Beijing Boyce

In the latest installment of the watering holes series, Alex Lopez gives his top five places to grab a drink in Beijing. Lopez is a self-described local music lover, hutong runner, and dive bar connoisseur. He works in brand licensing, is a student of Chinese, and moonlights as “religious adviser” to the infamous Beijing Full Moon Hash. Here, in no particular order, are his top five bars…

Lydia’s Manor Café (map): My favorite hole-in-the-wall. Lydia, the very friendly (and funny) manager, runs a nice little Italian joint south of Lama Temple. The pizza isn’t the most authentic in Beijing, but it’s flavorful and goes well with the… here it comes… micro-brewed light and dark beers. The micro brews are tasty (I like the dark) and go for 10 kuai per pint. You really can’t beat that.

Kokomo (map): Best open air dancing in Beijing, period. No cover, unpretentious, and casual enough to really let it all out and have fun. I especially recommend Friday nights with DJ Andrés. These can go quite late.

Reef Bar (map): Best beer bar on Nanluoguxiang. There’s a big fridge full of imported brews, and the Tsingtao is still only 10 kuai for after your taste buds are too drunk to know the difference. Very popular with young locals, and a great place to meet non-expat friends.

The Smugglers (map): I maintain that Yanjing in stubby bottles is the best tasting domestic beer. Smugglers sells these for 15 kuai per pair. Not only the best value in Sanlitun, but also the only dive with the balls to break the Tsingtao stranglehold on the Beijing bar scene. Usually my first or last bar of the night.

Jiangjinjiu Live (map): Beijing lacks a truly stellar live music venue, but Jiangjinjiu is just about as good as it gets. Live folk acts Thursday through Sunday, usually without a cover. If it gets too hot inside, you can relax outside in the shadow of the Drum Tower and Bell Tower.

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Top fives:

• Elyse Ribbons
• Cam Macmurchy
• Brandon Chemers
• Jon, Jackson, Richard, Adam & Andy of RandomK(e)
• Andrew Schorr & Ellis Rahhal
• Pete Demola
• Shane Crombie
• Ben Shaw
• Kaiser Kuo
• Bjorn Stabell
• Phoebe Wong
• Diane Fermin
• Badr Benjelloun
• Elisabeth Tchoudjinoff & Katrina Arndt
• Paul Adkins
• Chandler Jurinka
• Kevin Shen
• Steven Schwankert

Earlier today I explained why Nanluoguxiang is earning a bigger chunk of my nightlife budget. That spend trend continued yesterday as BeijingDaze and I headed there for a few drinks.

12SQM: We started at the self-proclaimed smallest bar in the city and found it – with eight people inside – fairly busy. I ordered a Black Russian while BD went for a White Russian (RMB30 each). He prefers to have the Kahlua poured in first so it can settle at the bottom, while bartender Joseph says his regulars like to have it mixed. (Frankly, I prefer Coopers Pale Ale to both.) By the way, for a bar of its size, 12SQM offers a big selection of single malts.

Passby Bar: We passed by this landmark but it deserves a shout for its house pies, especially the Hutong pizza, which comes with roast lamb on top.

Utopia: Another pass by, but its worth mentioning that though one of the decor highlights is ballpoint pen graffiti on white brick walls, this place often draws a crowd and offers an excellent beer selection.

Sandglass: Yet another pass by, though I stopped here last week with fellow bloggers and ended up drinking German Lowenbrau and Spanish Mahou, both at RMB35 per bottle. We managed to amass a bill of over RMB1000 – its always those flaming shooters for the birthday boy or girl that do it. This is a place to drink and chat, so much so said one in our group that bringing a laptop and surfing the Web is Verboten.

Fish Nation: “They have the cheapest cider in Beijing,” said BD, but then we had to shift to past tense as we found the place sold out of Woodpecker (RMB20), though it had Strongbow (RMB35). Our White Russians were tiny, about one-third normal size, and around RMB30 at that. We would have been better off ordering the Brooklyn, Rogue, Kona, or other craft beers for the same price. The fish and chips (RMB49) were fine, coming with a lone piece of battered fish, while BD found the onion “marmalade” pizza (RMB38), topped with caramelized onions, OK (I thought it too sweet). He reminisced about watching the Olympics opening ceremony fireworks from Fish Nation’s rooftop while I marveled that not even two months have passed since that day – it seems so much longer.

Treehouse: We found this bar down an alley from July’s (keep going past Super Box). Many NLGX places are hard to distinguish from each other on initial glance, since they tend to have similar facades, the wooden furniture, the shelf of entry-level brand-name booze behind the bar, and so on, but for those looking to get away from the bar street proper, this place at least offers isolation.

