragons of virtue, patrician moral grandstanders (often Industrialists, Colonists, sometimes Slavers, not to mention alcoholics, adulterers, gamblers, etc) combined with a church-propagandised working class railing against the abuses of alcohol as seen in their family lives, creating a pincer movement on pubs.

The rest of Northern Europe was not spared. In Sweden, the effect was devastating – losing nearly all its pubs, with alcohol sold on a ration card until the 1950s. Even today, with one exception, every licensed premises must serve food, while outside pubs and restaurants alcohol above 3% abv can only be purchased in a state-run off-license, Systembolaget which operates rather conservative opening hours that Brits might remember from 30 years earlier. Finland too only saw its first licensed pub in Helsinki in the 1970s once it became clear that moving alcohol abuse from pubs into homes didn’t solve the problem.

In England during that period, spaces became more closely controlled and segregated. Lower rent alehouses were stripped of licenses given any opportunity or pretext and there was a push to ‘clean up’ pubs. Local councils even introduced temperance pubs, popular in the North West.

One of the most notable surviving temperance bars is Mr Fitzpatricks.

This bar in Rawtenstall, Lancashire has been serving non-alcoholic drinks since 1899. These days they trade on the novelty factor and there is more of a café atmosphere.

The state itself even opened and ran pubs: an experiment in Carlisle resulting from efforts to tackle poor productivity during World War I and pushed lower alcohol products in efforts to curb excess. (The article is fascinating reading, by the way, so do give it a quick look through.)

Those who had control of activity throughout the late 1800s into the 1900s were always intent on prescribing decorum as a controlling tool. That is to say, how one should dress and act in a certain space. Decorum is now as it is then, largely a tool someone else, usually richer and more powerful than you, to put you in your place. The very presence of a bar separate from a saloon lounge implied that people of different classes could not successfully associate with one another but also that it would be preferable not to try. In the process of opening up pubs, a great amount of damage and vandalism was done to these often magnificent fixtures and fittings – partitions, snugs and smokerooms destroyed along with the overall character of pubs which had been carefully conceived as an intact whole by master craftsmen, but conversely, pubs became more democratic.

Westminster Council is of course, Tory through-and-through. Even today, with the Conservative Party in existential dire straits, the makeup of the council is 32 Conservative and 22 Labour councillors. Old money and highly patrician. The lives, interests and agendas of residents who elected these councillors do not exactly align with the international audience spending money in Soho, in short, the people that London not only attracts but relies upon, not just for its economy but its prestige. At major city level, prestige and the capacity for power projection underpins the investment and talent it can attract and London needs an area like Soho to not just compete but dazzle. For a combination of reasons, Soho’s reputation on that front has been slipping for a while now.

A second factor is the Soho Society who have developed something of a reputation for vetoing incoming investment into pubs and bars, something their homepage manifesto appears to acknowledge with an amusing degree of self-awareness (or should that be insecurity).

Table service is nothing new, however, and not itself any kind of armageddon for pubs. Anyone who has ventured to bars abroad will have found it operating as standard, whether that’s in a German Gaststätte like Brauerei Spezial in Bamberg or a Grand Café like Cirio in Brussels. It’s also extremely common in Czechia down to the most humble pubs. There are certain venues where it sets the tone, like Grand Cafés and Beer Halls, and others where service is so prompt and the atmosphere so casual, like Czechia that it doesn’t detract from the experience. However, a blanket application of this is likely to cause issues.

In English pubs the congregation at a bar, whether you like it or not, represents a cultural practise that people enjoy and even naturally slip into doing in the right spaces. It has never in and of itself created alcohol related problems or disorder. Bar socialising adds to the vibrancy and depth of a pub in subtle ways.

The Rutland Arms, Sheffield and its patrons will soon let you know what they think about your ‘decorum’.

The shape of English pubs recognises a preference for bar socialising with long sweeping bar tops for broad access which, if rendered obsolete may lead to further destruction of original fixtures and fittings if businesses decide a few more tables means more money. Table service may also require pubs to take on more staff, making their business models unviable. It also recalls the dreadful era during Covid where hospitality was forced to pretend that choreographed table service would reduce viral transmission even in tiny bars where tables were centimetres next to one another.

But just as important as all that is to remember that your purpose at the bar, providing you are being civil, is nobody’s business but your own. How dare any tone-policing councillor or their residents in the year 2026 tell you what you are allowed to do, where you are allowed to move, if you are doing no harm?

The working classes descending into debauched anarchy as they chat civilly at the bar at The Vat & Fiddle, Nottingham before a football match.

Thankfully, online reaction to the news from Westminster has been scathing and the Mayor of London quickly announced they were against the move. We can hope that this movement to drag part of England back to the era where ordinary people were treated by their ‘betters’ as animals to be herded, hectored at, forced into formal clothing, put in their place and taught to narrow their speech and their thoughts conclusively fails.

I’m not going to be ‘put in my place’ and neither should you. If there’s a bar you want to stand at and drink in, I stand with you.

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August 6, 2026jackanderton Leave a comment

Anatomy of a Bar District

Think of Europe’s famous nightlife districts. The Reeperbahn. Soho. Kazimierz. District VII. Navigli. They trip off the tongue. Wojciecha Bogusławskiego in the city of Wrocław, Poland 🇵🇱? Not so much!

Wrocław itself suffers from a name Europe and beyond has difficulty with (it’s pronounced Vrots-waff, basically). It’s always a bit of an obstacle when potential visitors aren’t sure how to say the name of a place!

However, substance is what to focus on and in 2016 Wrocław was endowed European Capital of Culture, coincidentally the year of our first visit. The title was richly deserved because Wrocław (Breslau to Germans) has a claim, rather like Brno, Plovdiv, Vilnius, Novi Sad, etc for being one of the most continually overlooked by Western tourists. Even a slew of cheap flights this past decade has only elevated Wrocław to alternative curio. That is beneath the status the city deserves.

There are a plethora of attractions that will easily fill 4-5 days, satisfying all except perhaps beachgoers.

Wrocław is spectacular, from the restored grand Rynek (market square) with tall painted burgher houses and singular Gothic town hall, to the Odra waterways, wrought iron bridges and cathedral island, to Neon Side, a mini-Blade Runner like passage with preserved neon signs. Hosting one of the largest oil paintings you’ll ever see and in Aula Leopoldina a baroque University hall worthy of any of the core Italian cities. A world class Zoo, huge variety of Museums, a Japanese Garden and, if that wasn’t enough, a UNESCO heritage inscription for its Centennial Hall. Even when you arrive by train you are greeted by their impressive neo Gothic station building with its fanciful turrets and crenelations.

