Gezellig

Praise the Beer Gods. They created a temple of worship for us and conveniently placed it on Lower Greenville. Since the gods like to laugh at us mortals, they named the bar «Gezellig», which is damn near unpronounceable, especially after a few libations. Gezellig is a Dutch word, and it roughly translates as meaning «cozy», and connotes the notion of belonging and acceptance. Those prankster Beer Gods know what they’re doing though: this bar is very true to it’s name.
As soon as we walked in to Gezellig we were greeted by the new owner, Graham, who was sitting at the bar having a pint, and James the bartender. James is brilliant. He shook our hands and showed us what beer they had on tap and the actual taps themselves. Two of the taps are covered in ice, a trick done by running some kind of coolant through an inner tube. This helps them poor some of the coldest beer in Dallas.
James started us off with a sample of the «Kona Beer», which is a coffee flavored. I don’t even like coffee, but Kona Beer was tasty. James also explained that their beer menu varies because they rely heavily on selections of seasonal beer. As soon as I heard him say «seasonal beer» it was like I heard the recess bell. I about bolted over the bar to get a look at what they had. James was just as excited as I was, and quite exuberantly pulled out bottles of beer from their frig to show us what they had in stock.
Besides the Kona Beer, I had an Apricot wheat beer that was left over from the summer beers selection. It was sweet, just like you would image an apricot beer would be, and it made my palate happy. I also tried a dark, stout beer that is called Maurete, or something very similar. The shots were flowing as well. A couple of cute girls roped Sigurd and I in to doing a shot of Patron with them, and we did a Jäger shot with James. The prices weren’t too bad either, for fancy European beers and a couple of shots, our tab was $ 37.
While I had a lot of fun a this bar, I cannot, in good faith, give Gezellig a full five star rating. They have a smoke machine that began emitting it’s odious vapors about midnight — and that is so 1996. Basically, it’s a pretty cool bar, and then later in the night it transforms into a nightclub. This is why the only seating it has is at the bar, the patio, and the communal table by the window. The transformation from bar to nightclub is just kind of unsettling when you’re five pints into a beer session. Also, they do not serve food, even though their website says they do. James said they will be introducing food back into the bar soon, however.
Like so many of the bars on Lower Greenville, Gezellig plays its music loud. Sigurd and I had a couple of great moments of talking really loud, and then the song would stop in time for the entire bar to hear an awkward snippet, like «hairy nipple». We kind of made it into a game. At least the music was good though, it was a variety of alternative music and rap. James told us we could pick out what we wanted to hear, but we never bothered.
There is a fenced in patio, so you can sit outside and heckle the passersby, and the front of the place is almost completely glass. We were able to watch a cop give a sobriety test to some guy on the other side of the street from our seats at the bar. I love that I can see the Fuzz before they see me.
As a beer lover, I am adding this bar to my Lower Greenville rotation and James to my «awesome bartender» list. Praise the Beer Gods.