Romania Archives - Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

Sometimes you go for a beer and a bite to eat and find yourself in the jaws of a machine – and it’s not always an unpleasant experience.

These are hospitality operations run with total efficiency.

At first, you might think, ugh, this is all a bit charmless. Not very organic. Not very artisanal or indie.

But after a while, if you submit to it, you might start to appreciate its sheer effectiveness, which does actually translate into a form of good service.

It can also be incredibly entertaining to observe, like a magic show, or a demonstration of athletic prowess.

Not very artisanal? It’s the epitome of skilled labour, requiring the best of the best. at the peak of their game.

In these hospitality machines, processes have been honed and iterated so that no time or effort is wasted in getting you seated, getting you served, getting the cash out of your pocket, and spitting you out into the street so another party can slot into your space.

Everyone on the team has a role to play and knows what is expected of them.

That includes people whose job it is to smile and convey an atmosphere of carefree fun, at least while you’re looking at them.

The margins have been calculated to the penny and no chance to upsell is ever missed. And if that upselling can be made to feel as if they’re doing you a favour, all the better:

“My personal favourite? I’d have to say the pasta. (On which we make 30% more markup than everything else on the menu.)”

In the past week, we found ourselves in two such machines in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.

Both drew us in with beautiful, historic buildings and the promise of decent mainstream beer.

Caru’ cu Bere is a German-style beer hall established in 1879 and housed in a grand Gothic building designed by an Austrian architect in 1888. It has its own house beer and serves hearty traditional food in large portions.

It’s recommended in all the guidebooks and smells, frankly, a bit like a tourist trap, rather than a tourist attraction, which is an important distinction in our view.

We really wanted to see inside the building, though, and also really wanted to drink a decent lager in vaguely trad surroundings, so we made our booking and braced ourselves.

On arrival, we were intercepted by a member of staff whose only job was to assign people to free tables and escort them to their seats. She wasn’t exactly cheerful, but she was certainly efficient.

She handed us off to a waitress controlling a section of about 10 or 15 tables who was just as friendly as she needed to be to avoid making us feel totally unwelcome. When we took a little too long to decide what to drink she got, perhaps, a touch impatient.

But, like in the beer halls of Cologne, or The Dog & Bell in Deptford, once you accept that you’re not there to make friends with the staff, this brusqueness becomes part of the offer.

It’s what allows establishments like this to serve the constantly flowing crowds of customers quickly. We didn’t have long frustrating waits to order, or to receive our beers, or with empty glasses in front of us, or for our food, or for the bill at the end of the session.

We thought we’d been conned into buying bread we didn’t need but, actually, we did need it. And she even talked us out of ordering too much dessert.

Meanwhile, she was negotiating with customers who didn’t like their tables or had questions about their bills. She was chucking children under the chin and chatting to old ladies. And she was bollocking supporting waiters who brought food to the wrong tables, or were too leisurely on their way back to the kitchen.

At one point, she was taking a food order from one table, taking our beer order with a nod and a couple of gestures, and telling people on a third table that she’d be with them shortly.

Awesome, if intimidating.

We had a similar experience at another tourist-focused venue, Hanu’ lui Manuc. We hadn’t intended to visit but, on a hot day, the sight of its beer garden in the courtyard of an historic inn built in around 1808.

The building was breathtaking – a medieval fantasy of galleries, balconies and flagstones – only slightly undercut by the sense of passing into the mouth of a great predator.

Again, we were intercepted at the gate and seated within seconds, at which point another crack waitress took control of the situation.

She started by trying to sell us a lamb dish for sharing – colossal, expensive, and more suitable for a medieval banqueting table than lunch on a warm day. She did successfully upsell mayonnaise at 8 Lei (about £1.50) and attempted a little emotional manipulation when we said “No” to ketchup.

But, on the whole, service was again super efficient, with barely a gap between rounds of beer.

When she did neglect us for a moment, during a crisis at another table, a colleague slipped in seamlessly, passing our order to her as they rushed past each other, swooping together ages apart like ballet dancers.

Our food arrived very quickly. Too quickly, almost, as if it came from an all-you-can-eat buffet counter hidden from view.

Perhaps we also detected a hint of misery and desperation in the way our waitress pleaded with us to review the experience online, and to mention her by name, as she slipped a QR code onto the table.

Watching the waiting staff buzzing around the bar collecting drinks we saw plenty of grim, exhausted faces.

The problem with machines is that they tend to drag people in and chew them up, on both sides of the service counter.

Timișoara is Romania’s third city and from certain angles looks and feels as if it belongs further west – with flat whites, avocado toast, and very convincing craft beer.

