La Barrique is a PMU that doesn’t want you to know it’s a PMU. Situated just across from La Republique, it can lure in tourists who have accidentally wandered out of the Marais, like a carnivorous plant swallowing flies.
It’s also on route to the canal, meaning it can effortlessly catch the tiny-beanie-wearing crowd as they push their single speed bikes back from brunch. It’s close to clothing shops like the dreadfully expensive ‘Agnes B’ and the dreadful and expensive ‘The Next Door’, close enough that you might think it is a trendy cafe. But La Barrique is not a trendy cafe.
La Barrique used to have a loyalty program with a little card that they stamped every time you bought a cheap pint. If you bought ten then you got a free one, though I’m not sure if anyone ever actually did. This scheme has since been discontinued, meaning all those semi-stamped, dog-eared pieces of carton floating around the city are now worthless. La Barrique cancelling its own reward scheme is a very La Barrique thing to do.Â
La Barrique has no television for the old men to watch the horses. It’s not that kind of PMU. It is sanitised to an extent to cater to its younger, hipper audience. The cigarettes and the scratch cards and the lottery tickets are all very much there though, stocked up in the magical Aladdin's cave in the corner. The scratchers in La Barrique will all boast high jackpots and none of them will ever be winners.
La Barrique is changing, just as we all must either change or die. These days it sells locally brewed wheat beer and some kind of IPA. You can sit out on that terrace with the organic cotton beanie and look at the vinyl records you bought from a skate shop and talk about rock climbing until the cows come home. La Barrique knows what you are. La Barrique doesn’t care.Â
La Barrique: 7 Rue Beaurepaire, 75010 Paris  Â