The blazing red sign above the door leaves no mistake to the dive bar’s location, especially helpful given the bar’s location down a bit of a side street off of a more heavily trafficked street. And if the red sign weren’t enough, a downtown shop-style window shows off a handful of ornamental plates against a blue background, like some kind of dive bar diorama to leave no doubt about its location. Yellow neon lights ring the front window, illuminating the faint view of drinking within through opaque colored glass tiles.
The vibe inside doesn’t necessarily recreate a club but it does scream “nightlife” in the way that guidebooks sometimes over dramatically describe bars in urban areas. Walking in on a Saturday night, it was loud, it was packed, it was ringed with smoke and it was anything but a neighborhood dive bar hosting a band of locals. Eiffel Bar is a verified destination beyond its dive bar tendencies, showing that a dive bar doesn’t need to be unpopular to be classified as such.
The glossy look of Eiffel Bar’s exterior extends within, where mirrored walls feature white stenciled drawings of hot air balloons, lampposts and, you guessed it, the Eiffel Tower. Be warned, many of Copenhagen’s dive bars descend into clouds of cigarette smoke, but Eiffel Bar’s compact layout greatly accentuates the smoke-filled feeling, creating clouds the drift from room to room. Across the two rooms within Eiffel Bar, the space is packed with as much seating as possible, the dive bar’s effort to maximize the limited space inside. Permanent bench seating mixes with low tables that serve as the sources for all of that cigarette smoke as the night wears on.
