Cuban, Canterbury

On a recent stag-do pub crawl of Canterbury, we were temporarily thrown off course by trying out this vaguely Cuban themed bar and restaurant. Entering from the High Street, you find yourself in a very long corridor that leads all the way to the back of the building, where there is a small bar area with a servery on the back wall and a few tables and stools. We congregated in this area, but a trip to the toilets revealed a much busier second bar on a lower level, with a much larger servery and loads of space for vertical drinking. I also noted another room, which was also fairly busy and may well have been the cocktail bar. There is a restaurant here somewhere, although I suspect the tables are cleared away in the evening, which might explain why I couldn't find it. The place was playing very loud music throughout our stay and seemed popular with students. There is virtually nothing here to make you think of Cuba, with most of the walls bare brick with very little décor, not even a Che Guevara poster. Unfortunately there was no ale on the bar, just a couple of well known lager brands which we had to make do with. There is an extensive cocktail menu, many of which feature rum in a token nod to the Caribbean, but thankfully we didn't hang around to sample any of them. I really disliked this place and thought it was a real disappointment with very little to recommend - just a modern bar-by-numbers. They operate a strict dress code on Saturday nights which made me think it was a shame we visited on a Friday as with a bit of luck, they would have refused us entry. One to put down to experience.