Zinc Lounge, Prague

After the underwhelming experience at Cloud 9, I wanted to try out the bar at the other Prague-based Hilton: Zinc Lounge and Bar, found in the Hilton Prague Old Town. I wanted to see how it measured up, and in short: it was pretty bad. Please forgive me, Cloud 9, I didn't realise your sister bar was so awful. I would have cut you some slack otherwise!

The Hilton Prague Old Town is pretty easy to find compared with the other Hilton. It's just off Náměstí Republiky, one of the main squares in the Old Town. The Zinc Bar and Lounge is just to the right as you come in. "Zinc" is also the name of the hotel restaurant, just behind the bar

Inside, it's decorated like a dreary hotel lobby. Leather seats and low, round wooden tables. Holey partitions of wood try to separate the actual hotel lobby from the bar. Despite their best efforts, we were still drinking around a bunch of people loudly chatting on Skype (I assume there's free wi-fi in the lobby area) and wheeling their luggage around, waiting for their ride to the airport.

The menu consisted almost entirely of classic cocktails. There was nothing inventive or fancy like at Cloud 9. We stuck to our staples and got a gimlet and a manhattan. They were both OK – competently done and similar to what you could find at a lot of bars in Prague.

The thing is, these cocktails were 220Kč (~$11) each. And there was me going off on how expensive the Cloud 9 cocktails were, at 185Kč (~$9)! Like I said in the beginning, I'M SORRY CLOUD 9. The Cloud 9 cocktails were far more reasonably-priced (I still think they're expensive, though). At least you get something different, innovative. At Zinc you get a standard cocktail that at another bar (say, Groove Bar) would be 100Kč (~$5).

Put together the atmosphere of the hotel lobby with the fact that the drinks were exceedinly expensive for what they were, and you get a disappointing experience. I'd suggest venturing a little out of the hotel to find a better cocktail bar.

4.6 / 10