Tag Archives: character

U PoutnĂ­ka, Brno

back to Czechia

Vstup branou č.p. 14, Starobrněnská 16/18, 602 00 Brno-stƙed, Czechia
  • Quality and/or choice of drinks –9/10
  • Style and Decor – 8/10
  • Character, Atmosphere and/or Local Life – 9/10
  • Amenities, Events & Community – 6/10
  • Value for Money – 10/10
  • The Pub-Going Factor –  9/10

Czechia excels in very unpretentious pubs devoted to swilling high quality beers of its own making. These pubs are the very definition of down-to-earth (particularly the ones located in cellars), welcoming all comers so long as they wish to experience and uphold this noble mission.

U Poutnika is Brno’s best example, possessing attributes common to those rare standout pubs that tie everything they do and everything they are together to produce ‘genius loci‘, a phrase which refers to that most indefinable and frustratingly hard to pin down thing – a place’s ‘spirit’ – (no, not Becherovka or Slivovitz ) – an accumulated sense of place and purpose that produces that atmosphere most people are seeking when they go out and socialise: vitality and character, usually so elusive to the majority of bars and pubs. The phrase ‘you had one job’ springs to mind whenever I think of some the hapless, and occasionally pretentious soulless holes I’ve stepped into.

Genius loci is a very well-used phrase by Czechs on reviews of their pubs, so it seems appropriate to mention it in reference to U Poutnika, which is as good a pick as any to demonstrate how an otherwise simple place with a look you could barely pick out at an identity parade can be elevated by virtue of its operation and customers, who every day contribute in their own way to the maintenance of a tradition, and who knows, perhaps even one day a legend. Some people may scoff at this, but even cursory research indicates that this place, much as several others has had its very existence threatened by bureaucrats, and therefore anyone who in their own way has patronised a pub, become an advocate, or a regular can fairly be argued to be participating in a peaceful revolt against such nonsense.

U Poutnika enjoys a central location in Brno’s ‘old town’ (largely a bustling and business-like provincial city but with some very pretty areas and buildings too), meaning no special trip-out to the suburbs is required in order to join the young, old and everything in-between who drop by on their nightly ritual. Although the pub may be central, its unassuming position nestled in a side-street arcade seems to provide at least some shelter from passing trade. However, upon your arrival you may notice a throng of people outside (all smoking). It will be quite busy, as Brno itself has very lively nightlife of a kind anyone from a northern city in the UK might be quite familiar with.

From a simple look around at the exterior, with its shopping arcade frontage and rather straggly-looking signs you may be adjusting your expectations downwards by the second, and I wouldn’t blame you if you were a touch tremulous arriving solo. Sod it – you’ve come this far, so why baulk at the last minute? Dive inside!

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The taproom is located right at the front, so if you want a quick beer ‘on the stand’ as they say, find a leaning post and have at it. U Poutnika is lucky enough to boast a “tapster” – invariably a rotund, middle-aged man whose sole job is to attend to the cleaning of glasses, pouring of beers and maintenance of the taps and kegs. Separately the server’s job is to go around tables doing the ordering and delivering of said drinks, but if you’re alone it may be easier and quicker (given how busy U Poutnika is) to approach the tapster directly when you first walk in – not always the most pleasant experience. These chaps can be quite growly and monosyllabic, even in their own language, let alone trying to converse with them in yours, so approach with caution, know your ‘dobry den‘ from your ‘ahoj‘ (the latter reserved for friends and regular acquaintances only) and be clear in your demands.

‘Jedno Pivo, prosim‘ will result in being presented with the house light lager, which is the excellent, criminally under-distributed Poutnik Pehlrimov, (translating to Pehlrimov Pilgrim) a Moravian beer difficult to find in Prague and Brno, let alone anywhere else (forget about tracking it down in the UK). As always in Czechia, light lager is so much more than the thin, gloopy and over-crisp offerings Brits are used to. This beer is poured with a smooth thick head, giving you a correspondingly thicker, smoother drink, and one which is so easy to knock back it becomes virtually irresistible. They do the 12 degrees and the unfiltered equivalent. That’s all – and that’s all that’s required. Try escaping from a pub having had just one half-litre of Poutnik – I haven’t seen it happen yet.

