This topic is about beer in Moscow.
We headed over to the new William Bass, we found another couple-friendly pub serving up great beers, good service, and a variety of British dishes. William Bass is a two-story structure not too unlike the John Bull pub, except that it serves its own beer and not John Bull beer. The menu tells a fascinating tale of how one William Bass, born in 1725, took his struggling father's private beer recipe and created a locally famous pub in Leicester. You can almost smell the history wafting in the pub, even all the way here in Moscow!
Interestingly, there are rows of high-priced cars that crowd the small parking lot in front of William Bass's. Meaning that it's popular with the professional Russians, many of whom still remain, despite this crisis (overhyped, if you ask Amy and me). Perhaps it's because of them that the prices were a bit out of mine and Amy's reach. Beers ranged from 95R to 160R for a half pint, while food was more in the $10 to $20 range. As my budding free-lance career is still bringing in meager wages, Amy is still having to cover most of our expenses. Not that she minds—we don't adhere to extinct patrimonial values—but nonetheless, we have to economize, especially now that her firm has scaled back on her housing allowance, and they're even threatening to rescind insurance coverage for partners (meaning yours truly).
So, there you have it. Maybe not «crazy» and «wild» and «decadent» like some people in this newspaper, but nevertheless, «real». And that's what counts in the end.
More about beer and pubs in Russian.