Fat Cat

With a name like that you would think that the customers should be in for a shock when they see the price of the drinks and you would be right, because as with all good business models the owners of Fat Cats are relying on the people who have more money than sense to spend it here, the land baron milks it’s cash cow, in this case people on a night out paying for expensive drinks and sometimes for the privilege of entry, What! Yes I’m disgusted.
The interior is decked out with leather sofas mahogany flooring and tables and lots of modern trendy stuff. As a night out venue I’d avoid it or try and go to varsity or any one of the less busy pubs. The service is slow due to the huge crowds at the bar and the music is too loud to have a decent conversation.
The main reason to go here is to make your self-​known or just waste time pretending to enjoy yourself.

The Fat Cat Bar tends to have a pretty lively atmosphere about it. It’s not quite a club but it’s slightly more than a bar, so you can sit and chat without being dragged up to the dancefloor (which is fairly small anyway and not really used as much of a dancefloor in my experience). It’s popular with students, but it tends to attract crowds of twenty-​somethings so you’re unlikely to see many sixteen and seventeen years-​olds trying their luck with their older sibling’s ID. The bar staff are friendly, and the bar itself tends to offer a lot of 2 for 1 deals on cocktails and happy hour prices, I find it to be used a lot as a stop off point on the way to somewhere else in the city where everything is more dance orientated, but it’s not really a quick stop off, it’s somewhere to sit with a drink while the night is young.

During the week, off-​peak, Fat Cat is relatively quiet and a good place to pre-​drink before a trip to the Theatre, or off into town. There is a good and tasty range of food (the ribs are scrummy) which is not really the mainstay of the bar, but good nevertheless.
Fat Cat has a plush interior with leather sofas and the like, which gives it one of the more pleasing looks of bars in the centre of town.
Do not go to Fat Cat on a Friday or Saturday night. What is frankly a nice bar becomes absolutely terrible on these nights, it is so busy that moving is a real trial and getting to the bar an incredible feat. They insist on playing music incredibly loudly, which in a place without a dance floor always strikes me as stupid. Surely the main reason for loud music is to dance, otherwise you’re just stopping anyone having a conversation. It really isn’t a nice place to go on these nights and worth avoiding at all costs.
Monday’s offer two for one on cocktails so can get busy too, but you’ll have to weigh up if two cocktails for £6 is worth a lot of noise and bustle. Overall, a good day time and early evening bar, but God help you if you find yourself trapped by the bar on a Friday night.

Fancy a delicious cocktail in a sophisticated atmosphere where you can sip and feel like a glamorous beast of chicness? Go elsewhere.
Fat Cats have cultivated that unique brand of drinking elegance I like to refer to as ‘Canteen Cocktails’. You go in, yell your order across a counter, grab your drink and go sit down on huge tables which may or may not be folded up at the end of the hour in preparation for the afternoon’s PE lesson. All that’s missing is a beige sectioned tray.
Fat Cats also have that super annoying way of prescribing the mood. The lights will dim and the music will get louder so that you instantly feel you have to cuddle up closer to the person next to you. Not ideal if you are with your course-​mates or colleagues.
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I like Fat Cat, but I don’t love it. Granted, I have had a few good nights here, but that’s thanks to the copious amount of tequila shots more than anything else.
It’s normally so crowded it’s difficult to manœuvre, and being crammed so close to strangers naturally opens the door to roving hands. Which I don’t appreciate, especially after a night drinking Jack Daniels.
So for that reason, Fat Cat isn’t at the top of my list of favourite Cardiff bars. The drinks are expensive for what is essentially the chavy stepsister of bars like The Crockerton (found a few doors down).
Plus, the music’s too loud (and Radio 1 for my taste), which is perfect for a club, but I find it annoying in a place like Fat Cat. I think it could be quite a fantastic venue if it changed locations (well said, James!) and made the effort to be more than just a mediocre cocktail bar.

Fat cats is situated amongst a string of bars, unfortunately ones that are a lot cheaper. This bar is plush looking, but there is something ever so slightly boring about it, it just doesn’t inspire me to drink — which is a bad thing.
There is something in my brain that just won’t allow me to go here to drink, maybe it’s the prices, maybe it’s the fact that I feel like it has no soul. I’m sounding over dramatic now, but there is something really boring about this place. On the bright side, it is close to the theatre for pre and apres theatre drinks and it can also do 2 for 1 cocktails. I hate cocktails, so I think you can see why this place is just not winning me over.
The other bars along this strip don’t exactly have my love for them but at least some of them are cheap. I recommend going elsewhere Unilocalers, but I could just be weird.

