This place is a riot.
It is called the Brew Brothers but the sign outside also calls the establishment Bro.
Bro as in Fraternity Bro.
This is a straight up uncompromising American collegiate restaurant-brewery.
It is designed to exactly replicate what you would get in a town like East Lansing, Michigan near the Michigan State Campus or in Amherst, Massachusetts near the U-Mass Amherst campus.
It is meant to be a college student paradise.
There is a long run of homemade beers with the normal selection from lagers to wheat beers to IPAs to stout.
They are designed for maximum drinkability rather than distinctive taste per se.
All of their beers "go down easy" so you can drink a lot of them.
There is also a substantial menu of "fun food".
The menu is half globalized American (a broad selection of pizzas along with a wide choice of burgers) and the other half French cafe (Salad Lyonnaise, Andouillette, Tartare de Boeuf).
The food is fine.
The place is packed with undergraduates.
Two floors worth of undergraduates.
They don't have a live band - but otherwise this could be any bar on Sixth Street in Austin.
As is the case on Sixth Street, you hang out with your friends if you brought eight to fifteen of your favorite buddies.
If you are by yourself, you people watch.
I watched two American exchange students have a big romantic argument and break up. They continued their acrimonious exchange by phone after he left in disgust.
I watched a well upholstered gallery of wealthy French girls have girls-night-out.
Electronic cigarettes were a big part of the evening agenda, so they were up-and-down up-and-down in-and-out in-and-out all night depending on whether they were in vaping mode or drinking mode.
The menu has plenty of proseccos, roses and girly cocktails for the female contingent.
Unlike an American collegiate bar, they do NOT have TVs everywhere.
So there are large parts of the bar, where friends actually talk to each other rather than watch sports events.
If this were a college fun bar in the United States, it would be one of the better ones.
This is not how I thought I would be spending my time when I came to Lyon for a month of cultural immersion.
But this is how college students spend their time here.
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