On the lead-in eastwards into the main station, Wrocław Główny, locomotives travel along a lengthy viaduct that runs parallel to Wojciecha Bogusławskiego street. It is under those arches that you’ll find 30+ bars and restaurants stretching on and on west of the station.

In the 1840s the train tracks constituted the border of the city, along which was simply a dirt track, but the construction of a raised viaduct 5 metres above the streets wasn’t under way until near the end of the century. The street was then named Friedrichstrasse which became Springerstrasse, both reflecting the large German population that lived in Lower Silesia at the time who moved/were forced out at the end of World War II as part of the redrawing of the Polish borders. Germans had previously co-existed with Poles in the region and in Pomerania. Wojciech Bogusławski, an enlightenment-era theatre director was given the street in his name after World War II. This is fitting because the street is situated very close to the Capitol theatre, one of Wrocław’s landmarks that today’s number 7 tram plays a special jingle for to acknowledge when it passes by, a nice little touch. At this point though, this street was not notable itself other than its position by the tracks.

To illustrate this, here’s a shot from 1989 where, as you will see, the scene looked quite different to today.

If it was someone’s pipe dream to turn this street into a nightlife hub, that’s all it was. This area became notorious for being Wrocław’s red light district and pick up area. However, in the 1990s after the end of the PRL-era, alongside the usual vice-adjacent businesses, bars began to spring up. Most of those originals are today gone, but there are traces of the era: sex shops remain and old stagers like Pociąg from 2004, the tail end of that era.

Some predecessors like Sielanka, fondly remembered, have bitten the dust but there is no sign of decline – quite the opposite. Today, the district continues to boom with new bars and eateries stretching further and further down the viaduct.

The arched interior of each bar and frequent rumbling sound of trains passing overhead give this row of bars a continuity that is extremely unusual. Style-wise, most have used the space well too, with colour and cosiness avoiding the stark and soulless setup that has been the trend of the last ten years.

It’s such a distinctive feature that the capital Warsaw or even Kraków can’t claim anything like it. There many bars around the continent that occupy similar spaces but it’s difficult to think of one area in another European city that has quite exploited a viaduct to quite the same extent.

This article was inspired by experiencing just how difficult it is to even find a bar in provincial Poland cities like Tychy, Tarnowskie Gory and Kalisz. Arriving in Wrocław was like being reintroduced to another side of Europe. Vitality, energy and a connection between people that isn’t limited to work, church-going and family meals. Most visitors to Wrocław seeking nightlife will understandably stick to the old town, the Rynek (market square) and numerous bars around it, but don’t look past this area or you’ll miss a key feature in the city’s – and Europe’s – nightlife culture.

Bars pictured: Cinema Paradiso, Pociąg, Lamus, Swing Bar, Bałagan, Bialy Vilk, Mistrz i Małgorzata

Other bars on the street (at the time of publication): Rusty Rat, Krambambuli, U Augusta, Siwy Dym, Przy Bramie, Czuła jest noc, Odjazd, Western Pub Saloon, Kraft Daily, Soul Train, Garage Pub, Rumbar, Huśtawka, Kuźnia, The Bear/Beer Bar, Zagrywki, Baza

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June 18, 2026jackanderton 1 Comment

Three of The Best: Finger Food in European Bars

I’ll start by throwing a few terms at you:

Pintxos 🇪🇸
Cicchetti 🇮🇹
Jednohubky 🇨🇿

Heard of 1, 2….all 3? Either way, what you need to know is that these cultural practices influence, to differing degrees, the bar scenes where they are popular. In this article we attempt to explain what, how and why.

Pinxtos

Pintxos is a reasonably well-known term across Europe these days. Hailing from the Basque country, pintxos are mini-dishes, finger food ordered to accompany a drink. These are displayed on a counter at the front for you to inspect. They are often unmarked and you will have to inspect them carefully or enquire. The old notion of pintxos where each plate would be pierced with different coloured flags which you collected and paid for at the end is long gone, and we saw this system nowhere in Bilbao, San Sebastian or Vitoria-Gasteiz.

A common drinks order is a glass of red or white wine, or a beer (for a small beer order a zurito (200-250ml) as opposed to a caña which in Bilbao is more like a copa doble serving elsewhere in Spain (300-400ml). Large beer servings (0.5l) are possible, but uncommon. As usual, Vermouth is popular too at specific times of the day and week and bars are known for their differing house preparations. Jerez sherries and other fortified wines feature prominently, which shouldn’t surprise either. Don’t overlook Sidra, which is a common Basque drink poured in elaborate style.

Pintxos culture makes bar surfing quite common, so like the bars of Andalusia it is customary to hop from place to place rather than getting a reservation and remaining somewhere for the evening. Prices remain fair. If we put a price here it would go out of date quickly, but generally speaking you’ll pay similar for a drink as for the pintxo. On Plaza Nueva in Bilbao you have a self-contained bar crawl on the square if you’re feeling particularly unadventurous. If you want to explore the centre little more widely, Bars like Fermín, Basaras and the famous Café Iruña offer a selection from the most humble to the bourgeois and flashy.

Activity at the bar is busy, sometimes frenzied as orders and serving plates are exchanged, and there is a ‘here for a good time, not a long time’ sense of informal social get-together that cuts through class divides too. Spain has a particular knack for bonding people through ritual.

Cicchetti

Popular in the Veneto, Italy, Cicchetti bars do not dominate in the same way as Pintxos in the Basque country (where almost every bar of any kind feels obliged to provide some). They are also popular at more specific times, namely pre-lunch and at “Aperitivo time”, the ritual daily after work get together.

There are certainly similarities in the nature of the offering though and the presentation. Expect croquettes, crostini, meatballs, fried fish usually perched (get it?) on a slice of baguette, or fresh porchetta in a bread bun. Cicchetti incorporates another term, Tramezzini, which are mini-sandwiches normally offered and sold under this wider umbrella.

These can be found in typical bars, but also Osterias. The Osteria inhabits an especially grey area between bar, tavern and restaurant depending on the sensibilities and each business’ target market. They can be casual though, and there, Cicchetti is not uncommon. There are specific Cicchetti bars too where it is the focus, such as La Mandorla and Monte Baldo in Verona and Corte Sconta in Padova. At these places expect a similar informal approach to Basque pintxos bars, however there is often a distinctive refinement in Italy versus the more working class or at least open-ended, democratic Basque locals (give or take a few flashy San Sebastian examples).

