This is the newest Tokyo addition to the Craft Beer Market empire and it’s another Beer Boy. Personally, from my limited experience, I think I prefer the actual CBMs rather than the Beer Boys, but another place serving reasonably priced beers is always a good thing. If you’ve been to one Beer Boy, you’ll pretty much know what the score is here, but in case you haven’t, here’s what you need to know.
– Rough and ready decor (as you can see in the picture), which I imagine is intended to give off the vibe of one of those old backstreet food and beer establishments that you often see here in Japan. THE TWIST IS, THIS ONE HAS GOOD BEER! At least that’s how the narrative is supposed to go I guess, but the real twist is the fact that this rough and ready feel has probably been contrived to within an inch of its life and it is situated in a brand spanking new fancy shopping centre. If you can get over this incongruity, you’ll probably have fun here, standing at beer crate tables, drinking some good beer at decent prices. And yes, that’s standing, as unlike the Kichijoji branch, (and apparently like the Nakameguro place, which I haven’t been to), this is a Tachinomi place. There is enough place for perhaps 30 here. Can’t remember if there were seats at the counter and can’t quite tell from the picture, but I guess seating isn’t really the idea here.
– 10 taps, but they miss out on the 10+ taps tag as one of them is a macro. Beers are a mix of Japanese stuff and imports, mainly from the US but with a Belgian and a Scottish beer too when I was there. Beer menu is updated daily on their website so check it out for an idea of what they have. Prices start from ¥480/¥780 for the half and pint respectively and go up to ¥880/¥1280. Unsurprisingly, the lower end is the Japanese guests and the higher is for the imports. Somewhat bizarrely though, their own brewery’s beer falls somewhere in the middle.
– There’s no cover charge, which is nice. There’s daytime opening. And lots of it. And there’s wifi in the shopping centre. It’s no smoking (because it’s in a shopping centre). What else do I usually put in this last bullet point? I can’t remember to be honest. Oh, in case you don’t notice it in the address, it’s in the basement of Parco.
So, in a sentence, it’s alright! The pricing seemed a lot more reasonable than the Kichijoji branch (which I must confess, I’ve only been to once but seemed very expensive not only for a CBM, but for any kind of bar). It’s never going to be somewhere you spend hours in, given that you’ll be standing and that it’s a shopping centre bar. If you can get over the fact that you’re drinking in a shopping centre, this could be a great place for you. The lack of cover charge really helps make it appealing as somewhere you can just pop in to or use to kill an hour whilst you’re waiting for someone in Shibuya. I think I’ll definitely go back, and the fact that they publish their taplist means that I can plan my assault to correspond with the time that they have the best possible beers on. If you’re looking for a wide range of Japanese beers, you’d be better off going to one of their normal branches. But if you’re just looking to have a couple of drinks with a bit of variation on the taplist, it’s definitely worth a go. It’s perfectly good for what it is, but might perhaps lack a bit of character because of its unavoidable limitations.
Japanese breweries on tap when I visited:
Snark
Craftrock Brewing
Ushi Tora
Barbaric
Beer Hearn
Opening Hours:
Daily, 11:00-23:30
Location/map:
PARCO B1, 宇田川町 15-1, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo