Poltava – Beer House

My first impressions of this pub weren’t that positive from the exterior, as it looks a little generic. However, it was well reviewed by others and my second impressions were much better after we entered it.

It wasn’t particularly busy inside, although given that it was 3pm on a Saturday, that wasn’t entirely unsurprising. The whole environment was clean and comfortable and the welcome seemed genuinely friendly.

They had a dark beer, which was decent although it didn’t have a particularly strong aftertaste or notes of particular ingredients. However, it tasted fine and was at the appropriate temperature.

I’m not sure that there are that many English visitors to Poltava, so it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t have an English menu. However, the waiter got someone else over to help and they were able to speak excellent English. I was struggling with the pizza section of the menu a little, particularly as I’ve forgotten the Cyrillic alphabet which might have helped. However, I could work out the BBQ pizza, so I went with that.

My expectations were a little low as I realised that it might just mean a pizza with BBQ sauce, but it was much better than that with pieces of BBQ meat. It looked like it was wood fired and it had a crispiness to it with a range of tastes of textures. It could have been a little hotter in terms of temperature, but it still exceeded what I expected. Very nice.

And the seed things which came with the beer, salty and very moreish.

The bar had a set-up which meant that they needed to take a card at a nearby location, so it seemed easier to just pay with cash. I didn’t work out what the nearby location was, but it was perhaps a fixed card machine they couldn’t easily move. Either way, the prices were very reasonable and a pizza and beer cost around £3.