Jednohubky

Perhaps the more emerging scene of these three. Outside certain one-offs in Prague and some other cities, Jednohubky is a developing sensation in Brno, Moravia. Popularised by the cult pub U Bláhovky, and now found in many bars elsewhere such as Pivnice U Míče, Pivo & Syn and na dobré cestě.

I find this a particularly interesting development because the Czech hospoda is normally big enough to incorporate a kitchen and with that the usual Czech classics are offered – Goulash, roast pork, Svíčková and so on. However, the smaller Czech pub, the Knajpa may not either have space or wish to turn the venue into a diner. Yet food is a very important aspect of Czech drinking culture and so they do need to offer something interesting to eat.

Over the decades the offering in smaller pubs was provided by the Něco k pivu (something for a beer) menu, with dishes like Hermelin, Utopenec, Tlačenku, Klobasa and occasionally Topinky designed to help the medicine go down and maybe induce another order of beer. No matter how small the pub, you will usually still find this.

Jednohubky is like a further diminutive of this, with little pintxo-like skewers or topped baguette slices (canapé-style), usually dressed with meat & cheese, but commonly also pickles, sometimes herring. The Czechs like a bit of pikantni flavour, acid sharpness and creamy spread. The most popular I have noticed are Ninové koule, blue cheese balls dusted in Hungarian paprika. These fly off the shelves! The ever-popular chlebíček, mini open-faced sandwiches are generally included in the offer too, but you have to be lucky in certain pubs as those will disappear in the space of minutes after being released on sale. Roast beef and horseradish is a popular and delicious combo.

This format works well, particularly in a country where alcohol is drunk in a high liquid volume in comparison with Spain and Italy, while the cost is always kept sensible too.

Unlike the first two, the format does not at all dominate the pub experience, meaning that some excellent pubs and their social scene can be enjoyed without the food element overrunning them.

These aren’t the only three countries with a snack culture but they are three of the most distinctive to twin that with bar going.

English pubs often have pies, rolls and pasties but these are always a little more substantial. Ireland’s toasties, likewise.

French hors d’oeuvres / canapés are possibly the origin of this food format, but in France you won’t generally find those offered in bars as standard.

It’s fair to say German daytime pub culture is very much about hot dinners with little evidence of finger food at bars. Later on, it’s kebabs/falafel after evening drinks rather than finger food grazing. The nearest similar example I can think of is some of the appetiser options like Halve Hahn at Düsseldorf beer halls.

Smørrebrød in Denmark is similar but far less tied to pub culture than any of these.

A footnote for Netherlands where Bitterballen almost singlehandedly constitutes the finger food offering in their brown cafés.

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June 4, 2026jackanderton Leave a comment

In defence of tourists

When I first visited the pub U Prašivky in Letná, Prague 🇨🇿 around 2017, this followed in-depth research into the plentiful but rapidly declining stock of old, battered survivor pubs in the city, as well as scouring recommendations from insiders.

The promise was of a throwback to the 1980s, a time before the revolution, one of unrestrained cheap boozing and with a peculiar format too. The sort tourists don’t know about, let alone to avoid. When I started out my travels I admit I’d have been too scared to walk through the door.

This pub keeps highly unusual hours of 9.30am-9.30pm owing to its origins as a Fourth Grade pub during the Socialist era (known colloquially as Čtyřky) where businesses were graded according to the social status of their clientele. In Prašivka’s case they were popular with bin men coming off their early morning shift and heading for the first Pivo of the day. The hours reflect those work patterns and social rhythms, whilst the atmosphere inside the main room adjacent to the taproom can be so bunker-like, that in mid-June you can emerge at closing time into broad daylight – an odd sensation!

For many years the pub offered two beers, Chotěboř (declining) and Klášter (passable on its day) on tap for as cheap as you will find a beer anywhere in the city. This remains the case. Let’s put this into context. Both those lagers, even now annihilate the likes of British, Croatian, Hungarian, Spanish, Scandinavian lager with their relative complexity, depth and poise. They beat a lot of generic German pils too. They aren’t exactly respected in Czechia though. But for 30 crowns a throw, who’s worried about that? Definitely not the pubs faithful, their štamgasti.

With the advent of Google maps and online resources assisting visitors to Prague on a level unimaginable even in the mid-00s (where visitors were still stumbling around the cobbles clutching a fold-out map), the democratising of information meant the pub began to acquire a different audience, supplementing its motley crew of shift workers, oddballs, alkies, infirm and misfits whose favourite spots at each table are so fixed that it is like wandering on to the set of a film that has never quite reached the point where someone shouts “that’s a wrap!”

The first wave of curious interlopers were local students enticed by the promise of cheap beer, forming a well-recognised union in old tatty boozers of youngsters and grizzlies sharing space. Online wars about Gen Z and so on melt away when you bring these groups together in a good pub.

There is also sporting affiliation. Until a modest 2020-ish clean-up, they had festooned the walls and ceiling with dusty 80s and 90s football memorabilia. It is only a few minutes on tram from Sparta Prague’s ground, and on match days takes on another dimension. The answer to where to drink before/after a game is Here. But despite all this, you’d never call it a footy pub. Fans have their ritual dalliance, often not returning until the next home game a fortnight hence. Not enough for a pub to rely on.

The pub also made some smart moves and began offering changing guest taps from smaller brewers (these days less so, usually leftovers from Lobkowicz group). The offerings of modern craft ale Matuška California and the like for almost base price began to turn a few heads locally, dragging beer aficionados through the door too.

That caused U Prašivky to become known internationally, at least for a niche.

None of this changed the experience overly though. Wild, backwards, charming for it. Breweries like to endow pubs with merchandise. Tablecloths, beer mats, emblems. When the brewery’s beer calendar on the wall here is turned to the next month you might see a vulva. Welcome to Czechia.

Day to day operations have not altered substantially, but it’s the little things you pick up on. The customer service has softened. Originally, I found the servers bracingly hostile, almost annoyed to find their next potential victi….err, I mean customer!- capable of speaking Czech courteously, almost longing for a reason to sling you out. In Prague -outside the biggest tourist traps at least- you’ll normally find servers soften up considerably if they notice you’ve paid respects to their language and can do the verbal back and forth. Today the Prašivka experience has moved on from a genuine fear you might be spat at as your beer is delivered to the point where some of the new staff are pliant and one of them even speaks basic English. That was like the pub had crossed a rubicon. If you’re looking for the rawest possible experience it’s probably no longer at this pub (I’d suggest trying your luck at a private member’s smoking pub like V Koutku if you’re seeking that).

