Opened in 1996 and sporting a profoundly professional web site, The Moose Bar might be the dive bar this reviewer has encountered with the biggest disconnect between external marketing and physical appearance. This is a dive of a dive of a dive. Outside, there’s a giant moose on the gate. Inside there are multiple murals of a moose fornicating with a woman. On every each there’s graffiti. On every inch beside those inches, there are stickers. To see that interior paired up with a web site that features, gasp, moving graphics is a little jarring.
Copenhagen is the kind of city without a single point of focus, to be sure, but if there was one, the area that surrounds The Moose is a good candidate. Home to long stretches of pedestrian-only pathways, the area can feel a bit like a labyrinth of branching roads and alleys. The Moose lives on one of those branches, easily found thanks to the hanging metal moose head sign above the door. Once found, the moose head-emblazoned gate leaves no doubt.
The space is narrow and dominated by the bar just inside the front door, a narrow u-shaped structure that doesn’t leave a ton of room for a bartender, but manages to squeeze in a line of taps and ample liquor bottles. A single table (with an alley view) sits in the front window and a few low chairs can be found opposite the bar. Aside from a handful of stools, there isn’t much else too this first room (aside from the Dracula doll hanging from the ceiling, of course).