We were only there for a few nights and so this post is only a record of what we saw and thought. It’s certainly not comprehensive – not least because we only had time to taste beer from two of its six or so breweries.

Our primary beer-related mission in Timișoara was to investigate the local historic brewery, Timișoreana. Founded in 1718, it brewed through the forming of empires and nations, through wars, and through decades of communism.

Now, it’s owned by Asahi, via its Eastern Europe arm Ursus.

We didn’t have high hopes for the beer, if we’re honest. We’ve never heard anyone say “You simply must try this delicious lager from Romania…” And the packaged variety that turns up in UK corner shops looks rather like a supermarket own-brand budget brew.

But, guess what? We were impressed.

Admittedly, we drank it at brewery taps, both in town and on site at the brewery, where you might expect it to be well cared for.

We also drank premiumised versions, one of which is served unfiltered and hazy, and the other of which, La Tanc, is unpasteurised.

We found the former pleasingly rounded and almost complex, with the suspended yeast adding body, and softening the edges.

La Tanc was clean, sharp, and just bitter enough to feel on a par with, say, Budvar.

Both benefited from freshness and from the care with which they were served. And at the beer hall on site at the brewery, on a weekday afternoon, they seemed slightly less fresh, and so less exciting.

It’s worth noting, too, that these are beers which sing when drunk alongside salty bar food. Without wanting to get into beer and food pairing talk, salt delivered in the form of, say, pickled gherkins, has a way of jolting, resetting, or jump starting the palate. And that helps beers like these land.

The brewery itself is an impressive complex beyond the city’s ring roads. We arrived for our lunchtime session during what we guess was shift change, as a stream of weary looking workers poured from a side door in high-visibility jackets, carrying bags that clinked.

Underfills from the reject bin? Or a continuation of the tradition that brewery workers get a daily allowance? Our impression is that Romania clings to the old ways.

The counter and beer list at Bereta.

Bereta Brewing Co

The Bereta Brewing Co is at the other end of the scale from Timișoreana.

We visited its craft beer bar in the city centre and felt as if we’d been transported back to Bristol, or London, or Amsterdam, or any part of Craftonia you care to mention.

There were street art inspired decorations and slogans everywhere – in English, of course. The other customers included both Americans (“Ah, man, this is what it’s all about!”) and hipsterish locals with bike clips and beards.

Among the 15 or so beers on offer on the blackboard were several from Spain and, perhaps surprisingly (or do we mean inevitably?) Lightbulb from Verdant in the UK.

Our focus was on Bereta’s own beers, though. Most were billed as “heavily-hopped IPA”, with one lager, and one strong pastry stout.

We disagreed over the lager, Social Drink, at 4%. Ray dismissed it, more or less, as like dodgy homebrew. Jess, who drank most of it, found it pleasing, if more like a golden ale. Its carbonation was fairly low and it certainly had some fruitiness you don’t expect in ‘proper’ lager.

The two IPAs we tried, Juicebag (6%) and Is This Real Life? (6.2%) were good executions of the modern hazy style. They’d both fit into the lineup in a British craft beer bar with ease – and, in fact, might stand out as particularly impressive. But perhaps that’s our preference for bitterness speaking.

Finally, there was Circles, a strong cinnamon and coconut stout at 11%, served in a 200ml brandy glass. It suggested that the brewers involved have done their research and calibrated their efforts against international examples of the pastry stout style. We enjoyed it a lot, but very slowly.

The chat at the counter, in a mix of English and Romanian, was exactly as you might expect:

“What do you have in the way of an IPA? Have you got anything more sessionable? What’s the normalest beer you’ve got for my mate? He’s not much of a craft beer guy…”

Postscript: Timișoara beer in Sibiu

Thinking we’d had our shot at Timișoara beer, we were pleased to find, two stops further on in our travels, a craft beer bar stocked with beer from Timișoara breweries.

Sibiu is a prosperous, tidy city with even more avocado toast and more hipster coffee shops.

Flow is a coffee shop by day and a craft beer bar by night. Among the 12 beers on offer on our visit were nine from Timișoara’s OneTwo.

These were similarly accomplished and convincing, covering a range of styles from New England IPA to ‘heavily fruited sour’. The beer that grabbed us most, however, was a Gose based on a Romanian national dish.

We got a warning from the barman: “Are you sure? Would you like a taste?”

As we said on BlueSky, about 10% of the time this means you’re going to have one of the best or most interesting beers you’ve ever encountered. And so it proved to be in this instance.

You might not think a beer with no foam, that tastes strongly of red bell peppers, could possibly be enjoyable. Well, readers, we were first flummoxed, then amused, then charmed, then ordered a second round.

If you never go to those outer limits, you never have your mind blown.