Location: 67-68 Enid Street
Opening hours: Saturday 1200-2230
Other days: Sunday 1200-2100, Thursday 1700-2200, Friday 1500-2230
Official site: https://www.pr-dutchdrinks.co.uk/
Last updated: 21/01/2024
For as long as we’ve been drinking there, central London has had De Hems, always referred to casually as ‘that Dutch bar’. And now we’ve got a second London Dutch bar, grabbing a primo spot as the new first venue on the Enid Street stretch of the Mile. When we visited it hadn’t been open very long, and like Kanpai (which we’d also just seen for the first time) it very much had that New Bar Smell, with plenty of freshly-hewn wood in the décor.
IAMIIAD – hey, don’t blame us for them having a terrible acronym – isn’t owned by an individual brewery: instead, like the late lamented London Calling Sweden before it, it’s a bar intended to show off the best of what’s happening in another country’s beer scene. Uiltje have a decent representation amongst the – count ‘em – thirty taps on offer, but plenty of other breweries get a look in too. And in a welcoming trend also followed by Kanpai, the drinks can be accompanied by traditional beer food of the region: in this case, a wild collection of cheeses and fried things from both Holland and Korea, served out of a kiosk covered in fun illustrations by Dutch comic artist Gerben Valkema.
It may be an anthology bar rather than a brewery showcase, but the range and quality of beers on offer here should satisfy any visitor to the Mile. Or so we thought, until we saw a bunch of guys walk into the building, look at the tap list, say ‘oh no, they’re Dutch, it’ll all be really strong’ and walk straight out again. It’s not entirely true, although there was certainly an 18% TIPA on offer if you fancied it. We stuck to the more sessionable beers on our visit, but if you really wanted to crash and burn early into your crawl, this would be the place to do it.
Now walk 39m to Moor Beer ----->
<----- or go back 180m to Anspach & Hobday
Whilst we were clearly there for the beer, which was excellent, the "collection of cheeses" had to be one of the saddest sights on the mile, and definitely not worth the price (compared with other street food options around and about.
Posted by: Colin | 27/07/2024 at 04:45 PM