Today, a brief entry on Stone in Asagaya. Brief, because it doesn’t really have much of a focus on Japanese beers, but an entry all the same, as it is a great place to go and have a nice beer. Stone’s focus is hoppy beers, and unsurprisingly this means it is skewed towards US imports…
Happy New Year, and here is my first post of 2014, although it actually relates to a visit I made in 2013. Today, a place that I initially had reservations about, for reasons I will explain below, but which is definitely worthy of a place on this blog. The Aldgate in Shibuya is something of…
Ikebukuro is a place I have never had much luck with beer. There are a few places that I have been wanting to check out here for a long time, but events always conspire to frustrate my efforts. Admittedly, making a reservation would normally be enough to sort this out and fairly easy, but yesterday…
Ant n’ Bee is somewhere I have been meaning to go for a long time. Finally I made it there last week. It is a place that has been around for a while now, so is an elder statesman compared to many of the young upstarts that have recently enriched the beer scene here. On…
Straying slightly of the Japanese beer track again today with what I think is the best of the Delirium/Belg Aube group of bars. However, they are all pretty good if you want to drink Belgian beer and certainly nicer than the Delirium Cafes in Belgium. Belgian beer was the beer that first got me drinking…
Back again to Koenji, and this time to Bankan, a small bar on the other side of the train tracks to Bakushu Kobo. Bankan is a nice little bar/restaurant with seating for around 20, a few more seats at the bar and a few seats outside, which unsurprisingly were not that popular in February given…
Another one a bit out of central Toyko, but once again worth the trip. The Chuo/Sobu lines seem to have a lot of good bars along their length. So, Gambrinus in Kokubunji. We combined our visit with a bit of record shopping in the area and got to Gambrinus shortly after opening time. It’s a…
(Quick update, there seems to have been a rebranding perhaps a diversification here. There is now a GBF Bottle Shoppe which apparently has lots of stock in the same location. I don’t know if or how this might have affected the usual running of the bar. Perhaps it has just commandeered part of the room….