If you’ve come this far you’ll notice I’m finally getting, digestively, to the point. Would it have been better to leave Prašivka to pickle in its own juices, undisturbed? Or is the march of time inevitable and exposure even a positive, securing its future? Perhaps this is an unresolvable conundrum.

I wasn’t either early or late to discover U Prašivky and so even after publishing a bar profile on my guide I note it has taken several years to become a pick for bar explorers on their regular pub roster.

Financial traders advise novices that once they’ve heard about a move it’s already too late to take advantage. Those who jumped on Gamestop once it hit the news probably know that feeling. You wonder whether influencers are already producing videos crowing about this “like, 100% Communist Prague pub for locals dude” that’s actually bending in the breeze. I haven’t searched to find out, I haven’t the heart.

However, for those whose Prague pub experiences are limited to the patrician Old Town beer halls, I suspect Prašivka will still make a strong impression. And anyway, even if it is no longer a diamond in the rough, it may be that the pub itself is just as responsible for that.

They introduced the new beers, they tidied the pub up a little, they’ve discovered how to be civil to customers other than their regulars and they’ve kept themselves relevant. Their pricing also means they need a decent turnover of people to make money and no doubt calculated that their regulars, bless them, are not going to live forever.

It’s a market economy and people can do as they please but surely no-one wants to see a pub of this sort become half-filled with tourists, especially not the kind you find in the Old Town. No-one comes here to listen to American families crass conversations cutting through the room like a razor blade or English lads on tour, the self-awareness free zone of endless banter. The pub probably could do without those lone Chinese guys that come in to places like U Zlatého Tygra and stare at their beer for an hour as if trying to parse an entire culture through the prism of a glass. They already have many places they can go.

Prašivka has been an extreme, colourful example of local life in situ. Like a Van Gogh, there’s something remarkably vivid and beautiful captured in its existence that modern life has yet to destroy. I genuinely regard it as intangible cultural heritage, my pub UNESCO. The fact even this beacon on the hill for Pajzl culture is glacially changing is pause for thought.

But to a point, I don’t see much harm in it settling to being a place where respectful foreigners drop by, remaining in the background, being a tolerated minority and a part of the story.

Over in Vinohrady a few years ago there was a great example of this at V Lucemburské, a similar Čtyřka where we were silently observed by their regulars and for 20 minutes very much felt unwelcome. Then, as we moved to use the toilet one of them asked “Where are you from?” and we got talking to him and to some of the other crowd, who suddenly came to life. That is what a pub is all about, and tourists surely play a part, providing they position themselves properly. We provided the dimension and spark the pub and its regulars were seeking.

Hostility to tourists has peaked in recent years not only for occupying and often dominating some favourite pubs, cafés and social spots but the accompanying effect on prices, housing, crime and the environment. There is no doubt a serious problem to address in cities like Barcelona and Prague on those fronts.

However those legitimate concerns risk sheltering a genuine undercurrent of xenophobia and chauvinism which shouldn’t belong in any cosmopolitan city, as Prague residents themselves hope and believe theirs is. As Prašivka shows, there can be a dialogue so long as respect is duly paid.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

April 10, 2026jackanderton 3 Comments

the madness of bar exploring

After the success in April of a risky but in the end navigable voyage hiking around rural Franconia to far away brewpubs, (including using the always patchy Oberbayern public transport), I must have experienced a surge of confidence, because I upped the stakes in June, relying on a ludicrous number of connections in order to try several very nice looking pubs in the Žďárské vrchy national park in Czechia all in one day. On a Sunday.

Remarkably they were all open with one exception of Hyltn in Oldřiš which opened only at 4pm by which point I’d be at the other side of the region. Still, given the circumstances, 7 out of 8 targets being open seemed too good to miss out on.

En route we encountered a village called Května (blooming flowers) that was genuinely fields of flowers, log cabins, lakes, a mechanical orchestra, Medieval turrets, a village pub run by an incredibly elderly lady, local life and the cheapest half-litre of beer in Czechia.

Below is a look at the day’s itinerary cobbled together with Mapy.cz and Muj Vlak, the state railways app. Spot the number of short changeovers and absolute absence of a backup if anything goes wrong.

Sunday 22nd June

Train – Vranovice (our base) to Brno 08:24-08:48

Train – Brno hl. N to Svitavy – 08:56-09:56

Train – Svitavy to Polička 10:02-10:29

Walk 10 mins walk from station to centre.

Pub #1 – Šenk Nožíře Dobroty, Polička

Train – Polička to Borová u Poličky (NOT Zastavka, the one after) 12:00-12:11

Pub #2 – Roubenka Borova, Borová u Poličky

Run (yes, really…) to Pusta Rybna, 4.9km (A fast walk will take 36 minutes so to catch the bus we’d need to arrive around 1pm, which requires departing at 12:30

Pub #3 – Hostinec Hlučál, Pusta Rybna (who knows how much time we’ll have – have a quick look in)

Bus – Pusta Rybna 842141 bus to Leave at Krizianky dolni konec stop – leaves in the square opposite the pub – 13:08 – 13:20

Bus – Krizianky dolni konec 842140 bus – 13:25 to Nove Mesto na Morave rozc. Kadov (halfway to Nove Mesto, crossroads of Kadov) 13:42

Walk to Kadov – 18 mins – arrive 14:00

Pub #4 – Hostinec U Janečků, Kadov

Bus – Bus 842143 from square opposite pub to Tři Studně – 14:43-14:53

Pub #5 – Krčma na náměstí, Tři Studně

Walk to Hostinec s orchestriónem 8.9km / 5.5 miles – should take about 1hr 20 // 15:45-17:05

Pub #6 – Hostinec s orchestriónem/Hostinec Veselíčko, Veselíčko

Bus 842130 – Veselicko to Žďár nad Sázavou 17:46-17:57 OR 18:22-1835

Walk Exit at Obchodni centrum and walk 6 mins to:

Pub #7 – Süssův hostinec, Žďár nad Sázavou

Train to Brno: 19:33-20:40 or 20:33-21:40

Train to Vranovice later and home.