Reef Bar: Ever since The Rickshaw Rally last October, I have liked this place. It has a decent number of Whiskies, starting with Grant’s (RMB15 per shot) and Jameson (RMB25 per shot), and beers that range from Tsingtao (RMB10) to more than a dozen Belgian and German selections (RMB30 and up). There is also an extensive cocktail and shooter menu.

The bar proper takes up about a quarter of the place, with the remaining space dedicated to five bar stools and five pairs of facing sofas. The crowd is local, and seems like a regular one at that, and the bar staff is attentive. BD stuck to his White Russion regimen and found this one pretty good.

Guitar Bar: A good crowd on hand to watch a pair of guitarists play. With few seats available and a bit too much noise to make conversation possible, we continued on.

“Ten kuai” bar: This long, narrow, and grungy place felt somewhat like an abandoned house converted into a bar and evoked the spirit of the original Nanjie and Kai Club. The main feature is a long bar faced by about 20 stools and, behind these, small high tables and chairs. People played dice games in a room in the back. The white walls are dotted with enlarged photos, music and movie posters, and the graffiti of a thousand patrons. The bar had a fair-sized crowd and kudos to the lone bartender who zipped about and made sure everyone had drinks.

Speaking of drinks, the menu lists about 20 cocktails, 15 shooters, and Tsingtao at 10 kuai, with another 15 choices at 20 kuai. I had a Black Dog (tequila, Coke, and lemon) while Badr stuck with the White Russians, finding this one a bit too milky.

Boheme: Save for the wood floor, this place looks like a big garage or storage room converted to a bar, with sofas covered with red drop cloths and walls bare save for a few decorations – sketches, a Dogs Playing Poker poster, and a Chinese flag with dozens of Mao pins. The most spacious place of the night, I nevertheless found it a bit grungy. The White Russian research continued, with BD finding this one (RMB25) better than Ten’s but worse than Reef’s. (We are going to need a scorecard here.)

Salud: We immediately indulged in the homemade rums – mango and anise, banana and honey, ginger, and (a freebie!) the special spicy blend (which includes Tabasco). This place consistently offers good times with its generally laid-back patrons, friendly staff, rums, and ample seating options (bar, table, and loft). I’ll write a more detailed post about Salud soon, but on this night, it took top spot as our favorite stop, with the runners up being Reef Bar and the “Ten Kuai” bar.

When I dropped into The Rickshaw last Friday morning to watch the Chicago Cubs – Arizona Diamondbacks game, I didn’t imagine that 24 hours later I would be blogging live about nearly 20 foreigner-driven three-wheeled “rickshaws” racing around the Houhai area on a pub crawl. (Then again, I didn’t imagine the Cubs would get swept and extend their failure to win the World Series to 99 years, but I digress.)

I blogged six times about the event on Saturday (see all of the posts here). Now that the event is a few days behind, my overwhelming memory is of the many locals, from bar owners and employees to bystanders, who seemed to have had nearly as much fun as the participants. From taking photos of and with the rickshaw racers, to watching a few of them go for a dip in Houhai, to sharing dance moves at the post-race bash, it was good times all-around.

In any case, I spent half of the day at Houhai Zoo and the other half touring the course with race marshal Alistair:

The racers took 90 minutes to three hours to finish, with only a few major incidents – one tipped over rickshaw at the beginning and three rickshaw-car scrapes (the owners of the autos were fully compensated).

Some of the more memorable moments:

- Befuddled racers trying to find The Reef or Drum & Bell or any other number of bars, but refusing – out of pride – to pay the one-drink penalty to the race marshal in exchange for directions.

- Racers busting moves on the deck of Houhai Zoo to the amusement of locals.

- What must have been a seventy-year-old man stopping his bike, parking it and showing some moves of his own.

- The further spread of pajama culture in Beijing.

- And couples taking wedding photos: what a contrast to see Chinese in Western wedding wear beside Westerners about to race Chinese rickshaws. Perhaps not globalization at its finest, but certainly in its explicitness.

As for the serious business, according to Mike Iannini for whom the race was his going away party, the winners seem to have been the team of Gary, Grace and Max, though  he adds that they may have played a trick or two on the other teams along the way.The following establishments participated and, noted the race marshal, did a superb job: No Name Bar, Hai Bar, Huxley’s (Shut Up Just Drink), Shui Gui Qi, Drum and Bell, Cafe Sambal, Ball House, Paper, Reef, Fish Nation, Pass By Bar, Houhai Zoo and, last but not least, the Xiao Mai Bu across from 20.

Props go to Mike Ianinni, Alistair, Chad Lager of The Rickshaw and Huxley of Houhai Zoo, where the race began and ended. Sadly, it coincided with the final weekend for the Zoo as Huxley will put more focus on the new Nanjie, which has done a rocking business since opening about a month ago. Good luck to Huxley and the Zoo staff, pictured here:

Hopefully, East meets West again…

… next year.