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tina Timus
Vali Nas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Caru cu bere
As the legend goes the name of the pub was given when a cart of beer casks,
coming from Bragadiru, stopped before the bar.
published in issue 3883 page 8 at 2007-03-02
Recently Caru cu bere reopened its gates, after the building underwent
massive repair works for quite a long period. Today it is part of the City
Grill network, and restoration investments amounted to EUR 1.5 M, with the
front part expected to swallow another half a million. But efforts have yielded
fruit: paintings on the walls and ceiling and the gilded decorations look just
as they did 100 years ago, tables were reconditioned, along with the entire lot
of oak wood furniture. Superb stained-glass windows filter the light, and
chandeliers regained their beauty. Downstairs, in the cellar, there is a
genuine museum displaying beer steins and pints from various periods.
As the Peace treaty was being signed in Berlin in 1878, a certain Ioan Cabasan
bought a shabby house behind Zlatari Inn, on Stavropoleos lane. At the time,
much of the Constantin Voda Inn, which used to be there, had been demolished,
so that, since 1861, before the house there was a nice large open area, opening
onto the Stavropoleos and St. Ioan cel Mare inns. To the south, imposingly
towering over the slums, was Nicolae Brancoveanus palace, from the gates of
which the Mogosoaia Bridge started.
For an entrepreneur, this open place was interesting enough, although the place
was a dump. But soon more substantial incentives were to appear, such as the
construction in the area of a wood panel circus named Walhala, alternatively
used by German artists - heavy beer drinkers - and by politicians.
The construction of a tavern, La pisica neagra and of a sweetshop,
Baltador, both located in the Zlatari Inn wing that opened onto Stavropoleos,
will rapidly turn the area into a place with promising commercial potential.
But another event was decisive. In the same year, 1878, a merchant from Bacau
named Dumitru Marinescu was about to start the construction, in the
neighbourhood, of a brewery and spirits workshop, which will be finished in
1899 and will be known as the Bragadiru brewery. The owner was already looking
for clients to sign sale-purchase contracts, and among them, among the very
first perhaps, was Cabasan. Under circumstances so favourable to trade, the
latter plucked up courage and went into business. On May Day in 1879, he opened
a beer house in the building on Stavropoleos Lane, the second in Bucharest at
the time, after the pub opened next to the former office of the
Justice-Brotherhood secret society on Jignita lane. And he named it La Caru
cu bere
(The beer cart). The legend has it that the name of the pub came when the
first cart of beer casks, coming from Dumitru Marinescus new brewery stopped
before the bar. Actually, the beer had been brought from Bragadiru village,
where entrepreneur D. Marinescu had put together a makeshift beer refinery.
The fact is that this name, with a slightly out-of-date meaning and sound, was
to share with the Capsa brothers company a celebrity untouched by the passage
of time. Nota bene: Cabasan was never a supplier of the Crown! Moreover, his
name is mentioned in no anecdote or memoirs related to Caru cu bere. Every
now and then, his name is mentioned in the newspapers of the time, but only in
advertisements. It vanishes from almanacs around 1886, and after several years
of absence the company is once again quoted, this time with new owners: Mircea
brothers. A new era began. The new owners commissioned the plans for the
reconstruction and redecoration of the pub to Austrian architect Siegfrid
Kofezinsky. Radical reconstruction and improvement works begin in 1888 - the
date is mentioned in several memoirs works - and were completed, with
difficulties, only in 1924. The old, modest building was demolished completely,
then the central building was erected, along with the cellar,
the kitchen and the front part, in neo-Gothic style.
The interior is decorated in a refined combination of styles, with the
Byzantine one represented by balconies and banisters, harmoniously combined
with the gilded frescoes and the stained-glass windows in the Bavarian academic
style. A statue of old Ghita the cellarman holding a lamp in his hand was added
later at the end of the stairs, next to the balcony, and it affects nothing of
the spectacular interior. The pub features were also changed, and starting 1902
it will be both a beer house and a restaurant, although ads tried to reassure
the old customers that special beer from the Bragadiru brewery is served all
days and evenings, until after the late night shows. Brothers Nicolae, Ignat
and Victor Mircea, born in Cata village near Medias, had new ideas, French
rather than German. As far as the menu was concerned, customers from
Transilvania, the most numerous over the years, found it similar to the one
offered in the German taverns at home. Quite popular were the
Praguer sausages with horse radish, frankfurters, boeuf salad, mashed peas and
the always present small bottle of Lacrima Cristi wine, which old Ghita the
cellarman took care of for over one quarter of a century, in the pub cellar.
Beer drinkers were offered draught beer directly from the cask. The Mircea
brothers also imported from across the mountains the tidinessmama Zangor,
the only woman employed in the pub, was in charge with thisand the attention
paid to apprentices, waiters and cooks, who had several rooms to rest in.
These were notable differences from the other pubs in the Capital, which made
Caru cu bere unique and ensured its unrivalled fame. Before the WW1 outbreak,
one of the brothers, Victor, abandoned the family business and set up his own,
competing beer house, specially for officers, under the new Military Palace
inaugurated in 1912. Ads indicate that he took full advantage of the fame
gained in Caru cu bere, and he named his pub the Victor Mircea beer house.
An enterprising spirit, he was also the one who took over the management of the
restaurant inside the Gara de Nord (railway station). Thus, the Stavropoleos
pub was left with two owners only. Soon, Ignat was also to try to start his own
business. With his brother Nicolaes support and advice, he bought a tavern and
turned it, although at high costs, into a beer house named Ignat Mircea. He
too tried to take advantage of the fame that Caru cu bere had secured for the
Mircea family. But he failed, and in 1929 the
Romanian-British bank declared him bankrupt. And he didnt go down by himself.
As he had guaranteed his brothers credit and the bank threatened to take away
his pub, Nicolae made a desperate move and committed suicide, falling from the
second floor above the cellar, as we learn from the newspapers of the time.
Bucharest locals decried the misfortune, but equally honest was their concern
with the future of the famous pub. Times were testing. And still, in those
difficult times, the company and the beer house survived. Unfortunately, the
ads make no reference to the new owners name, the article published by
Magazin Istoric, reads.
The pub served as mess for the German army
Apparently, the new owner did not interfere with the house customs, which
explains the popularity of the beer house among the German officers who chose
the place as their mess between 1942 and 1944, just as it had happened in WW1.
But then came the occupation by the barbaric Red Army and the abusive seizing
of the pub, in 1948-1949 (the so-called nationalisation). The Russian
officers, bothered by the German paintings, ordered that they be covered in
red paint, so that everybody would know who the new master was, and that
decorations be covered in white paint. Whether communist or apolitical,
Bucharesters did not see the mutilation of the old beer house with a friendly
eye, and shortly after Stalins death, right in 1953, works are carried out to
remove the red paint.
But under the new peoples ownership, the bourgeois tradition loses its
appeal: the horse radish Praguers are replaced with the popular Olt sausages,
the mashed peas are taken out of the menu and so on. Caru cu bere was doomed
to turn into a regular Socialist beer house. But clients were still numerous,
and most of the times ennobled by artists. The decadence lasted until 1986,
when large-scale restoration works started, coordinated by painter Nicolae
Gheorghe, who restored not only its past elegance, but also its lost dignity,
at the expense of the proletarian clients.
by Nine oClock
(C) 2000-2005 Nine o'Clock
----------------------------
Vali
"Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions are the chief mark of
greatness." (Carlo Goldoni)
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know
peace." (Jimi Hendrix)
---------------------------------
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