Crowd was our final stop on our mini eastern Tokyo pub crawl. In spite of it being near a station with a similar name, it’s not that close to Keisei Koiwa Craft Saketen. It was about a 20 minute walk and then one stop on the train from Koiwa to Shin Koiwa. So I guess that all proves that Koiwa is a big place and one that seems to straddle Tokyo ward boundaries as Keisei Koiwa was in Edogawa and Crowd is in Katsushika. My east Tokyo geography isn’t good though, so perhaps I have hugely misrepresented this. Here’s what you need to know:
- Very classic feel to it. Seems to be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and really felt quite different from some of the more recently opened wood and bare concrete places that now are the norm. If there were such a genre of places, I’d put this in the ‘classic small Japanese pub with Craft beer’ genre. Long counter and a few tables for two, probably seating just under 20 in total.
- Only four taps when we visited but has the capacity for maybe a bit more than 10. I guess it’s maybe suffering from a COVID period hangover where pubs that have had their customer numbers plummet and adjusted their selection in response are still not quite back up to speed and full strength on their taplist. In a classic case of ‘you had one thing to do and you messed it up’, I forgot to take a photo of the menu or note down prices. But I have a feeling that they were pretty normal. We had two pints and two small food dishes and it came to ¥3000 so that makes me think the prices were pretty reasonable. They also have a selection of nice Belgian beers in bottles if you have exhausted the tap list or want to go international. I seem to remember they might have had a beer flight but my lack of a photo has made me doubt the accuracy of my memory.
- No smoking, no cover charge, (a little bit but not much) daytime opening, and WiFI. The full set.
I really hope that this post will encourage more people to go to Crowd as it seemed quite quiet when we visited. There is something I really like about these kind of friendly small pubs that you don’t quite get in the larger and louder places that have become kind of standard recently. Now that there are so many places around that portray themselves as independent entities but are actually run by large enterprises or chains, I really enjoy bars that seem to be more of a personal labour of love and want to support them whenever I can. Crowd is only a few minutes walk from Shin Koiwa station and I hope you’ll all stop off there for a beer if you’re passing.
Japanese breweries seen on tap:
Minoh
Fujizakura
Ushi Tora
Y Market
Opening Hours:
Monday-Friday, 17:00-00:00
Saturday & Sunday, 16:00-00:00
Location/Map:
東新小岩 1-3-11, Katsushika-ku, Tokyo
Telephone:
03-6657-7669
Links:
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