And ‘Czech‘ out the prices (sorry, I had to do that once and I promise never to do so again) – unbelievable! 29 crowns for a half-litre, ie. a pound a pint in a city centre pub, without having to enter into a slum with a tap, or one of Czechia’s notoriously rough and occasionally dodgy ‘Nonstop’ Herna pubs that stay open 24 hours for gambling, chain smoking and putting back of gallons worth of budget lager in a haze of depression. This great value has not escaped the attention of everyone – the pub is name-checked in a 2010 article in The Guardian.

Fuck, we haven’t even sat down yet! Have a glance around the taproom first – there are usually some pub emblems, mascots and ornaments that give a place individuality, and U Poutnika is no different in that respect, but head into the backroom for the sit-down and a chat amongst Brno’s finest.

You’ll find a curved ceiling in the archetypal Czech pivnice style, bench seating around the perimeter and plenty of communal tables, with a yellow ceiling telling tales of the millions of cigarettes smoked in the room and a palpable sense of history reverberating through the echoes and murmurations of friendly conversation going on around you.

Once seated, the server will be round to hand out a slip, and mark your slip for every beer you consume. He works pretty hard considering the almost constant demand for fresh beers – it is no cushy job, and you can tell that by the thickness of forearm and glistening forehead. The drinking goes on between 2pm and midnight – a relatively late closing time in a country with a more conservative attitude in that regard.

As with a lot of the best pubs, the come-one-come-all inclusivity here is what makes it – you can rub shoulders with students, architects, petty philosophers, borderline-vagrants, politicians, quiet pensioners, who may sit there silent for an hour before a conversation topic sparks them into life. Idle chit chat, card games, passionate political discussions, bitter feuds over sporting rivalries, it’s all to be had in places like this where everyone no matter how low or lofty is allowed to express themselves and be at one with each other.

It’s the kind of pub you would make your local minutes after moving into town.

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Bar Pastis, Barcelona

Carrer de Santa MĂČnica, 4, 08001 Barcelona, Spain
  • Quality and/or choice of drinks –6/10
  • Style and Decor – 10/10
  • Character, Atmosphere and/or Local Life – 9/10
  • Amenities, Events & Community – 8/10
  • Value for Money – 7/10
  • The Pub-Going Factor –  9/10

Any cursory research into Barcelona’s bar scene will lead you to the venerable and incredibly dinky-sized Bar Pastis, a staple venue of the Raval district for decades – with very good reason.

You may be concerned the place is over-exposed and  overly touristy – that’s understandable given how often it happens – well don’t worry. Bar Pastis can’t physically contain very many people for a start – secondly, the format of the place acts as an effective filter repelling faint-hearted rubberneckers, mainstream middle class folks and gormless teens almost as soon as they walk in (if they even get that far).

The outside of the bar really looks like nothing special, so much so that you might do a double-take before even trying the door. A late 80s/early 90s era sign in black and white ‘futuristic’ lettering hardly signposts the atmospheric speakeasy inside – just look at it! – but be brave, intrepid traveller, and dive in.

Once entering, and on the – not guaranteed – proviso you’ve managed to secure a comfortable standing or leaning spot, do take a moment to glance around at people entering the bar for the first time; enjoy the shocked and intimidated looks on people’s faces as though they’ve opened the wrong door into something truly disturbing and smily wryly as they reverse back out.

The old geezer running the bar wouldn’t want it any other way – indeed you’ll notice many stickers behind the bar area pointedly directing Erasmus students to an eff marked off.

So what’s this all about then?

Well, despite its diminutive size Bar Pastis could mostly call itself something of a music venue. It seems silly, even then, considering the place most likely fits 25 people in at a push (including any performers) but as true as day, there’s a small stage at the back of the bar that might allow 3 musicians at most, a table by the door that seems to become ever more useless and in the way as the night progresses (you can’t see the stage properly from there) and a few bar stools. If you’re desperate to sit down then prepare to be patient or prepare to leave – it took us around half an hour last time.

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The musical offerings vary between folk and jazz, and my last visit involved a maudlin French folk duo which despite being in Spain seemed perfectly appropriate for the location. Rather than recoiling in disappointment by what we found, the sound of live music was just the ticket as we thrust ourselves inside, and leaned over a few bodies to order some drinks.

