The Beer Kitchen, Dundee

Modern, three-part bar, with two main areas to the right and left of the entrance, the former with some brewing paraphernalia behind a glass screen at the back and the latter being more of an irregular space for various seating / dining areas. Mixed modern furniture and decor throughout, including some booths. Two of four handpumps in operation, offering very local 71 Brewing real ales: Cloud Fall and Pale & Significant (£5.00). However, it is actually an Innis & Gunn house, with eight of its beers on the various bar-back and counter taps (including its 'tank' lager).

I popped into this modern bar and restaurant for a bite to eat on a Wednesday evening and found the place to be far more diner-oriented than I’d expected. You enter into the right hand side of the building where the main drinking area is located. A servery-style counter down one side has a row of bar stools along it but it isn’t actually a bar so you can’t get served here. A few more seats for drinkers can be found further back under quite an attractive stonework wall, but to find the bar, you need to turn left towards the dining area, passing a series of fridges stocked with various Innis and Gunn beers on the way. The servery is along the rear wall in the mid-section of the pub and it has one of those pipes running from some backroom down onto the counter that implies the beer is being drawn straight from the brewery. The styling is fairly bland, with a basic counter and modern mirrored bar back plus a minimalist approach to having any taps or other such clues to the drinks available on the bar. Leather banquettes opposite offer a semi-relaxed space in which to grab a bite to eat and have been supplemented with a few grim looking plastic chairs. There are further banquette booths down the left hand side of the room under more stone walls and some Innis and Gunn cask ends in what is essentially the main restaurant space. Pop music played in the background throughout my stay but I didn’t spot any TV screens or other such forms of entertainment. It was unclear just what exactly they had available at the bar, but upon sitting down and consulting the menu, it became apparent that Innis and Gunn Lager Beer, The Original, Session IPA and Blood Red Sky tend to usually be on draught. After a chat with a very helpful waiter, I opted for a barrel aged version of the latter which was pretty good and much better than the Innis and Gunn beers I’d previously tried. The food was pretty good too and I found the staff to all be very friendly and attentive. This place worked well as somewhere to stop for a bite to eat and try out some beers from a brewery I don’t get to sample all that often. The place felt far too much like a restaurant to me for it to be considered somewhere worth popping into just for a drink, but if you ever need to break up a pub crawl with a quick meal, then this is the place.