Bar Review: Van Gogh, 9 Smardan St.

As you’ll know, Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter who’s works have influenced and inspired many. He died in 1890, of self-inflicted wounds, and could not have every imagined that one day his works would sell for millions, and, perhaps more importantly, that 119 years after his death he would have a bar named after him in Bucharest. Opened by a fellow countryman in October last year, it’s a bar to make the great man proud. The building itself is an old converted bank with domed high ceilings in the main bar area supported by large pillars. Yet the defining feature remains the bar itself – solid oak, and very, very long – inspired, perhaps, by a man who comes from a culture where they do their drinking sitting on a bar stool.

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Read about Jerry Van Schaik, one of the owners of Van Gogh Grand Cafe