Although it is a pastis/absinthe bar, strictly speaking, you’ll find a beer/wine easily enough. These are perfunctory efforts, really, slight concessions to what the bar would really rather sell, and merely passable. In addition to the drinks expect to pay a little surcharge for when there’s music on, though this doesn’t run to much more than a few euro. It’s all done informally by way of your first drinks order, which providing you’re not scared yet and wanting to flee, will prove very good value when the music starts.

The owner Angél has a typical René type look, slick back balding hair, roman nose and paunch, and is very much master of his domain.

While the music is playing you’ll find yourself drifting off into the surroundings which are some of the most crusty, ramshackle and amazing I’ve ever visited. The crimson painted walls of this tiny drinking den ran out of space some time ago, taken up with an unmistakably gothic and ever darkening set of paintings, yellowing newspaper clippings and various cultural ephemera from decades past. There is a slight bordello theme with some vaguely erotic stockings gestures and the centre piece on the ceiling, almost certainly a remnant from a Mardi Gras type festival is a suitably macabre mascot for a bar of rich, unflinching, uncompromising character. None of these items appear counterfeit, but inherited, and as a consequence you feel smothered in its history and the gradual accumulation of its importance.

No matter how many tourists attempt a pilgrimage to Bar Pastis, there is always a core fanbase who could be clearly identified from the tourists, while the transient custom of couples and folk music aficionados is only fitting for a bar of its kind.

Although I could suggest a few changes to the drinks roster and seating situation, it seems almost rude in the circumstances to do so, when so much of the place lavishes you with new things to look at, new music and revelry to enjoy, or that bleary eyed soulful haze at the end of a night. The place has a tendency to stay open into the small hours. Rejoining the street and heading down the relative normalcy of La Rambla (2017 terror attack excepted) feels like you just stepped back from a window into another universe, both real and yet unreal. How many bars come close to this?

It is for this reason Bar Pastis gets such a thumbs up from me. One of those places where an average score on Google fails to tell the true story. It’s brilliant – even if you go there once just to say I was there, good on you. You were there.

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LĂłrien, Palma di Mallorca

…back to Spain
lorien
Carrer de les Caputxines, 5A, 07003 Palma, Illes Balears, Spain
In a city geared up for café culture, tapas, pintxos and wine, the pastime of drinking beer and pub-going currently plays a definite bit-part role in Palma. Going for a night out here generally revolves around visiting various tapas bars on an evening, which are often lively and buzzing but lacking any standout décor and character to distinguish themselves. Indeed, the crowds in those places, the endless snacking and paucity of good beer options become a drawback after a time.
Thankfully Lorien has stepped into the breach, a superb genuine beer pub with a Lord of The Rings theme. This whole notion hangs loosely around the frame of the pub though, think tasteful artwork, motifs and patterns rather than role play and costumes! It isn’t like The Prancing Pony either, although few places are.
The pub tailors itself for an audience who have been starved of choice and quality of beer, stocking a range of Spanish and Mallorcan craft ales on tap along with a healthy supply of beers from more traditional parts of the world. This will come as a refreshing change of speed from the relentlessly uniform options of Estrella or Mahou everywhere else in the city. You’ll be surprised at the length and breadth of the beer menu.
There is a corresponding uptick in price which is hardly surprising given the sheer lack of competition, but given the alternative option is standing around food-munching Mallorcans in corporate tapas bars, or drinking wine in inappropriately intimate cellar bars, it’s worth it.
Furthermore, Lorien succeeds by being a real pub. You will find corner bench seating arranged in a communal, inwardly facing main room – a pub, in essence – and unsurprisingly a rather different crowd of young people than the dress-to-impress crowd in the tapas bars, going for a drink and a chat in a cosy and informal setting.

