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Inside Bar Hygge: Beer and coziness on Fairmount Ave.

Bar Hygge - pronounced "HYOO-guh" and taken from a Danish expression roughly translated as "cozy camaraderie" - is set up for comfort.

Thursday Feb. 4 was the opening of Bar Hygge (1720 Fairmount Ave., 215-765-2274), a brewpub by Earth Bread + Brewery's Tom Baker and Peggy Zwerver in a partnership with Stew and Julie Keener, of Baggataway Tavern in West Conshohocken.

Bar Hygge - pronounced "HYOO-guh" and taken from a Danish expression roughly translated as "cozy camaraderie" - is set for comfort by CANNOdesign: a spacious wooden bar, plush anteroom (creating something of a "parlor" effect in front of the old farmhouse windows framing the brewhouse), and banquette and high-top seating beneath a wall of barrel staves. There's plenty of requisite reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs.

Chef Chris Galbraith's menu is split between clever "boards" - assorted app-size dishes (meat, cheese, vegetables) that can be built into customized sharing platters - as well as more conventional dishes. Nothing too outlandish: roast chicken breast, braised short rib, herbed spaetzle resembling mac and cheese, and a grass-fed beef burger. No flatbread pizza, EB+B's specialty.

In the 10-barrel brewhouse, branded as Brewery Techne, Baker makes six original beers. The bar pours four "guest" beers and four wines on tap.

Speaking of original beers: You'll be hearing plenty about the hauntingly delicious Gotlandsdricka called Grinding Grooves made from smoked malt and an entire juniper bush (!), as well as the others: H.O.P., a pale ale that's dry-hopped with amarillo; a Belgian pale ale called Meme; a Baltic porter with balsamic called Alchemy; a saison brune with rye and caraway called Izzy Brown Ale; and a Scottish ale called Doon the Watter.

It is open nightly, adding Sunday brunch in a month.

Dinner menu

"Boards" menu

Drink menu