8 trains, 5 buses, a 5km run and an 8km hike (with a combined 45 minutes of other walking in-between). By the end I’m 7 beers deep with a dying phone battery.

Normally I do these crawls to help guide you to accessible routes, but on this occasion I would advise against it! Not because these pubs don’t deserve a visit – they were lovely.

The pubs were all between good and great and, as a result all of them got on the guide. But I wouldn’t advise trying my route chiefly because it’s something a rather dumb, obsessive and reckless person would do. I needed a bit of luck and got it: superb dry weather, punctual public transport. Nothing snapped, broke or fell out.

But it would only have taken a single mishap for it to turn sour. It was also not possible to spend a good amount of time in a couple of the pubs due to the single and only bus option at Pusta Rybna without which the endeavour would have failed.

This is the bind though – there is limited time, so when the days are long and the forecast is good it suddenly seems reasonable. I wouldn’t bet against trying something similarly daft in future.

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November 5, 2025jackanderton Leave a comment

The soft skills of running a good pub

Let’s take you back to August. It’s a pleasant summer’s evening in Walle, Bremen’s West End, inside the bar Hart Backboard on the corner of the main drag into the city centre. It’s our first time here and we’re enjoying it a lot.

The bar is two-thirds full by 10pm, a nice balance. The ambience is chatty and convivial, there’s a warm timbre to the hubbub murmuring around a room lit with candles, fairy lights and globe lamps each adding flicker, twinkle and glow.

Despite being new to the city and to the bar, service is gracious and welcoming, the drinks order delivered directly without fuss, accompanied by some free salty snacks on the side, a small touch some overlook. Their beer selection is nothing specialist, though perhaps a little above Bremen’s average. A Franziskaner wheat beer from the tap arrives, tasting fresh. This still can be a very enjoyable beer if looked after, well-poured and – important for Hefeweizen – drunk at the right occasion. A warm summer evening is certainly that.

Scanning the room, soaking up the environment, it is clear the place is more than the sum of its parts. The care and love lavished on the place (which is no upscale bar) in order for it to feel lived-in, cosy, a venue with its own identity, somewhere you’d happily spend a longer time in, is palpable. The culmination of hundreds of small choices taken over years, the majority of which have added lustre to its appeal.

It is especially notable that Hart Backboard attracts a broad range of ages and gender without either inoculating itself to the point of blandness or over-trying. The very presence of a diverse audience burnishes it further.

There was no rule-book, no guideline for this business to follow that guaranteed this, instead their success is realised through strong intuition, careful judgement and a desire to please.

At these times it is worth pausing to appreciate the soft skills that have brought this about.

For just as there are ways to improve an experience, there are many more ways to ruin it.

All of us have visited venues which may offer a wall of beers, or a historic interior, or live events 7 days a week, but are let down by the poor quality of hospitality, the lack of any sense of welcome, a sense of churn and listlessness (sometimes pure disinterest, sometimes outright arrogance). The venue can be under or overheated, the music inappropriate for the setting or the acoustics in the room incompatible with having a large number of people in it on top of loud music. In late summer to early Autumn flies gather around kitchens and dishwashers spill over into the pub and are not dealt with, meaning you can be swatting these annoyances away well into winter. Sticky tables and floors in the wrong kind of bar shows a neglect, unloved items that change a pub from that nice “worn-in” feel to purely clapped-out. Bad smells. Staff indiscriminately spraying pink industrial disinfectant on the tables next to you. There can also be a meanness to an operation, lacking any attempt to foster the loyalty that ensures repeat custom. No samples, no deals, no loyalty cards, rules placed everywhere in the case of one notorious British brewery and pub chain. the bar almost acting as a barrier between you and the pub you want to love.

These type of places are unfortunately everywhere.

So, in an era where many are complaining about minimum wage rises affecting hospitality (do hospitality workers not spend their money in pubs?) while simultaneously complaining the same workers are staying at home, there are serious arguments that the perspective and emphasis needs to change, focusing on the power dynamics that disadvantage small independent pubs and the profiteering that burden pubs with expensive overheads. In difficult trading conditions there are also small changes pub owners can make, often costing little to nothing which help give customers a reason to return.

Hart Backboard gets this. So do many others. For the sake of throwing examples around – The Fountain in Leek, Piwna Stopa in Poznan, Nabuchodonosor in Toulouse.

Soft skills & small changes improve your pub or bar’s ambience and its sense of welcome, fostering loyalty; broadening and deepening your audience. Many of the best bar experiences we’ve had and the most successful, thriving businesses we’ve visited have been among the most humble and the most giving.

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October 2, 2025jackanderton Leave a comment

A Weekend in Milan 🇮🇹

Visiting a city for the first time, getting used to its systems and rhythms is always a fun proposition.

Spending a weekend in Milan to -among other things- find its best bars also became an exploration of the city’s culture; its etiquette and formats.

Milan is vast, without many green arteries (only 2 central parks) or visually distinctive neighbourhoods ringing the city centre, other than the canal-lined Navigli. It’s also flat. As a result, rows of apartment blocks stretch onwards as far as the eye can see. It isn’t a walkable city either. Buy a public transport pass, then use everything on wheels or rails you can find in order to get around swiftly.

Outside Navigli, the clear nightlife hub in Milan, the districts of Chinatown, Isola and Porta Venezia contain some clusters of bars you can combine together. The centre? Home to some high-flying, elite cocktail bars or simply famous venues such as Bar Basso (home of the Negroni Sbagliato), Camparino (no prizes for guessing which drink here), and Jamaica whose qualities vary considerably. But honestly, given the size of the centre, interesting, distinctive or superior bars are thin on the ground in Milan’s core. Head instead into the city’s districts which are after all, where ordinary people live.

Milan is not known as a pretty city, so dispel any notions of encountering gleaming ancient stonework or cooing over grand vistas of Cypress-line valleys and streams. Go to Bergamo for that. Nevertheless, Milan is as Italian as anywhere else and fascinating in other ways. The Milanese mindset is functional, adaptable, progressive and work-obsessed. Aperitivo time provides a joyful pause for social space and post-work relaxation. Around golden hour masses congregate, usually on the terrace, to enjoy Aperol Spritz, Campari, Negroni, a bottle of beer or glass of wine with bars offering free snacks and small plates, some increasing the offer to straight out buffets. Because aperitivo is a cultural staple, you’ll find the majority of pubs do not open their doors until 6pm in the evening, with 2am closure pretty standard. Planning for day drinking should be done carefully as a result, because you won’t be able to combine great bar after great bar before 6pm without doing some significant travel and walking.

