NightLife

17 September 2014 - 02:20 By Yolisa Mkele
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Your average hotel bar is well decorated, and inhabited by hirsute expats and midnight entrepreneurs.

This can be fun, but The Bannister Hotel in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, is different.

Its Bistro Bar is the picture of a mild-mannered hotel bar that has borrowed all the best parts of the experience while leaving the sweaty, middle-aged foreign men at home. It is nicely decorated, sporting wood furniture that would make an environmentally friendly interior designer purr.

By day it has the mien of a hipster coffee joint. Apple Macs sprout from table surfaces and iPhones go palm to palm with S5 Galaxies. No one looks as if they own a suit, and they are discussing things that will be cool in the future.

Evenings are different. The facade is bathed in golden light and there is nary a creepy expat in sight. It is filled with fresh-faced varsity students who have fled the pickpockets at Kitchener's and the dank, dark, overcrowded sweatiness of Great Dane next door.

Aside from being aesthetically pleasing, a well-lit bar allows less sober patrons to find the toilets without clattering into every blurry shape in their way.

  • 9 De Beer Street, Braamfontein, 011-403-6888
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