When it comes to Italian beer, I’m a Nastro Azzuro girl. It’s light, refreshing and easy to drink. My main gripe about beer in Italy is the lack of variety. I can occasionally find an artisanal Italian beer, and they are very very good, but sometimes a girl needs a little spice in her life.
Enter: hic! hic! is a hilariously named beer shop in San Lorenzo.
Being in San Lorenzo, the decor is impossibly cool without trying to hard.
Beer lovers can find brews from all over the world. They will also recommend some delicious Italian seasonal beers that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else in Rome.
The imports range from about 3 euro to 5 euro a bottle, depending on size and brewery.
They also have quite about 50 varieties of beer cooling in the fridges, ready to go at any time.
Since this is Italy, you’re more than welcome to grab a cold brewsky, pay, pop it open and grab a plastic cup by the door on your way out. hic! has a bench outside, or you can walk a few blocks down to the piazza for great people watching.
Drinking outdoors is acceptable, but the police in Italy are cracking down more and more. You definitely can’t walk around after 11 pm with a drink in hand, and never never wander the streets obviously intoxicated.
If you choose to drink at hic!, don’t worry- there’s a secret bathroom. Just ask.
We always get our beers to go, and this time I went with the Kipling because I was too curious to pass up a ‘South Pacific Pale Ale.’ Semantics. The name pulled me in but the beer was nothing special. Too much tropical fruit.
The boy sticks with tried and true Sierra Nevada. I may be to blame for the newfound imported preference… I insisted we drink it on a recent trip to California. It’s funny to me that a beer I’m so used to being “local” in Cali can be called an import here.
hic! is open in the evenings and I would love to give you exact hours, but this is Italia!
hic! Wine Beer and Spirits Shop
Via dei Marsi, 5/7
00185 Roma
Phone: 06 44362790
Wow! What a cool find! I see Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn, Great Divide… that’s a great lineup! What other non-Irish beers is Jimmy warming up to?
Are you surprised that there are enough beer drinkers in Rome that a specialty beer import shop can stay in business? Or am I being a spoiled SoCal beer snob?