Italian Tabaccheria culture also provides something you just won’t find in much of Northern Europe. Similar to the French ‘PMU Tabac‘ system, these are places to buy cigs, gamble, but also read the news, grab a beer and a snack and socialise with friends. These vary from the unreconstructed to some real gems which have pivoted to provide good quality modern wares and amenities without losing their soul. This has helped reconnect the younger generation with the old.

Craft Beer, well, you’re generously served in Milan. Brewing is widespread and beer culture occupies a strong minority and point of difference you can’t help but notice. The average offering has been transformed virtually everywhere in the last 15 years, even at the Tabacchi, while stalwarts like the excellent Birrificio Lambrate are complimented by new developments all the time. Be careful not to simply surf from one beer bar with a big tap-list to the next. Firstly, you will miss out on a lot of venues with more good selections that offer much more than a sterile empty taproom, but secondly because you’ll fail to experience the rest of the city’s culture and offerings. Try and dip your toe into something different.

Despite Milan’s endless churn, there are some historic survivors maintaining businesses from the 20th century. The sign of a kindly old lady at the till is both reassuring and slightly worrying to think what may come next. However, some old timer venues such as the wonderful Latteria Carlon appear to be thriving under the wind of being rediscovered. This is now one of the in-crowd places to go, believe it or not.

Milan’s reputation for expense is possibly overstated. I remember as far back as 2008 being charged 4-6 euros for pints of bad lager across Italy. At the time of writing it’s perfectly possible not only to buy good beer at that price in Milan, but get some free food with it at certain times of day. The same applies to wine. You can certainly find bars where you’ll be charged 10 euros a glass without flinching, but you can similarly find Bottega bars like La Coloniale which is pretty central where it’s 5 euros a glass – and not for trash! They offer 20-30 wines by the glass. If anyone speaks English in these places then mine them for good tips and advice!

For cocktails, simply go to Navigli for dozens of options: some on the trashy side, others much more ambitious. We were lucky to get a reservation at the longstanding Backdoor 43, which still claims to be the world’s smallest bar. The owners also run nearby 1930, Iter & Mag Café, just a selection of what’s on offer in this lively district.

Lastly, don’t forget about the kinds of bars that usually fall into the gaps between these different formats and focus. These are the types we try and champion as they always seem to get left off listicles and hype trains. Funky evening spots like Union Club, atmospheric original cafés like La Belle Aurora, out of the way late spots, punk and alternative bars, humble but charming corner cafés.

Final tips: While anyone aged under 40 in Milan seems almost guaranteed to speak excellent English, we’d encourage any visitor to make an effort to converse in some basic Italian and show gratitude, which is just a social lubricant that makes the world go round much more pleasantly here. It’s an expressive culture and a good attitude is frequently paid in kind. As for cash, we didn’t need to pay in cash in a single venue, so unlike Germany and Czechia we are confident enough to say than other than keeping a reserve note in your wallet, do not bother carrying wadges of notes around which could only get lost/stolen.

Milan is very easy to reach and well served by affordable, frequent offerings from a number of airlines and airports across Europe. Although the more distant Bergamo and Malpensa airports are not exactly close by, (which should be factored in when planning a visit), they are a simple connection. In Bergamo’s case it makes a an excuse for a delightful day trip or afternoon there.

May 27, 2025jackanderton Leave a comment

Top 100 Bars in Europe 2025

Happy New Year! This is a bulletin as it’s time once again to celebrate the finest bars in Europe.

If you want to cut to the chase – here it is:

Top 100 Bars In Europe 2025

The Top 100 is displayed with flipboxes – each box can be tapped or scrolled over to reveal the name, location and link to the bar profile.

2024 was a year of dedicated exploring for us, with 251 new additions to our guide. Of those, 21 made the cut inside our new Top 100!

Travel in 2024:

January

France 🇫🇷 Strasbourg, Colmar, Eguisheim, Ribeauville, Seléstat

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Beverley, Walkington, Market Weighton, Manchester, Whalley Range, Halifax, Bradford, Ledsham

Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Edinburgh

February

Finland 🇫🇮 Rovaniemi, Oulu, Tampere, Turku, Helsinki

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Liverpool, Wainstalls, Halifax, Bradford, Sheffield

March

Switzerland 🇨🇭 Basel

Germany 🇩🇪 Freiburg im Breisgau, Aachen

Belgium 🇧🇪 Brussels, Liége

Netherlands 🇳🇱 Maastricht

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Halifax, Bradford, Leeds, Saltaire, Shipley

April

Austria 🇦🇹 Salzburg

Germany 🇩🇪 Passau, Innstadt

Czechia 🇨🇿 Strakonice, Čejetice, Písek, Tábor, Pelhřimov, Humpolec, Prague, Olomouc, Brno, Mikulov na Morave, Znojmo

Slovakia 🇸🇰 Bratislava

May

Spain 🇪🇸 Barcelona, Calella, Girona

June

Spain 🇪🇸 Valencia

France 🇫🇷 Perpignan, Carcassonne, Toulouse

July

Croatia 🇭🇷 Zadar, Šibenik, Split, Trogir

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 London, Tenterden, Ashford, Maidstone, Ambleside

August

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Ely, Norwich, Wymondham, Ribblehead, Leeds, Lincoln

Northern Ireland 🇬🇧🇮🇪 Belfast

September

Croatia 🇭🇷 Zagreb

Slovenia 🇸🇮 Ljubljana, Bled, Kranjska Gora

Austria 🇦🇹 Villach, Klagenfurt

France 🇫🇷 Reims, Epernay, Lille

Czechia 🇨🇿 Ostrava, Frýdek-Místek, Valašské Meziříčí, Ostravice, Frenštát pod Radhoštěm

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 London

October

Germany 🇩🇪 Nuremberg, Windischeschenbach, Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Wiesau, Falkenberg, Bamberg

Czechia 🇨🇿 Brno, Hradec Králové, Prague

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Nottingham, Ockbrook, Long Eaton, Leeds, London

November

Denmark 🇩🇰 Copenhagen

Romania 🇷🇴 Iași

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Whitby, Goldthorpe, Leeds, Nottingham

December

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Carlisle, Sheffield, York, Hull, Guisborough, Ugthorpe, Leeds, Tan Hill

Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Glasgow

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January 5, 2025jackanderton Leave a comment

The lurid appeal of the boozer

The Local’s dive.

