The bloke who started the Belgian beer café concept (first one was Epoque in Cammeray then that wonderful school hall conversion in The Rocks) came a gutser when he over-reached himself with the Commercial Hotel in East Balmain. It was disastrous from the start: the night the new operators took over was the occasion the old staff crashed their boat into a prawn trawler in the early morning on their way to a party at Watsons Bay. From then on it was all downhill, the Balmain pub effectively dragged the whole group down and the corporate cleaners were called in. Such a shame, I quite liked the Harrington Street one, scene of G&GR's first Christmas do and many other happy occasions.