opinionated alchemist

Since I have had this blog (inclusive the previous installment of it), I have shied away of doing bar reviews. If you work as manager in a bar (or in my case even as beverage manager), you know, that you shouldn't question too much others, as your own courtyard might not be that clean... But then I still make exceptions - this happens specially if bars receiving awards (and/or taking themselves too serious and  This apparently happened in Speakeasy in the Ramada Plaza. Let's first off all get the most obvious from my breast: the name.... It is an audacity in the light of modern speakeasies (you can't compare anyway a bar to historic speakeasies - unless it is e.g. Located in Saudi Arabia - and well, a review there wouldn't be that clever, to say at least! Anyway - the name is stupid and misleading. However please note, that this bar received the Best New Pub Award of TimeOut Dubai! So it has to be good? Well, I went with a friend and colleague to this place. I am just f...

I've just seen, that "Speakeasy" won the award as best new bar at the Time Out awards. I wasn't there yet - and even haven't heard yet from it - good job of them, you might think [as speakeasy's supposed to be clandestine]. The strange thing though was, that it was a Facebook post of DJ Lance, which brought me on that. I searched the web - and directly found their very own website. Which. Puts. Their. Name. To. Shame. So Wednesday they have a ladies night. How in the name of hell, they would do a ladies night in a speakeasy? But it is not only that. I see bright colorful [hello artificial] drinks on there, and a dart board and a rowdish crowd with beers cheering; or "impressing" girls. How is Dubai to screw up the character of a speakeasy bar? Now, it is important to understand - what exactly a speakeasy is and why is it called like that [maybe the guys of the Ramada should have researched this as well and might just used a different na...