Occupying floor space of scarcely 20 sqft, this bar on Wudaoying Hutong lies opposite Saffron restaurant, slightly west of clothing store Brand Nu. But you could easily walk back and forth past it a dozen times without realising it’s there (we can testify to this). Sooner or later, though, you’ll stumble across 9+ and wonder what it is.
The bar’s name is a homophone of jiu (‘alcohol’) and ‘more’ (jia), which also puns on the Mandarin for ‘home’; devilishly clever. The window, stocked with empty bottles and the now-ubiquitous cupcake – a dainty seemingly hell-bent on world domination – suggests a café in the French style with room to support three tiny tables. At the back, there’s a counter (no room, alas, for a bar) on which was sat – on our visit – a hefty side of jamon next to one of those Japanese plastic cats whose paw rocks back and forth incessantly. Three blackboards offer a slightly odd selection of snacks, but the menu proper eventually arrives on a single iPad. Oh, and there’s also another menu – the traditional paper kind – with around 30 bottles covering the usual regions.
We went with the obvious: a small array of excellent bread and cheeses from the Fromager de Pekin (30RMB) with a couple of glasses of wine. They normally have four by-the-glass options (including, unabashedly, a Blue Nun Liebfraumilch) of which we shared a Chateau La France (30/442RMB) and a chilly Beaujolais Nouveau (30RMB). They threw in some free serrano ham, too – it’s very friendly. Show-offs can enjoy a 2007 Lafite at 8,085RMB a bottle if necessary. Or, more likely, one could plump for the surprise option of a half-dozen oysters plus ‘cup’ of wine (280RMB), or try the cupcakes too – but that would only be encouraging them. Robert Foyle Hunwick