April 2024. Sofia.
Night 1, “Pub” 2, after a quick glance at the Russian orthodox church,
the mysterious but stunning wall art that continued across Bulgaria,
and the rather less sacred artwork of what looks like Amy Winehouse vomiting.
Like all the best cities, Sofia was taking a bit of time to get to grips with.
One thing jumped out; the craft bars were incredibly central to the civic and cultural centre.
In the absence of a Bulgarian CAMRA Good Beer Guide (it would only have one entry in it) we stuck to The Great Pubmeister‘s list, with a little bit of Untappd thrown in.
Except that Tap Local wasn’t on Duncan’s list and White Stork had closed, so there must be a fairly fluid scene.
Let’s be honest; none of these little bars with mezzanine and board games are competing with the Hare & Hounds or Fat Cat or Free Press for your affections, and I wish I’d had a Guide to “Scruffy lager pubs”, but I doubt Mrs RM would have joined me on a 40 minute metro journey to find them.
And Tap Local had food as well as two keg beers from Kazan Artizan, a Dark IPA and a stout that were cool and tasty but over-carbonated, the story of craft in a nutshell.
The bar food was astonishingly good, a standard maintained all week.
I only wish I could tell you what it was; something pulled pork something sesame something.
If the staff were fed up of tourists making no attempt to speak Bulgarian it never showed, and I presume they all speak English as the soundtrack was the entire “Out of Time” album, which is OK.
And when that ended, the “Guns of Brixton” prompted the locals outside into a chorus of “Oh-oh, guns of Bricks-ton“,
which was nice.
As was the complementary shot of spirit to finish a meal. A bit like grappa said Mrs RM, who would know.
That would have been the best point to end the night, obviously…
retiredmartin 