Given our taste for a beer, we have tried and tested a few establishments by now. I still haven’t found the beer that I could enjoy as much as I enjoy beers in Estonia. But we have a few favourite pubs to go to.
The common problem with the beers here is that they are all very gassy – bubbly and so cold that for the first 5 minutes you don’t feel what it tastes like. All pubs offer a taster when you ask, but it is different to have a small cold sip of a beer and then actually want to drink a whole pint of it. Every now and then when faced with choices I don’t really like, I have to resort to a pint of Stella or Harp to cleanse my palate 🙂 Of course there are good sides for not liking the beer so much – I don’t drink more than 1 pint these days.
Our favourite pub to go to is Buchanan’s – it is right across the street from our building and we end up going there when coming back from yoga or from gym to have our yoga-beer or gym-beer. What makes the establishment a winner is not the beer (as you read from the above), but the atmosphere. The place is buzzing with good-humoured people every time, the staff is friendly, remembers you and has a genuine chat with you. People sitting behind the bar, start spontaneous conversations with their neighbours. We have also found a few friends with whom we now agree to meet up rather than wait to bump into next time. The pub (actually a New-York style steak and seafood chophouse) is also famous for their steaks and whiskeys. The owners are whiskey lovers and they organise every Wednesday a whiskey tasting in the back room of the pub. We found an article that says that Buchanan’s is considered to be one of the world’s top six whiskey bars and definitely the best in Canada.
There are two more pubs we can go to on our way back from the gym – one is a traditional Irish pub next to Sheraton hotel and the other is a mere 10 meters away. We tested the Irish pub – there are a lot of people because of the hotel, but they also have live music nights. We haven’t made it to one of the events yet, but that seems to be a reason to go there. The service is polite but rather generic and the beers are the same as everywhere. The other place has one really cool bartender who talks to us about beer and sports, but the real catch for that one are their chicken tacos – really nice snack, indeed!
Kensington pub is not too far from us – across the river and has a great atmosphere and is in a building that looks quite old. We go there every now and then when we want a bit of change or when we are on our way to events on the other side of the river. They serve sweet potato fries that are one of my and also now my husband’s favourites.
There’s also an Irish pub on the Main street where we go to when we are in that area. It has really good sweet potato fries as well, but is normally quite empty and does not have anything except location going for it.
The rest of the places we have been to are not really worth mentioning – chains with impersonal service and very noisy normally. Good news is that we don’t need to – since the best pub in the area is our local!
avepeetri 