Heidi's Bier Bar

4–6 Mill Lane, Cardiff [map]

Whoever proposed the idea for this place must surely have been drunk at the time: a faux après-ski lodge serving four-litre beer towers, in which the poor bar staff are dressed in pigtails and Tyrolean dresses (and that's just the men), named after a 19th-century Swiss children's book.

 

Still, if you are going to come up with an insane theme for a bar while massively pissed, they've certainly seen the idea through to its illogical conclusion.

 

The seating is made up of lots of little booths, although it's not immediately clear where you're meant to leave your skis.

 

Ah, there's the answer to that then.

 

Handily, it's open till 3am, Monday to Sunday. So even if you've had a particularly long stint on the slopes – as this lot clearly have – there's still time to get in an enormous flagon of Löwenbräu before retiring to your Alpine chalet. Happy days.

La Brasserie

6 Mill Lane, Cardiff [map]


Pleasant as La Brasserie is (which, as we understand it, is French for The Brasserie), we've always found cafe-bars to be slightly problematic.

There's the sense that you can't just go completely Bacchic without first requesting a helping of croque-monsieur.


Nonetheless, we manage to successfully negotiate the pint-ordering process without being sidetracked by cheese on toast.


You've got to love that use of parentheses and its clarification of the fact that £2.50 will procure you only a single can of Foster's, and not the entire, elegantly arranged display of room-temperature lager.


It's indoors but, with those paving stones and street lamps, feels kind of outdoors too. Even if you haven't been drinking, it's a confusing state of affairs.


Still, there's always something to be said for anywhere that has no queue at the bar.


Right, so we're properly outside now (we think). One can only assume that The Photographer is going for an arty shot of those two pints of Beck's-and-lime (our summer drink of choice).

Unfortunately, what's actually happened is that he's taken a fairly graphic photo of a bloke whose shirt and trousers are clearly that little bit too tight for him.

This, it would seem, is the long-term effect of being obliged to order croque-monsieurs every time you buy a drink.