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Bar Review: Wadham

Walking in through a sea of Nike Roshes, ironic sweatshirts, and pictures of Beyonce, I wasn’t really sure what Wadham bar would be like at all. Entering through the front quad, I thought the bar, like most college bars, would be tucked away in some underground cavern just off the main quad.

Alas, 15 minutes later, I was still lost in the complicated maze that is the back end of Wadham. Having finally found the right staircase, I walked in through a quad which had a somewhat tragic resemblance to a Floridian retirement home.

Walking in, the place essentially looked like a corridor which, as if by accident, happens to have a bar. To be honest, the whole thing looks a bit like an accident and this is not helped by the sparse number of blades above the bar and the random assortment of old photos hanging on the walls.

With the bar on the right-hand side and the booths on the left, the weird chasm in between initially made me think that this was a bar for the most hacky of hacks who were paranoid that someone would overhear their conversation. However, there isn’t actually glass between the booths, so you can hear the next table’s conversation on the politics of dildos.

It also means that the acoustics are a bit odd and so it’s easier to hear others’ conversations than your own. It was also fairly small and it not particularly full (even on a Tuesday), so I guess even Wadhamites themselves aren’t that fond of it. On the bright side, the bar was admittedly very well stocked and had an excellent range of liquors. Approaching the bartender, who was reading the paper and looked a bit bored, I asked if Wadham had a signature drink.

Looking somewhat confused as to why I was talking to him, he told me that it was a tequila and pineapple juice. Being both a fan of pineapple juice and tequila, I was looking forward to what I expected to be some kind of variant of a tequila sunrise (especially since I paid a decent amount for it).

I have great memories that all involve tequila sunrise, so the pressure was on. What I got was a shot of tequila which had a chaser of a shot of pineapple juice. It was alright, but realistically, for the price I paid, the tequila should have been better quality.

There’s nothing exceptionally terrible about Wadham bar but it just feels like no one really cares, like it’s a little bit too much of an effort to do anything really well.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆  (1/5)

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