Making the most of the drier weather and learning of a new place to drink beer we struck out towards Arnos Vale Cemetery. It makes for a lovely walk through, with hidden corners, birdsong...and grave furniture. Mind you, walking to the top of it is quite the yomp as the wider hillside it's built on includes the steepest residential street in England. We took a fairly direct route to the top and arrived quite breathless. During the walk I'd been musing on a Twitter request from someone I follow asking for "civilised stag do" suggestions - and what I might recommend. I'm going to take that up separately in the next post.
Meanwhile, we strolled through a few residential streets in Totterdown and found the destination of the walk: Bruhaha.
We'd missed them in their pop-up incarnation in Bedminster when we'd done an amble around there last summer so I was quite keen to give their permanent home a try.
It's made of two shops, on a hill, joined together - much like Collected Fictions in St Leonards. The steep hill means the two levels are distinct and involves some steps. The bar and a few stools plus loo and kitchen are in one half, the other half is tables and chairs. There's space for about 35 people and, as such, definitely needs to run on Basketmakers' rules.
They had a longish list of draught beers and ciders available but all were completely different styles. So one lager, one Bock, one sour, one pale, one stout, one sweet cider, one dryish cider, one cask beer, one lo-alcohol, and so on. Whilst it's a nice idea in theory, for the way we drink it meant there was really only one beer I wanted to drink (the cask beer was a relatively low ABV beer from Good Chemistry and I didn't think I'd like it much). We'd have loved them to have 2/3rds measures available but they only do halves and pints so we had a pint and a half between us which is our new tactic for dealing with that eventuality. We hadn't really planned to stay that long, and we initially perched on the stools next to the bar because the main room was rammed and with many children and their pushchairs. Clearly, this is very much a neighbourhood venue. Also evidenced by an overheard conversation between owner and punter..."...I think you're my daughter's head teacher..." this is a smallish, clearly quite tight-knit community.
The owner is very attentive and at one point said - there's a couple of tables free now if you wanted to sit somewhere more comfortable - which I thought was a really nice touch.
We decided to get another drink and decamp. It was 'snug' in the other room but we settled in comfortably. People ebbed and flowed and then some pals came in and looked briefly alarmed at the lack of seating - obviously, we offered them the other half of "our" table and we spent a jolly evening catching up with them. There was the option of food there and perhaps on another day (ie possibly less busy) we might have taken it up...it looked really nice. Apparently different pop-ups each weekend.
As we set out home, the owner came and opened the door and bid us farewell - clearly keen to find out what customers thought. All in all, a really great evening - and a place to keep an eye on.
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