Tap Stand Craft Beer One Paragraph Review
It’s hard to recommend Tap Stand Craft Beer unless you have a rich benefactor behind you. With its perfect location near JR Shinjuku station comes with a hefty price, it’s expensive for everything: beer, food, and everything else in between but at least tax is included in the price. However, there is a ¥300 now per person as well. The bar is non-smoking and has a partly bilingual menu though the staff did speak some English to help things through. There wasn’t any WiFi for those wondering about it.
Tap Stand Craft Beer Full Review
Shinjuku has long been a black hole for craft beer – there are plenty of places around the area but few near the station but with Tap Stand Craft Beer, that was all about to change when it opened on March 1st. It’s located less than five minutes from the new Shinjuku Bus Terminal exit and can easily be reached with one direction: turn left and walk straight. With a location this close to Shinjuku station you would have thought the opening hours would have been earlier but alas, it opens from 3pm.
We weren’t allowed to take a picture inside the bar.
Inside the bar, there is a small counter space at the front, with enough space for five to relax or up to ten people to sit close together, and about ten tables at the back of the bar near the kitchen. The whole bar is non-smoking so you don’t have to worry about that – the only thing you have to worry about is getting a seat as it was busy when we turned up at just gone 7pm. I guess that’s the price you pay for trying to get to a bar that’s in perhaps the perfect location with lots of footfall. There was a hustle and bustle that felt like we were not truly welcome – more of a case of order food and drink and move on to allow the next customers to get in and sit down. Unfortunately, since this review was first written, they have added a ¥300 table charge per person.
The beer menu at Tap Stand Craft Beer encompasses both import and domestic craft beer. There are usually twenty plus taps on at any one time though we had just turned up after the Tokyo Beer Week had finished so there was lots of imported craft beer in with only a couple of domestic beers in. The prices though made our jaws drop before ordering – some of the domestic beers were MORE expensive than the imported beers. Beers come in three sizes: small (250ml) from ¥800 to ¥950 regular (350ml) from ¥1,000 to ¥1,150 and large (475ml) from ¥1,200 to ¥1,350. Thankfully those prices included tax else I would have walked out before ordering a beer.
At least the pizza is worth the price – if you’re willing to put up with some “interesting” combinations. The chips, the usual BT fayre, were a mixture with wedges, fries, and some smiley potato faces but the pulled pork pizza was where it was at. We were warned that it was spicy but little did we know that asking for extra spicy meant a bucketload of jalepeños on top of an already spicy pizza.
Tap Stand Craft Beer Details
Open: Daily 15:00 ~ 23:30
Phone: 03-3226-0566
Happy hour: none
Homepage: –
SNS: Facebook
How to Get to Tap Stand Craft Beer
The closest station to Tap Stand Craft Beer is the central south exit from JR Shinjuku station by the East Exit area.
1 comment
In what the readers of this beer blog will certainly adjudge as good news: Tap Stand Shinjuku has bitten the dust. It won’t be plucking any more Yen out of our pockets. I do wonder what happened to the Billy Barew’s two blocks east from here; where on one evening in September 2007, (a) It was playing a lot of Aerosmlth on the audio system {and I fulfilled a request for “Big Ten Inch (Record)“) and (b) it was where the Brewers’ Association had managed to place a lot of U.S.A. craftbeers (in bottles and cans) on offer – including F. X. Matt’s Saranac brews; which were (and still are) unavailable in Chicago. {Saranac is brewed in Utica, NY. Chicago is a lot closer to Utica than Tokyo, Japan. What is wrong with this picture?}