Lava Lounge

Cardiff is a good place to go for a night out but the one downfall is it is lacking independent, quirky bars as in recent times these have been replaced and over shadowed by samey chain bars like Lava Lounge.
Lava Lounge isn’t terrible but for me it is lacking the qualities that you need for a good night out. Located in the Brewery Quarter, it is in a good location, close to the train station and majority of bars on popular St. Mary Street. It’s also near ‘chip alley’ where everyone heads for a home time kebab.
Inside, you get what you expect from a chain bar. Dance floor, seating, bar serving the usual VK Ice, pints and cheap cocktails which are mostly made of juice and ice with very little alcohol. The music is cheesy and if you have had a drink you’ll have a good time.
At £4 to get in, it’s not bad but there are plenty of better alternatives. The people that go there are perhaps of a rougher variety and you WILL be groped if you’re a girl, or maybe even if you’re a man! Meat Market is the term that springs to mind. If you’re on the pull head here for an easy time or get out quick if you’re looking for something more.
Not a bad night but you can do better.

Occasionally on a spurious night out someone will suggest a change of scenery from the normal Buffalo, Pen and Wig, Arts Institutes type of night and instead decide we should head somewhere that we all absolutely hate. Lava Lounge tends to be a prime contender every time. On the way there, it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll be accosted by some promo girls with some good drinks offers and fliers and the deal is well and truly sealed.
It’s not my type of place to be honest — the music is cheesy and it’s full of mainly older people and works nights out. In other words, unless you’re already pretty well-​oiled, don’t bother with the place. Generally, every time I’ve been in, I’ve been drunk enough to dance like a loon. And I don’t often dance.
Drinks are decent enough, not that I cared by that point and it was about a fiver for a cocktail. We were going for shots of Jagermeister too which were £2.50 (I think!). That’s not too bad considering the prices some bars and clubs will try and get out of you for Jäger.
The atmosphere when I was there was pretty binge-​drinkey with lots of guys and girls knocking back shots and generally getting as hammered as possible in the shortest possible time. That’s all well and good when you’re drunk too I suppose.
All in all, from my experience head there if you want to get involved in a dance off with some 50 year olds and have drunk so much that you can’t remember who won, where you got that pink feather boa from or how you managed to get home. If that doesn’t appeal to you then avoid like the plague!

Lava Lounge reminds me of a bonfire. It looks good from a distance but it’s not something you want to get too involved with.
My first experience with Lava Lounge was a lunch time. The food is okay; nothing to write home about but there was a good selection to choose from. I did feel rather like I should’ve kept walking and bought a more reasonably priced sandwich, but I’d walked down a lot of stairs to get there and I was too hungry to walk back up look for somewhere else.
Since then I’ve been dragged there on a few nights out. And I mean dragged: I wouldn’t go there by choice. Lava Lounge is one of those places that seems like it couldn’t quite make up its mind what it wanted to be. Essentially it’s a restaurant and bar, but at night it tries to be more of a club and doesn’t quite get it right. There’s a lot of seating and very little dancefloor, but the music is way too loud to talk to anyone, so you end up sitting around a table staring at your friends, all trying to look like you’re having a good time. It’s also one of those places where the bar staff give you much less change than you were expecting. Since you can’t hear what they’re asking you to pay, you just give them a handful of coins (standard practice for many clubs where it’s loud) but in this place you’re lucky if you get any money back as it is much more expensive than you think it should be. However, it is situated in the classier part of town, away from the venues popular with students, so if you’re looking for somewhere with a slightly more mature customer, this might be right up your street. Personally, though, I’d try somewhere else, first.

AH! COUGARS! SO! MANY! COUGARS!
Cougars, cougars everywhere and not stick to hit them with.
I swear to you, if you’re under the age of 25 and even vaguely masculine in your appearance, your ass is going to feel like a pincushion by the time you leave this place at the end of the night. Being a favoured hole of hen parties and birthday parties, this place is crawling with late thirties/​early forties women and they aren’t shy about letting you know what they think of you. Often through the artistic medium of the stealthy bottom pinch. You won’t be able to sit down for days afterwards.
And on the other side of the spectrum, we have the creepy guys. And, oh, wow, there are just so many of them in this place. It’s like every women who comes in has to bring a man with clammy hands and weird, staring eyes with them to balance the numbers. Guys, if you end up in Lava Lounge with some female friends, a good 50% of your night will be spent pretending to be the boyfriends of about three different girls in order to ward off said clammy hands.
The music is cheese, the drinks are fairly cheap, but they come with the price of having to be in Lava Lounge when you order them. It’s not a good trade.

Okay, I know the DJs here sometimes play cheesy music, and the clientele can vary according to what night you frequent, but Lava Lounge has consistently provided me with a few good times, so I had to give it at least a three-​star rating.
I’ve only been here twice on a work night out, so maybe my perception was a bit skewed thanks to the free drinks provided by our bosses, but I like any bar where I can dance to «Billy Jean» or anything by Billy Ocean (please don’t laugh at me).
Plus, the DJ played all of my music requests (see above), whereas at other clubs, they normally just bristle at any of my recommendations (can’t imagine why!).
Lava Lounge isn’t really a place I’d spend the entire evening though, but during the warm summer days, I’d recommend grabbing a table outside and enjoying an ice-​cold pint or two.

One of those really hit or miss places that can be bouncing and crazy or dead and boring.
I too do tend to get sucked in by those promo people they have on St Mary’s Street on Saturday nights offering very cheap drinks and its actually not a bad place to go pre club. It is cheap, the music is pretty good and the service is quite fast.
It feels very claustraphobic in there when it’s busy because the ceilings are low and its quite narrow.

Lava Lounge is a big square underground bar. It never tops my top list of places to go but there are usually tempting offers (and promo girls) around to woo me in.
The last I went was a Sunday. We couldn’t really think of anywhere to go at the time so accidentally ended up here. The night started off pretty slow, but after a couple of beers it was packed an everyone was dancing. Sunday is apparently industry night, so all those hardworking bar staff can come and unwind here after the weekend rush.
Used to spend more time here on Wednesday night with the footy side. We’d take over the dance floor and have a ball, boom boom!