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 21st 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?