A few years ago, there was a strange fad in bar design here in Beijing.
And here, I mean the design of the serving counter, not the decor and layout of the bar overall.
Somebody managed to sell the idea of covering the entire bar with ceramic bathroom tiles. And not even full-size tiles, but ones that had been cut up into tiny squares to create a mosaic effect.
So - shiny, slippery, noisy, easy to break.... and impossible to clean properly (all that grime and spillage taking up permanent residence in the grouting). And denying us the dark wood we should properly have in a bar (and which was, in all probability, actually present underneath all the stupid mini-tiles).
They had one of these upstairs in The Den for a while 3 or 4 years ago (perhaps they still do; I haven't been up there for ages). There was a nearly identical one in the cellar at Nuage as well. And I'm sure I saw at least one other somewhere, although it escapes my memory where.
The very worst thing about these ugly tiled bars, though, was that the front edge of the counter-top was extravagantly ROUNDED. The edge of a bar should never be curved, because it becomes too easy for the poor punter to misjudge where the end of the effective horizontal surface is, put a glass or a bottle too close to the edge - and have it slide off. When your counter is made of ultra-slippery ceramics and the curvature extends three or four inches back from the edge of the bar..... well, glasses spontaneously migrating on to the floor becomes an almost hourly occurrence.
How could anyone ever think that this was a good idea??
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