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The bar staff are almost textbook beer monsters: bald, big beards and big beer guts, and are more than happy to chew over your drinking options. You’ll find English is commonly spoken, as is often a big plus of craft beer places abroad when you’re trying to decipher what to drink, or just to have a friendly conversation.
However, this is more than just a venue for craft beer, there is a real effort made to engender a local drinking spot and community. Thankfully Lorien strikes the balance right between the studious beer contemplation and a friendly community.
Anyone frustrated by the other options and angling for a good beer and a communal pub in Palma must start by making a pilgrimage to Lorien, perhaps meeting your own Lady Galadriel along the way!
There are no two ways about it – if I lived in Palma, Lorien would be my local of choice.
  • Quality and/or choice of drinks – 8/10
  • Style and Decor – 8/10
  • Character, Atmosphere and/or Local Life – 9/10
  • Amenities, Events & Community – 7/10
  • Value for Money – 6/10
  • F: The Pub-Going Factor –  9/10
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SpiĆŒ, WrocƂaw

back to Poland

Spiz

Ratusz 2, 50-106 WrocƂaw, Poland

The history of the ‘Ratskeller’ in central Europe is rich and fascinating, not least because the concept of the main social meeting place being in the epicentre of the town was the signature of medieval towns. Yet for various reasons this has become lost, even countries famed for such traditions, not least Germany. The cities expanded, the places became victims of their own success? Who knows.

Wroclaw has a great deal of crossover culture with Germany, being known as ‘Breslau’ by their neighbours, and along with that, the drinking culture centred in traditional fashion on the city’s extremely large and impressive Rynek. Today, the Ratskeller ‘Spiz’ delivers to modern Poland such an correct feeling representation of the style, it acts as traditional cultural anchor in the city’s otherwise modern and often alternative-edged social scene. Despite having only existed since 1992, it has basically revived a periodically forgotten historical purpose and in a short space of time picked up quite a bit of character to boot.

Upon entering the Spiz cellar, you will discover a Germanic, Gothic and stately subterranean beer hall with its impressive mash tuns, giant barrels, cloistered ceiling and interesting display cabinets, acting as a mini-museum. You can order these straight from the bar which makes a nice change from having to wait for table service. The bar area is a fairly amusingly disorganised affair with servers handling money slightly grouchily and seemingly not fully comfortable with the concept of direct interaction with the general public. Alternatively you can wait for the waiting staff to make an appearance, and these matronly sorts are not to be messed around with. Apparently carrying heavy beers around all day gives you muscles!

Importantly too, Spiz brews what it sells, and yet freakishly it competes with two other breweries also on the square itself – talk about keeping a tradition alive! All Spiz beers are unfiltered and unpasteurised giving them a hard-to-match freshness, and their whole range from the light lagers, yeast beer and honey mead fall somewhere between okay, good and very good.

They are geared towards either hearty winter drinking or refreshing high volume summer drinking and although you may quibble here and there about not hitting a certain level of finesse, their drinks hit a good mark consistently. None of their beers will come close to breaking the bank, even by Polish standards although with it being central it’s not the cheapest place either.

 

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Conversely, there is a huge seating area outside, including an outside bar which on a sunny day becomes the ultimate drinking spot in the city, as one can recline with a beverage and enjoy the sights and sounds of a buzzing and vibrant Rynek. On my last visit the weather was gloriously sunny and although I’m not hugely taken by terrace drinking usually (as often you may as well be anywhere), it hardly gets any better than this. To your left, glance upward to the clock tower of the Ratusz, then straight ahead a line of magnificently restored and individually painted burgher houses, then to your right the join onto the Maly Rynek, which, through depth of field provides a fleeting illusion that this beauty and artistry stretches throughout the city. If you just keep sat there chugging away at the lovely beer, you can convince yourself it does.

A passion for preserved historical features isn’t just borne of an interest and preference in historical architecture, also a yearning for the atmosphere and simplicity of the time. Sat outside spectating on the various forms of life passing by does on a temporal level transport you to a previous era. The Rynek in Wroclaw is terrific and Spiz has the number one location for enjoying it.

If there wasn’t anything else to do in Wroclaw it would be enjoyable in itself to spend your entire time at Spiz. As can be seen by the various reviews, the positive experiences are well founded. However, Wroclaw is a terrific city as I highlighted here on my sister site Undiscovered Europe.

