East Tokyo brewpub adventure part 4 (Part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here)
I initially had only planned to visit three brewpubs as I didn’t want to overdo it and didn’t want to spend all of my monthly money in one night out and rule out any more places being added to this site for the a while. (Yes, this is today’s sledgehammer subtle hint to ask to donate. The donation button is on the right hand side of the desktop version of the site and if you scroll down on the mobile version, it’s just after the search box). But with a kind of vim and vigour that has recently been completely absent from my life, as the night was coming to its predetermined conclusion I thought what better idea than to head in the opposite direction to home and tick off one more brewery. I thought Romeo Brewery was a newly opened place, but on checking their Instagram I found out they celebrated their second anniversary in January. So that shows how out of touch I am, I guess. In any case it was new to me and I had no idea what to expect. There were some preconceptions given that it sits in the shadow of the Sky Tree, so I was anticipating it being a touristy place. But it seems that I was quite wrong. Here’s what you need to know:
- Medium sized place with a counter for maybe six, tables for 12 and another smaller counter too. Some bare concrete on show as you’d expect, but it didn’t feel as full on Tokyo’s Brooklyn hipster as Pherment did nor was it as swish as Beer Vista. Instead it sits in the comfortable middle ground. I got the seat at the counter nearest the door and perhaps I am falsely remembering this, but if I turned in the right direction and bent at the right angle, I think I could see a bit of the Sky Tree. Could I? Hmmm. I think so.
- 10 taps, all of which were their own beers. Once again, prices were pretty much as expected. (I wonder if prices have began to stabilise a little after recently seeming to be constantly increasing. Maybe world events might be about to change this though…). Beers served in the usual two sizes, US pint and UK half. For the former, prices ranged from ¥1300-¥1500 and for the latter, from ¥850-¥1000. Given the proximity to a major tourist attraction I was quite surprised about this. But maybe Romeo is more ’round the back’ of the Sky Tree. Which is a strange thing to say about a structure this is pretty much round. They also had a beer flight of three 150ml beers of your choice for ¥1680. I went for the flight, and could easily have gone for another flight as there were plenty of things I was interested in drinking. My flight choices were the strawberry sour, Belgian double IPA and black saison. All three were very good! They have their beer menu on their website. You can check it here. (Although today, their website seems to be down). They also have some bottles of their beer in a fridge near the door. As they were similar to the beers they have on tap, I’m presuming they are predominately for take away.
- No cover charge, WiFi, and daytime opening at the weekend. They had an English menu if that’s something you’re looking for. Oh, and food. The food looked good, but it was getting late and I was getting tired so I settled on just having one flight and going home. There were some very tempting smells though, so I’ll eat something next time.
This was maybe the biggest surprise of the little crawl. I think out of the four places, I liked this one the most so I’m glad I decided to add it to the crawl. The beers were really good, which is always the thing I most interested in, but it had a nice feel to it too. I don’t spend a great deal of time in Oshiage, but given that it’s relatively close to the station, I’ll definitely consider getting off the train and making a stop here in the future, probably sooner rather than later.
Japanese breweries in bottles or cans:
Romeo
Opening Hours:
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 17:30-23:00
Saturday, 12:00-23:00
Sunday, 12:00-22:00
Closed Monday and Tuesday
Location/map:
押上 2-12-3, Sumida-ku, Tokyo
Telephone:
03-6381-3477