Not the most glamorous of Hard Rock’s Cafes, but it’s worth checking out on a Saturday or on a live music night.

The Venue
The Hard Rock Cafe has two entrances: one from the Old Brewery Quarter courtyard and the other on St Mary’s Street, where you enter a long corridor lined with pictures of rock and pop stars (from Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend to Blondie and Chrissie Hynde), as well as signed guitars, gold discs, CD and other music-related paraphernalia. At the end of the corridor you emerge into a medium sized room with a stage at one end and a curved V-shaped bar at the other.

You don’t get many frills here: just a dark bare wood floor and banquette seating along the walls. There’s live music on Wednesdays and Thursdays which pulls in the punters, but it’s relatively quiet during the week compared to the weekends when it’s open till 2am. On busy nights the mainstream rock music gets turned upto 11. Capacity peaks at about 1am when people drift off to other clubs.

The People
Although there’s a smattering of Whitesnake and Motorhead T-shirts, scruffy jeans and tattoos, like a lot of Hard Rock’s it’s pretty much a mixed crowd in terms of age and style, although the rock demographic can pull in an older crowd. Blinged up townies are few and far between, but they do sneak in.

The Food and Drink
Stella, Beck’s and Boddington’s (£2.40 a pint) are the only beers on tap; otherwise there’s Corona, Budweiser, Beck’s, Leffe and Heineken in bottles. There are lots of cocktails, though, and they average out at around the £5-£8 mark, although they’re all £3 during happy hour (4pm-10pm, Monday-Friday) when bottles of house wine are half price too. The house red (Hardys Cabernet Merlot) is decent value even at full price at £12.95 a bottle—or grab a Spanish Faustino for £22.95.

The Last Word
Its not that pretty but this Cardiff Hard Rock pulls in its fair share of mature punters. Saying that no self-respecting indie kid would be seen dead here.