Down-to-earth, dog-eared, unvarnished but rarely dull. The ‘hyper-local’ dive bar / boozer / pajzl, or whatever you refer to it in your native tongue may be intimidating at first (sometimes at second, third, etc) but these places can be great fun and an eccentric source of charm.

Hyperlocal?

Seems a fitting term to use for venues where the patrons are not only customers, regulars, family, but stakeholders and guard dogs. You are entering territory where you have been made – accidentally or otherwise – to feel like an outsider! Your best hope is to ingratiate yourself or, failing that, make yourself the smallest target possible, by knowing the necessary pleasantries then minding your business and melting into the scenery.

In smaller venues, this is close to impossible – merely by entering their domain you have announced yourself as a curiosity! Be prepared to be talked to, stared at, joked about. Good humour and a sense of adventure are absolute musts.

What is the appeal of entering a place where your best hope is not to be welcomed but tolerated?

It is not only about drinking where the locals drink, but an environment where you can experience conversation or patter between regulars, music and dance from local performers, unusual rituals and etiquette that may not have been observed before, differences and distinctions between countries and cultures. Perhaps the chance to join in with these.

In a strange way, the absence of pretense in humble surroundings is a breath of fresh air – even when the air itself is thick with fug.

Hyperlocals also often have the benefit of appealing to a cross section of society. When culture is becoming atomised, old and young are mixing less and less – many of these places buck the trend. Sure, this is often brought together through a shared love of low prices – but who cares if it makes that difference?

Now, shall we look at some examples?

The Micro Pub (England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿)

A largely 21^st century development. Changes in planning regulations made it easier for retail/shop space and residential property to be converted into licensed bars, turned into miniature versions of pubs. Micropubs seemed to spring up fastest in Kent and across the South East before becoming common in almost every town of decent size.

It is common for micro-pub owners to be dabbling in their early retirement running a bar as a semi-hobby to keep themselves occupied. The owner’s friends and family are often found by the bar, making them close to living rooms.

Their small size means conversation is overheard, effectively shared which acts as a natural catalyst for cross-chat and speaking with strangers. Often dog friendly which again seems to encourage conversation.

Examples: The Ainsbury, Thackley // Bridge Beers, Stalybridge

Intimidation rating: 2/5 😱😱

Micro-pubs score are relatively low on the intimidation scale – they are usually welcoming, but in some cases you can be drawn into “banter” (or craic / patter if you don’t like that word) where regulars test you out to discover what you’ve got. Sometimes cliquey, and depending on that group and their values, there can be unchecked comments flying around.

Hygiene Rating: 3/5 🧽🧽🧽

A mixed bag. Most are fine – in fact, some can be overly sterilised but, by the same token, some are pretty foul and smelly too. This tends to be guided by the values of the owners and the DIY nature of the business. There is no area manager to come around and tell the staff to sort their shit out.

Eccentricity Rating: 2/5 🥴🥴

As Micro Pubs attempting to ape existing formats (usually craft beer bars, pubs, ale houses), these aren’t the quirkiest of places, but they offer more variety and identity than any chain operations, while their compact size means they will always be more unusual social spaces.

The Tasca/Adega/Ultramarino/Bodega (Portugal 🇵🇹 / Spain 🇪🇸)

Portuguese and Spanish locals have what appears a natural filter screening out tourists and outsiders without seeming like they are even trying. A combination of intimidating format, absence of information to refer to, language barrier, absence of personal space and sometimes boisterous clientele achieves this.

Sometimes it is to their cost – we’ve chatted with some who have complained at lack of outside interest and would prefer to have more footfall.

The Portuguese Tasca or Adega can be as grand as a restaurant (although restaurants have really co-opted what are working class terms), but they are also common to mean a humble snack bar offering small plates alongside glasses of wine or beer. Normally starkly lit with aluminium bar counters and a solitary beer tap. Polaroids and cuttings of old events and highlights pinned behind the bar, old folk perched on bar stools. Families gesticulating wildly over their plates of food.

In Spain, Bodegas, Ultramarinos and Vermuterias are often highly informal places for clutches of people to stand rather than sit, which can be isolating as a solo visitor. There is no alternative but to get stuck in – go to the front, explain what you want. The problem is isn’t obvious what’s for sale. The locals don’t need a menu because they know what’s on offer – these places have been serving the same stuff for decades.

Examples: Alfredo de Portista, Porto / Casa Moreno, Seville / Bodega Fila El Labrador, Valencia

Intimidation rating: 4/5 😱😱😱😱

While service and hospitality is normally willing – most just want to know what you want – the format and etiquette in these places is a maze to navigate, and until you’ve experienced a few dozen it will still feel opaque.

Clientele are not hostile as a rule, but you can encounter times where you feel like an interloper rather than a welcome guest. This is keenly felt in cities with over-tourism. You’ll pick up on that very quickly.

Hygiene Rating: 3/5 🧽🧽🧽

It is certainly common place for Portuguese and Spanish bars to raise an eyebrow when it comes to hygiene. In Andalusia it is not uncommon for leftovers to be ditched onto the floor, which is swept up every hour or so – in theory. Some kitchens and cooks also do not give off the appearance of maintaining the highest or even minimum accepted regulatory standards. That said, often the front of house is kept in pristine condition. Perhaps the gleam off that brushed aluminium has more uses than you’d think.

Eccentricity Rating: 4/5 🥴🥴🥴🥴

Just as you thought you’d cracked these bars, you’ll visit one which changes the format up. Do I sit, do I stand, what the hell is this food I’m looking at? What is everyone else doing? Why are the servers shouting at customers? There’s a danger of a faux-pas at any moment which will announce yourself to the whole bar as the idiot stranger. When you factor in the frequently volatile nature of staff and owners, this is a type of bar that is anything but predictable.

The Pajzl (Czechia 🇨🇿 / Slovakia 🇸🇰)

One of the Kings of this format, there is no sign outside declaring a pub to be a Pajzl (derogatory/endearing term used by Czechs to denote a fun battered, characterful old boozer). Anything from a Hospoda, Hostinec, Restaurace, Krčma, Piváreň, etc can be a pajzl. These are pubs you have to sniff out from a few common themes. Being honest, it takes a while before you will have a satisfactory frame of reference.

