Inside: Sobo 151

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In the wide, wide world of sports-oriented bars it is uncommon to stumble upon one that is dedicated to hockey. Equally unusual is finding, in among the plethora of places devoted to specific cuisines, a place that specializes in victuals from Czechoslovakia. And it is positively singular to find both elements at work in the same venue. Yet here is SoBo 151, pleasantly obsessed with both.

Drinks. Behind the oak: shelf upon shelf of impressive top-shelf and mid-shelf libations. Even the well is above ordinary. The showpiece, however, is the beer menu. Czechoslovakia’s climate and geography are excellent for growing hops, and the country’s beer history goes back hundreds of years, to around 850 AD, when, in the town of Plzen, brewers created the world’s first pilsner beer. SoBo offers today’s most popular pilsner, Pilsner Urquell—an icy-cold helping of good cheer—on tap, as well as bottles of Staropramen and Golden Pheasant. (Sadly, they don’t serve Budvar, the recipe for which was so famously ripped off by Anheuser-Busch who named their tepid product Budweiser. But anyway…) Their wine selection is better than average, including Mirassou, a clever little pinot noir that’s well worth sampling.

My favorite item on the drinks menu, though, is slivovitz, a 100-proof member of the rakia family of spirits. It’s most often called a plum brandy, a name that works only insofar as “plum” is taken to mean “thumbtack” and “brandy” to mean “wheelchair lubricant.” It goes down like a fistful of Lincoln Logs, but if you’re on a mission to achieve intoxication (or, perhaps, chemically cleanse your GI tract), look no further.

Happy hour happens Monday through Friday, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., with drink and food specials such as $2 wells and domestic drafts, $3 Pilsner Urquell pints, $3 premium beers, and $2 appetizers. They have daily drink specials, too.

Food: The SoBo bill of fare features a lot of common bar staples—burgers, nachos, etc.—but ignore all that and have something from the Czech side of the menu, where you’ll find rizek (schnitzel), chicken paprika, bratwurst, and kachna (roast duck) that is well worth the extra prep time. Then, for dessert, climb aboard a plateful of apple strudel (made in-house) slathered with vanilla ice cream. They serve breakfast from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day, so when you’re hankerin’ for a blast of kielbasa and eggs, you now know just where to go.

Décor: As befits a hockey-obsessed bar, the sport somewhat dominates SoBo’s wall treatments. Its ceilings are festooned with NHL and, happily, international team sweaters. There is even one of Peter Forsberg’s pre-Avs Swedish jerseys. Several photos and curios bearing autographs from Avalanche players are also on display.

Where you don’t find hockey stuff you find plenty of shiny dark wood. The bar itself and the liquor shelves behind it are richly hued and polished to a fine sheen, but there are just enough kitschy knickknacks about the place to keep it from looking like a Bennigan’s. (What’s so bad about looking like a Bennigan’s? Well, the whole operation just went belly-up like an old sick ditch carp. Draw such conclusions as you wish.)

SoBo has a spacious main room with a smaller room in back housing pool tables. The bar stools are a little on the hard side, but that’s no big deal, and the central area is stuffed with lots of tables, so there are usually plenty of places to park your carcass. Smokers can avail themselves on the huge screened-in patio out front, which also affords a pretty good observation deck for studying the native South Broadwayians (an anthropological category all to themselves).

Crowd: In addition to the aforementioned South Broadwayians, you have a contingent of Sports-Barians, Day Drinkerites, and an occasional warrior from the Tattoo Tribe. All in all, an eclectic fusion of types. Many of the pool players seem to know their way around a hunk of green felt.

Knocks: Just one little beef: the service could be a tad quicker. It’s not glacier-paced, not at all, but it isn’t exactly Sakic on skates, either. Oddly, it gets better as the place gets busier.

Bottom Line: And there it is. SoBo 151. A Czechoslovakian Hockey Bar. One of the best you’re likely to locate. But even if it weren’t chock-a-block with all things Czechoslovakia and Hockey (like, say, all things Ulan Bator and Four-Square) it would still be a pretty happening joint. Czech it out.

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