Post by Mothy
I was happy to discover a new beer bar in Kawagoe that opened in August. I’ve been working in the city for about 10 years now, and the pickings have been slim in terms of getting a craft beer, so as soon as I heard about the place I rushed over after work one day to try it out. It’s called Entrance to Beer NOVICE. But at the entrance on the second floor the sign just says Novice. It is conveniently located about a five minute walk from Kawagoe station, and if you spend a day checking out the sights of the old town there, it is an easy stop to make after that. The outside of the building is a bit lacking in signage, but it wasn’t hard to find, though I’m giving only an estimate of five minutes from the station because I did miss it at first so it took me about 10 minutes to get there. But I’m thinking it should have taken me five minutes. I liked the layout of the interior. It’s a small space, but it didn’t feel cramped or tight as they kept the decorations sparse and didn’t try to cram more seating than could fit comfortably. There is table seating for 12 and bar seating for six. I sat at the bar and enjoyed a nice conversation with the friendly staff.
I feel like the beer situation could be a draw or could keep people away, depending on their personal preferences. First, they serve Saitama beer only. And while Saitama breweries have improved over the years, it still makes it likely that one of the beers on tap at any time should probably be avoided. But at the same time, I do like catering to local businesses, and there certainly are a number of good Saitama breweries out there which deserve being featured in this way. Second, their size situation is a bit odd. They only have two sizes, a small at 150ml and a medium at 300ml. The lack of a pint, or anything even close to it, was a bit surprising to me and an odd choice, I thought. But I guess it has its own advantages. It made it easy to try all five taps of beer without getting in trouble, alcohol-wise. They also have a variety of bottles and cans from Saitama brewers you can choose from. The food menu looked quite tasty and the one thing I tried was quite good, I thought. His speciality, if I understood correctly, is beer pairings. So each beer on tap had a recommended food item with it. I find a lot of places like this start out with an overly ambitious menu and then as reality hits they start to pair it down, but as of this writing it is a pretty great menu for a place of that size, with a variety of different foods. They have free Wi-Fi, which I think is pretty normal at this point, but I point it out because it was written clearly on the menu so you don’t even need to ask about it. The prices on the beers were ¥550 on the small, ¥880 on the medium. They also had a tasting set consisting of three smalls for ¥1,490.
Japanese breweries on tap when I visited:
Danchi Kitchen
Nutori
Carvaan
Williams
Hoshino
Opening Hours:
Monday, 17:00-21:00
Tuesday-Sunday, 17:00-00:00
Location/map:
脇田町27−３ PONOビル 2階-B, Kawagoe-shi, Saitama-ken
Telephone:
049-236-3161
Links:
Instagram