Is Brighton uni’s bar better than East Slope? We went to find out

Brighton University, the often bullied little brother of Sussex who we can’t help but wind up for our own amusement. Whether it’s asserting our dominance in Varsity, on the league tables, or on our general reputation we have clear authority over Brighton to bite our thumb at them.

Whilst league tables and education tells one story, student life and leisure tells another. University isn’t purely about hitting the books hard, it’s also about hitting the bars.

So, a weary group of students, bored of the class struggle they have to deal with everyday, ventured forth into the great unknown and set out to expose if Sussex truly is better than Brighton.

We entered, The Hive.

And this is The Hive

Yep, this is literally it. Serving only one beer on tap, Carlsberg, the bar itself is no bigger than if you were to stretch your arms out as wide as you can. Try it now. Yep, that’s how big it was.

Whilst they did have a decent selection of bottled beers and spirits, it was clearly missing an ale pump which is needed in any bar.

The ‘cafe-bar’ as  Brighton University likes to call it, has a very small bar and a mini cafe that serves paninis, cakes, and most importantly, nachos. We can excuse the lack of drinks options here if the nachos were on point, so we compiled some money together and got some.

Brighton, you have some pretty impressive nachos

We won’t lie, the nachos were good. A good size with fancy presentation makes a simple crisp look a bit more upmarket. The choice to have jalapenos and guacamole on them were offered, we turned that down though. After this hefty meal shared between four people, there needed to be something to wash the food down with. Not particularly fancying the only lager they had on tap,  I went for a single Jack Daniels and Coke.

They even managed to make JD & Coke fancy

I guess it is a fancy drink, but a lot of us are used to the slap-dash approach of serving drinks. We appreciated the professional presentation that required us pouring in the airline-sized Coke ourselves, it made us feel like we were part of the staff, like one of the union almost. Thanks Brighton.

All of this however, does not excuse this…

£5 minimum spend… Seriously?

We get it, someone got a bit too drunk one night and changed your policy where there has to be a £5 minimum spend. We understand that you don’t know how to change this back and so have to enforce it, I mean why else would you do this stupid rule? Not to alienate your customers who are mainly students, forcing them to spend more and thus adding to the growth of the capitalist society that inevitably with oppress us to a point where revolution is the only way to progress…

Oh great, now I’ve gone cross-eyed.

Swallowing my pride, I accepted the £5 minimum by spending a extra 40p, making my single Jack Daniels and Coke cost £2.95. Disgraceful, I need to relax.

Oh look, they have a beer pong table

I have been corrected and told that this is actually a ping-pong table. A pretty cool addition, we played a couple of games and due to our lack of skill we obviously managed to hit everyone who was sitting down around us. A recipe for disaster should anyone get drunk enough and start serving aces with the ball.

Actually, they have a lot more to play with

East Slope may have two pool tables and a dart board that no one can play with, but The Hive has giant Jenga, their own pool table, giant connect 4, TVs, and big comfy sofas to fall asleep on. These were really cool additions for people to play around with, still doesn’t make up for the £5 minimum though.

It was pretty dead out, not gonna lie

You would expect people to be using this space like crazy. Sussex outlets are busy whatever time of day you go, the same can’t be said for The Hive. It was pretty quiet with the odd group coming and going, this just meant more time on the ping-pong table for us.

So, which is better? The Hive or East Slope?

Without a shadow of a doubt, East Slope takes the crown here. All of the boxes were ticked in East Slope’s favour with a very strong contestation regarding the nachos. The food on offer at The Hive was decent, but nothing compared to a double chicken burger and chips at East Slope.

The fact that The Hive has one pump is pretty laughable, and the fact it only serves Carlsberg makes my sides split.

With two other Brighton University bars to visit, to claim we win on the leisure/student bar aspect would be inconclusive. To prove that Sussex truly is the better university in almost every aspect, we’re going to have to visit the next two bars. So, Starting Gate and Basement Central, expect us.