When the Best Of team walked into this central Kyiv bar, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Dozens of customers had sought refuge here. In pairs and small groups, they sat around tables, in booths and along a long, polished bar that flanked the room. Animated conversations and music filled the air. Beaming waitresses in Bavarian costumes skittered among the patrons, holding aloft liter steins brimming with foamy, ice-cold beer.
Behind the bar, a score of taps were arranged in a line like wooden soldiers in formation, handles at attention. Each tap, in turn, was linked to a refrigerated keg. The names on the taps read like a “who’s who” of brew – a veritable United Nations of beer, with offerings spanning the globe from Germany to the United States, Mexico to China. There were thick stouts, creamy ales, light lagers and bold porters. The big brand names of beer were poured, as were humble microbrews.
In the crowd, we thought we caught a glimpse of beer-quaffing American TV icons Norm, Cliff, Archie and Homer.
Above the bar, a banner proclaimed “Free Beer Today.”
That’s when we knew we were daydreaming.
Alas, the bar exists only in our imagination, a figment created by desire and given life by one too many sweltering afternoons in the poorly ventilated steam room that passes for our office.
The Best Of team, beer lovers all, has tried in vain to find a bar in Kyiv that lives up to our thirsty expectations. Most establishments carry from one to three draft beers – but nothing closely reminiscent of the German beer halls or U.S. brewpubs we know. The joy of beer is in its variety and in having a wide selection – a concept for some reason lost on most Kyiv bars.
Broadening the category to include bottled beers does give drinkers a few more options. The Drum, a small, friendly bar tucked into a courtyard off Prorizna, carries about 30 different bottled beers, many of which are imports, along with domestic entries Taller and Obolon on draft.
But our quest was for draft beer, served cool and straight from a keg. Eric Aigner’s perennial ex-pat haunt, Eric’s Bierstube, offers six draft beers, and with the relaxed conviviality of a German beer hall, Eric’s is a good choice for a cool draft, but we need a far greater selection.
The city’s newest Irish-style pub, Golden Gate, offers some variety and we like the refrigeration system Golden Gate has installed, which keeps beer at a constant 5 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, Golden Gate’s marathon licensing hassles have made it difficult to judge when they’ll be open or closed.
The city’s other Irish pub – O’Brien’s – sports more than a dozen beers on tap from inexpensive Ukrainian favorites to pricier German, Irish and British imports. The downstairs bar is a comfortable place to toss back a few while catching up with the world on CNN, or when in a more competitive mood, the upstairs bar offers billiards and other traditional pub diversions.
Until the bar of our daydreams is built, O’Brien’s is our choice as Kyiv’s best locale for draft beer.
O’Brien’s Irish Pub
17A Mykhailivska.
Tel. 229-1584.
Open daily from 8 a.m.
until last customer.