Awkwardly placed in between the ever-​classy superstars of the Cardiff night scene, Glam and Oceana, sits our lovely Fat Cats. A bar that has all the makings of a great place, but unfortunately is often beset by the sleazy run-​off of its neighbours, much to my chagrin.
If you can overlook the small number of dribbling idiots that crowd around the outside and cling to the bar like caveman and skank shaped barnacles, you’ll notice that Fat Cats is the kind of place built for people to sit, enjoy music, get very drunk and spend the whole night talking on and around the comfortable leather couches that dot the establishment.
The cocktails are numerous and as wonderfully colourful as you’d expect from any cocktail bar, but the best thing about this place for me is the absolutely fantastic range of whiskeys along the bar. Scotch, Irish whiskys, bourbon are all represented in a variety of brands and none of them are too expensive, considering the quality. One of the only places in the city to offer such a comprehensive selection, so if you like your whiskey, you’ll get a kick out of Fat Cats.

I do agree mostly with Tiffany’s review. I love Fat Cats — especially if you’re having one of those frenaissances. However, I do have to add a word of warning about going when it is NOT ladies’ night (trust me, it’s not worth it). It is so completely rammed at this times that you will find yourself unable to move in any direction without treading on six people’s toes. You will also be unable to walk from one end of the bar to the other without being groped about seventeen times. I don’t know it is with some of the places in Cardiff, but they are like groping hot-​spots. So, ladies’ night is a big double thumbs up with bells and ribbons on. But any other night of the week? Take a big scary looking man with you to stare down those gropers.

Just across the road from the New Theater and (a bit to close to) Oceana is this lovely little bar called fat cats with kitch décor and a cool laid back vibe, though that could have something to do with the fantastic cocktails.
More often than not there’s a 2 for 1 offer and despite this, the cocktails are great and made with love, which is more than can be said for some of the scurge that’s churned out in some of the bigger chain pubs.
Thursday night is ‘ladies night’ and I’d say you could get away with having a really decent evening for £15. If you’re a girl who likes lady dates (e.g. when you and a girlfriend go out for a platonic yet romantic meal/​drinking) then you can have two courses and a cocktail for £10. SHOCKING. Further more a bottle of house wine costs another £10 so if you split that you’re laughing.
Service is good, the staff are pretty attractive but the lighting is low and I broke my glasses so I might be fibbing. I may have also had a few cocktails but it’s rude not to…

I love this place. I have frequented Fat Cats many a time. However, from reading the review by Tommowinne, it has occurred to me I’ve never set foot in this place on the weekend past 8pm, so it’s never been too busy and too loud to have a decent conversation. They have a 241 offer on selected cocktails before 8pm and on a Thursday it’s ‘Ladies Night’ which consists of you and your girly friends having a meal plus any cocktail for £10 and the 241 on cocktails lasts all night! The food is average. The cajun chicken burger is tastaay!
The outside is deceiving small compared to inside. There are big leather sofas, high seated chairs/​tables, the room is dimly lit and the décor is great, subtly classy. Well, as class as it can be for Greyfriars Road. A must visit if you love cocktails and are after somewhere fairly decent to drink in Cardiff.

Yes, it is an upmarket bar and yes, it does have atmospheric lighting and velvet drapes, but NO, it doesn’t maintain a relaxed feel! Not on a Saturday night when it’s rammed with ‘beautiful people’ and the DJ can’t keep his hand off the volume dial. Jebus, my ears were quivering after a couple of hours at Fat Cats.
Went here with a delagation of European youth workers to enjoy a tasty meal, yummy cocktails and even better conversation. I got 2 out of 3. The food was diabolical and the music was so loud, Satan himself would have struggled to make himself heard over the dancemusic din. The cocktails were, however, perfect. Classic Mojito mixed well. Got to give ‘em credit for that.
It was sooooo embarrassing though — one of our guests had to order 3 times because they had run out of so many things on the menu. A couple of us had to order twice. Then the food turned up at different times, so some people’s food got cold waiting for the other dishes to arrive. My Beef & Ginger with Noodles was apparently ‘back by popular demand’. I swear that the chef (yeah, right) just up-​ended a bottle of soy sauce over the plate and sent it straight out to the table. It was inedible. The beef was beyond as well. Tough as old boots, yes i think that’s the best way of describing it. Some of the other people’s food came out of the kitchen stone cold and ‘limp’. Really, it wasn’t good enough. If they can’t cater for groups of 10 people on a Saturday night, they shouldn’t take the booking.
Oh yeah, the bouncers were very rude to everyone going in and coming out as far as i could tell. Hey, at least they didn’t discriminate!
Having said all that, i’ll definitely be popping back for a couple of cocktails after work, but on a week night and in a small group.