Berlin Bar Reviews

Oscar Wilde could not have expressed
the nature of beauty better.

There are plenty of reviews out there for people who want something particular from bars, or want the quick-fix Berlin bar guide. Consider these sporadic-at-best bar reviews to be something more of a slow burn. These are just places I go to and what I think of them.

Zimt und Zunder The best bar in Berlin, bar none. It’s my local, so I would say that. It’s also reasonably cheap, with beer at €2.50 a bottle (500ml). It also has a barmaid that I would go to prison for. Other than her, it’s pretty light on girls, so don’t expect too much action in that regard. The tunes are just what the bar staff wants to hear, and given that they’re pretty well integrated with the clientele, it feels like a cosy but cool front room of a house party you’re crashing. In the six months I’ve been going there, I’ve not heard English from the staff once, and that makes me almost as happy as the barmaid’s voluptuous figure and great norks.

Weekday nights (bar Mondays) can get pretty raucous, and a good way to describe it would be as a young person’s old-man pub. It’s the same crowd in there all the time, and while they’re cliquey as hell, they’re never unpleasant. There’s table tennis, table football and a handful of chess and backgammon sets to keep you entertained. Watch out for pub quiz night – if it’s happening, DO NOT go in. In typical German style, the pub quiz is a sober, not-to-be-fucked-with affair that involves MS Excel documents being projected onto the walls. On these nights (of which I have only seen one so far) you must be silent and respectful of the participants, and whatever you do, don’t you dare have fun.

Meat. Such as may be found in a meat market. Laugh all you
want, but don't pretend you wouldn't.

Monarch

Described by my flatmate, Chris, as an ‘alt meat market’ – solely because he couldn’t bear the thought of picking up a chick in a regular meat market – this is a place to pick up chicks in glorious superficio-colour. Indeed, Chris is now going out with a girl he swapped emails with there (he believes exchanging digits isn’t cool enough, the twat). If he can do it, you can too, trust me, ‘cos he’s the dullest fucker I know.

As meat markets go it sits neatly between the kind of shit-pit goth/rock dive that are common here, and the neon 80’s super-disco-uber-dance-mega-party locations that you kind of assume are here. At €3 a beer (330ml), and €1 entrance fee most nights, it’s not hideously expensive either. Go there, stalk the female toilet queue (yes, that happens here) and get laid, ‘cos you sure as hell didn’t come for the music.

The vanguard of every DJ's wardrobe. It says, simply,
cunt.

Lagari

I don’t have a clue what this place is like at any other time than Sunday evenings – of course here that’s a perfectly legit time to go out and get drunk – but I’d like to. Sunday nights are kind of English nights. In fact, last time I was there, they were dishing out shepherd’s pie. It’s probably the most ex-pat place I’ve been to. Even more so than dedicated ex-pat nights. It has a Parisian jazz club vibe to it, but without all the smelly French people. It has stand-up comedy, in both German and English, as well as live music all night, and various guest improv performers. Better than this, the beer is cheap (€2 for Sternberg (500ml)), and the feeling incredibly homely, which I suppose is because it might as well be a bar in England (albeit very good one).

However, I have something of an issue with this place in that it’s the kind of joint that’s ‘totally down’ with clique. It’s all artsy types and fragile egos, and as such isn’t the kind of place in which it’s easy to fool around and have fun. You’re here to watch the music, goddamit, and if you’re not here to do that or hang around arty types looking cool and discussing philosophy in a beret, or which aggressively priced Japanese fractal T-shirt you’re going to be wearing on next DJ set, there’s little reason to be here. Whilst I wouldn’t normally spit on these people if they were on fire, there is a certain coherence to this assemblage of predictable meat baggery that’s very comforting.

Hangin' out.

Schmittz

Not so much a hang out, as a pre-hang out meeting venue. Handily placed on Tor Strasse to allow for easy access to numerous hot spots in Berlin, this place is really just a hole in which to slowly get drunk and chat nonsense. There’s nothing special about it, bar the convenient location and relatively inexpensive beer (not to mention the proximity to a spatkauf for cheeky jager shots). Well worth finding and knowing for when you need that meet up location that’s going to let you relax without everyone around you telling you how cool Berlin is. Be careful around football time, as it shows all the major matches, and you don’t want to be stuck in that shitstorm.