EBG Rating: 9.2/10

Choice/Quality of Drinks:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Drinks are basic – and in bottles, though there are some independently brewed options outside the usual Carslberg/Tuborg stranglehold. A reasonable, but compact back bar for alternatives.

Style/Décor:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Small one-room candle-lit bar with rich reds, lamps and old wood. A café feel, but worn and sleazy enough it could double as a dive bar.

Atmosphere/Character:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Supremely atmospheric and characterful on another level, you will feel almost like an extra in a film. Sleepy, deeply relaxing afternoons with slow jazz, smoke trails and rustling newspapers gives way to a vibrant evening atmosphere and younger crowd.

Amenities/Events:
❤️❤️❤️
Snacks, smoking permitted newspapers.

Value For Money:
❤️❤️❤️

Description:
Dating from 1917, the bar claims to still be fit with original décor from that era. You’d struggle to argue otherwise as you enter a space of rich reds, lamplights, old paintings and old wood, with its faded splendour lending the place an atmosphere that falls somewhere in between prim literary café and sleazy dive without ever really being either.

Bo-Bi Bar is located opposite Gyldendal’s publishing house with its impressive angular facade comprising the view out on to the street. It is almost part of the bar itself. As a consequence, Bo-bi has traditionally been visited by writers and famous/evocative enough to be used as the location for Christian Braad Thomsen’s 1998 film The Blue Monk.

An environment that belongs to the sound of slow jazz, the mood is so horizontal during the afternoon that sometimes minutes pass between thoughts as you are lulled into a slumber, with the gentle ambience noise of rustling newspapers, adjusting of seats and glasses lifted and replaced.

This is only half the story, as Bo-bi ups the tempo in the evening, and the crowd graduates to a younger one.

Although classed as a Danish ‘brown pub’, Bo-bi feels more distinctive, less of an out and out boozer than most that fall into that category. It is a lost in time café bar with a close to matchless atmosphere.

Drinks are basic and in bottles, though there are some independently brewed options outside the usual Carslberg/Tuborg stranglehold. For snacks, a boiled egg may be brought forth.

Smoking is permitted, they greatly prefer cash payment and use of mobile phones for anything beyond reading is frowned upon.

Like Au Daringman in Brussels, the bar is staffed by a willing middle aged woman with such care and in such a way it feels like the bar and they are connected.

A clear standout destination that cannot be missed in Copenhagen or indeed in Europe, where it belongs in the pantheon with the very best.

(Added December 2024)