Paulina on Anhe Road is a cocktail bar for meeting friends after work, not shooting pool. The clientele is office workers in their 30s and 40s and guests from the Far Eastern Hotel, drinking wine and martinis.
The bar gets its name from owner Pauline Lin (林柏琦). "I put a lot of my own personality into this design," she said Monday during an interview in her recently opened establishment. "The concept can be expressed in two words: `simple' and `luxurious.'"
With exposed concrete walls, a polished black L-shaped bar and blue track lighting, Paulina goes for the stark minimalist look. The interior designer previously did sets for music videos by pop stars such as Jay Chou (周杰倫), and one gets the sense that this is a bar waiting for a few characters to bring it to life.
A dozen people can sit at the bar, with room for several more at three black high tables in the center. Downstairs, two large U-shaped couches can be rented for private parties at NT$15,000 each. NT$30,000 rents the entire 72㎡ basement, along with its projector, DVD player and amplifier, for anything from a business presentation to a DJ party.
Upstairs also offers a projection TV screen, which will be turned onto the World Cup Finals this weekend. But this is no sports bar. It's not a lounge bar, either. Lin calls it "the kind of bar like they have in America, where people pop in for a martini and tapas after work."
The menu lists 18 different kinds of vodka and gin martinis, priced from NT$250 to NT$350, in addition to several Chilean wines and German sparkling white wines. Boddingtons, Stella Artois, and Heineken are on tap. Bottle brews include Budweiser, Coors Light, Erdinger, Tiger and Victory Bitter.
At Paulina, tapas means dishes like bruschetta (NT$300), sauteed mushrooms with spicy garlic sauce (NT$200), squid in vinegar and lemon sauce (NT$300), German sausage (NT$400) and the cheeseburger handmade patty (NT$250). Lin says the food is "delicate." But the cheeseburger, which came with a juicy beef-and-pork patty, romaine lettuce, tomatoes and finely sliced pickles, was generously sized.
One of the best things about the place is its potential for staking out someone at Carnegies. Paulina sits a meter or so above street level and its clear glass facade offers a bird's-eye view of that nightspot.
And at NT$180 for a pint of Stella, you would be paying less than your quarry on the opposite side of Anhe Road. There is currently no happy hour, but Paulina has drink specials. On Wednesdays buy one bottle of Glenmorange whisky, get one free.
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