Supposedly, taverns are a good place to go when you're new to an area.
Sitting in the tavern now, he's starting to doubt this advice. It's certainly not the sort of advice he'd come up with, though admittedly most advice isn't. But he's already here, and he's already paid for the drink that's sitting untouched on the table, and it isn't like he has any better ideas for where to go.
The room is packed, which means he needs to be very careful. The scarf he normally keeps tied around his face is sitting next to his cup -- you can't pretend to be drinking very well with a scarf around your face -- but his gaze is fixed intensely on the table, tracing out a narrow crack running along the center. Periodically he picks up his mug, looks into it, and sets it down again.