Edit: Biere Cave Jan Bar closed at the end of March 2017. This review has been left up for archive purposes.
Biere Cave Jan Bar TL;DR
Biere Cave Jan Bar is a cosy little bar that is at the “wrong” end of Kannai. If you’re in the area, the non-smoking atmosphere and tax included prices is a welcome addition though the prices are on the expensive side. Also, if you’re a vegetarian, you might find it hard to get some non-meat food here as everything seemed to have either chicken or sausage as its base.
Biere Cave Jan Bar Full Read
Biere Cave Jan Bar is a bar I’ve been meaning to get to for a long time but there is one problem with it – it’s at the “wrong” end of Kannai station for me. What does that mean? Well, if you use the north exit to Kannai station, then you’ve got five or six good craft beer bars to go for a nice little bar crawl. The south exit, while it does have Yokohama Stadium and the DeNA Baystars, doesn’t offer much else besides Biere Cave Jan Bar it seems for craft beer bars.
Looking for somewhere to drink at 3pm on Saturday in Kannai is getting easier and easier but a friend found Biere Cave Jan Bar and wanted to go along for some of the craft beer and chicken-based dishes. Located about five minutes from the south exit of JR Kannai station, it is quite easy to walk past it as it is located in a recess on the first floor a building. On top of that, it looks quite dark inside and I was initially unsure if it was open or not. The sign was out but I was hoping we wouldn’t have to walk back to the “right” side of the station to get some beer inside.
The atmosphere was very chilled out with dimmed lighting and some US Forces radio it seemed – either that or a foreign English jazz station but it quiet enough not to be a distraction but loud enough to be heard. There is only one table, located at the front window with the remainder of the bar being the main seating area.
There are nine taps of beer at any one time, though two of these taps are for Kirin and Ebisu beer, while the other seven tend to be dedicated towards domestic craft beer. On the day we went, one of those taps was for an imported craft beer; however, there was a very good range of styles on tap, with porters, IPAs, fruit beers, and lagers all represented. Beers come in two sizes: medium size (273ml) for ¥850 and large beers (473ml) for ¥1100 with both sizes including tax. Both sizes had about one centimeter of head on top though less was possible if you asked for less. There are also bottled beers on sale as well, but most, if not all, were from Germany and were pretty pricey, at over ¥1000.
The food at Biere Cave Jan Bar is strongly based on chicken, with various parts of the chicken used in the majority of the dishes, such as liver pate, rillette, and also chicken breast and leg dishes. While tasty, the majority of the dishes were quite small, barely feeding one person so it would get expensive pretty quickly if you hadn’t eaten before coming here.
Biere Cave Jan Bar Details
Open: Weekdays 17:00 ~ 24:00 (LO 23:30) Saturday 15:00~ 23:00 (LO 22:30）
Closed: Sundays
Phone: 045-228-8943
Homepage (in Japanese): http://jan-bar.com/
Social Network: Facebook / Twitter
How to Get to Biere Cave Jan Bar
Biere Cave Jan Bar is located between Nihon-odori station on the Minatomirai Line and Kannai on the JR Keihin-Tohoku line.
From the first, take exit number one, turn left out of the exit and walk west for about five minutes towards Yokohama Stadium and the bar is on your right.
From the JR Kannai, take the south exit and walk towards Yokohama stadium. Turn left when you get to the traffic lights and walk straight and the bar is on your left.
[ezcol_1half]From Nihon-odori station[/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]From JR Kannai station[/ezcol_1half_end]