The best have a particular glory to them. Luxuriating in their lack of artifice and pretension; their inaction and intransigence a badge of honour. Their appeal is not drawn only from recent nostalgia, but sewn into national folklore, with the historic, long-gone Jedová Chýše (aka The Poison Hut) acquiring a legendary status as a drinking den of iniquity and flamboyant levels of squalor and dilapidation. Even today, certain pubs are labelled as Poison Huts on Google reviews, TripAdvisor, etc.

In a Pajzl you can have fun, forget your worldly cares, place life on pause. They also provide a relief from the sometimes stifling formalities of Czech pubgoing – a total stranger may greet you “Ahoj” (informal) rather than the standard “Dobry den”, the servers can range from down-to-earth cool dudes to the most bone-chillingly icy and unwilling lords of their domain, cries of “ty vole!” are issued back-and-forth. The clientele accommodated in a Pajzl, well, that ranges from the most straight-laced city gents to specimens who you are realistically concerned the skin may slide off their bodies onto the pub floor.

Examples: U Lva, Tábor / V Lucemburské, Prague / U Prašivky, Prague / Na Můstku, Brno

How to spot these? We can’t guarantee it, but we’ve always found that pub windows with circular inset patterns correspond to a certain era of pub building and are a good sign you’ll be treated to a Pajzl.

Intimidation rating: 5/5 😱😱😱😱😱

A choreography of nerve-shredding elements prompt you to “turn back, flee!”. A mass of turning heads at your arrival, the need to greet servers and customers as though you were familiar, then afterwards their stares and growls of reaction that signify No, we have never met (and, frankly, we don’t much like the look of you). A heavy, often clandestine environment of boozing, like intruding on a collective dirty secret.

However, things generally settle down and before long – especially if you are in company, you will blend into the background. Sometimes, if individuals or staff feel you have handled yourself well you will be saluted on your departure or, such as we have experienced on rare occasions, treated to a handshake, almost as a compliment for having the balls to even try to drink in there.

Hygiene Rating: 1/5 🧽

Not exactly known for their fastidiousness when it comes to sanitation or indeed regimes of any sort, there are usually knowing online reviews about whether or not to trust the food in a Pajzl. Occasionally there will be a surprise as a grotty pub gives way to the most spotless of toilets you’ve ever seen, but just as often you’ll be hoping your toilet visit is, let’s just say, brief.

Eccentricity Rating: 4/5 🥴🥴🥴🥴

The cast of characters in a Pajzl is often what makes them so fun, a form of people watching that could become a spectator sport. Wild growls and grunts may emerge from shady characters playing cards, darts or three cushion pool, meanwhile outcasts, oddballs and inbetweeners young and old are forging their place in the world.

The Brunt Værtshus (Denmark 🇩🇰)

The opposite of clean-shaven Scandi values that is portrayed to the rest of the world, the brunt værtshus, or ‘brown pub’ is nothing less than a national phenomenon, basically the default definition of what a traditional pub is in Denmark.

Also going by terms like Vinstue or Bodega (owing to historic alcohol licensing machinations), these pubs show a couple of things – that working class culture is still tightly bound in Denmark, and that Northern Europeans want a warm room, cosy surroundings and alcohol inside them.

Cheap booze, gambling and smoking are the common themes in these pubs, which are usually decked out in retro signage and wood fittings amidst a palette of browns and reds.

For many months of the year, the outside is the enemy in Denmark, and “hygge” culture means much more than a marketing ploy to sell lampshades, coffee and cardigans. It also denotes the sense of belonging, both within a space but among a people. In Denmark that means old and young together, a mixture that makes these pubs sing.

Examples: Diligencen, Funchs Vinstue, Bodega 48 – Copenhagen

Intimidation rating: 2/5 😱😱

For many, the smoke and dingy surroundings may intimidate, and some pubs off the beaten path may result in a few older heads turning, but the usually decent service and an overall tolerant atmosphere will put you at ease.

Hygiene Rating: 3/5 🧽🧽🧽

Nothing shrouded in a plume of cigarette smoke is really going to be clean, is it? All the same, there is usually reasonable effort made to clean surfaces and toilets.

Eccentricity Rating: 2/5 🥴🥴

As with all these bars, the den-like nature of a brunt værtshus pulls in a range of characters that would perhaps be uncomfortable elsewhere. However, this is Denmark, so they aren’t normally as florid or eye-opening – which is not to say such individuals aren’t out there! Often privately-run with the personal touch ensuring more distinction than corporate or chain ownership.

Honourable mentions

If you’re looking for cliquey local life in Germany 🇩🇪 then a village pub like a Gasthof will be your place to go, although they aren’t true dives, so instead find a raucherkneipe (smoking pub) as they can have the right combination of cosy, cliquey, local and unvarnished. The Pilsstube also applies – highly informal, lacking airs and graces even by the direct standards of Germany – and can be particularly intimidating.

In France 🇫🇷, Tabacs, or the Tabac PMU are their closest example – imagine a petrol station store or a newsagents where you’re allowed to drink and gamble. Yeah… great, eh?

Balkans Caffe Bars are too much of a catch-all term to include here, but you will find some that fall into this format, likewise the ‘Bife’ in Serbia 🇷🇸. Smoking and a strong contingent of regulars, locations that will not expect outsiders and a superficial gruffness to service and customers. Similar places can be found in Bulgaria 🇧🇬 and Romania 🇷🇴 but are far less common.

In Poland, the knajpa, old style small pubs with let’s say ‘grown-up’ clientele technically exist but are almost extinct. Likewise in the Baltics, because the neighbourhood/suburban boozer has almost vanished entirely.

Certain Irish 🇮🇪 pubs outside the larger towns and cities operate as grocery or hardware stores and these can be particularly characterful, locals-only venues. Some village pubs or roadside pubs are in such remote areas that they are unused to newcomers and such is the Irish knack of conversation, the ‘outsider experience’ is a guarantee, even a rite of passage.

The Czech 🇨🇿 Vinárna or Hungarian 🇭🇺 Borozó, working class wine-focused pubs, are formats often reserved for the owner, their families and friends these days. These are dying out fast as they are family-run, independent but have no future because they have fallen out of fashion with the younger generation. Hopefully there is time to turn that around, but it seems unlikely. Worth exploring.

Hungary 🇭🇺 also offers a funny term: “késdobáló”, or “knife-thrower”, referring to rough-and-ready pubs which descend into debauchery and beyond.

If you are interested in the many other terms for pubs and bars in Europe why not browse our Glossary?

November 30, 2024jackanderton Leave a comment

The European Bar Guide

Your Guide to Europe's Greatest Pubs & Bars

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