Yes, it’s entirely obvious as a destination and about as alternative as the use of the letter E in the word sentence. The service may not be all that, and it can be very busy at peak hours. Similarly, the TV screens downstairs in the beer hall garishly advertising info about its horrendous looking disco nights do detract from the experience. It needs to be very very good to overcome these – and it is.

Very few pubs will ever take such a short time to embed themselves in the landscape and cultural of such a big city, and they’ve done, by heavens they’ve done it.

  • Quality and/or choice of drinks – 8/10
  • Style and Decor – 8/10
  • Character, Atmosphere and/or Local Life – 9/10
  • Amenities, Events & Community – 8/10
  • Value for Money – 7/10
  • The Pub-Going Factor –  9/10

Update: Since my initial visit in 2016, I returned to Spiz again in 2018 and 2019 to find, thankfully, little had changed except for the addition of a craft beer to their roster, the APA.

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t’Brugs Beertje, Brugge

…back to Belgium

tbrugsebeertje

t’Brug Beertje, Kemelstraat 5, 8000 Brugge, Belgium

The alchemy of what constitutes a good pub is worthy of considerable study, and partly why this site was created.  The Little Bruges Bear is an excellent place to begin.

While there are so very many hundreds of bars and pubs across Europe missing essential ingredients, scrambling in the dark in their search to attract patrons, despite having a reliable formula almost laid out for them, this pub serves to illustrate how simple the task is.

t’Brugs Beertje is a cosy communal venue with the dimensions and confines of a snug brown cafĂ©/pub decorated with wood panelled walls and adorned well selected and stylish bar ephemera. There is a choice of simple wooden seating or slightly more comfortable bench seating if you’re lucky enough to swoop in and claim it. Ask to peruse their enormous menu of Belgian beer, presented in the form of an almanac that takes a good 20 minutes to look through properly and consider a selection of typical Belgian snack options (gouda, biscuits, meat platters, croque monsieur etc) to go with. Just thinking about this while writing is salivating.

Hanging above the bar is a gleaming selection of the various beer glasses each tailored to their specific beer, every single flavour journey mapped out by their brewers right down to the way the beer sits in a glass, tempered to the point of maximising every single potential for an improvement of the experience, telling of a country utterly obsessed with the art of brewing and the pleasure of drinking. There will be a beer for you in this pub, or I’m afraid there is no beer for you.

Service is efficient and attentive, while the prices are 20-30 cents higher than other nearby places, but not punishingly so. This can be offset by choosing a rare beer you’re unlikely to get anywhere else (my suggestion would be to try an Oud Bruin/Flemish Red style, which apart from Rodenbach are less commonly exported to the UK, while curiously, the style hasn’t yet caught on as a craft brewing style despite the proliferation of red ales and sours).

BrugsBeertje_tcm13-9835

The enormous popularity of the place has unfortunately driven locals away apart from a few quiet months in the New Year before Easter. Normally it would earn a mark down for that, as it’s important for a pub to have an original community element, but the place must be given a free pass. The ideal would be for it to contain a healthy mixture of both locals and a few tourists, but the world has taken over Bruges in the last 10 years. In lieu of local life, the shining qualities of the pub, that seem to epitomise everything good about traditional beer drinking in Belgium, compensate adequately.

The pub opens at 5pm and by 5.30 nearly every seat is taken. After that it’s a case of waiting politely at the door and taking your chance to swoop to a seat. Once seated, it’s unlikely you’ll see a reason to leave any time soon. It’s a rare example of a place where I would actually wait for 10-15 minutes to be seated.

The main room has a terrific atmosphere, watching folk come and go, but if that’s not available, the backroom has a lovely down-to-earth feel, like a rambler’s pub full of strangers thrown together in the tangle of a boozy evening. This compensates well for the lack of local characters. Only the matter of being on holiday, in Bruges of all places could distract a visitor from staying there all night, returning at opening time the next day and doing the same. It is the best pub in Bruges and there’s no doubt that this is pub going at its very best.

  • A: Quality and/or choice of drinks – 10/10
  • B: Style and Decor – 10/10
  • C: Character, Atmosphere and/or Local Life – 9/10
  • D: Amenities, Events & Community – 5/10
  • E: Value for Money – 6/10
  • F: The Pub-Going Factor –  10/10
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