Barocco, Cardiff

Official site of Barocco - www.baroccocardiff.com

Official site of Barocco - www.baroccocardiff.com

You really can’t avoid Brains Brewery when you’re in Cardiff, no matter how hard you try. Take this place for instance. We were wandering past on a Saturday evening and thought that it looked like a decent venue that would be happy to accommodate a large stag party. Inside, the cavernous interior has been decked out with all manner of smart furniture and a large servery along the right hand wall with a pretty impressive bar back. Loud music was playing, the lights were dimmed, there were bouncers on the door and there were no handpulls on the bar, yet believe it or not, it’s a Brains venue – their take on the ‘classy’ late night city centre bar it would seem. The place was fairly quiet and we easily found seating on some semi-circular banquettes on the upper floor which can be accessed via the imposing staircase at the back of the main room. Most punters were enjoying a bit of vertical drinking around the ground floor bar area, leaving the upstairs section relatively deserted. In place of the ales, there were a couple of Brains keg beers including their stout, but we were pretty disappointed with the offerings and opted for spirits instead, partly to facilitate a quicker get-away. The bar staff were having a better time than their punters and our drinks order took an unnecessarily long time to arrive as the barmaid kept stopping in order to dance with her colleagues. I wasn’t expecting much from this place but it turned out to be one of the low points of my time in Cardiff. I’m not really sure what the target market for this place is and maybe it works better in the day if you fancy popping in for a glass of wine or something, but it certainly didn’t appeal to me and I wouldn’t want to return.