Pub/Bar eating near Bell Centre

[Chicas]

I hate to have to ask this, but I'm looking for a decent sports bar/pub location for pre-hockey game eats. I absolutely detest the Cage aux Sports and the Peel Pub, so leave those out. Just wondered whether there was something a little more interesting than that in the area. La Brunoise looks interesting, but perhaps a little two fancy for the crowd I'll be with. Has Moe's closed its downtown location?

[Guinness02122]

How about Brewtopia and Hurley's for drinks?

[C70]

the new Irish Embassy Pub on lower Bishop also has good pub eats, IMO better and more variety than Hurley's. It's a great looking pub as well, and they have nice new big screen TVs.

[phedre]

Irish Embassy Pub? Tell me more! I am always looking for a good spot for a pint!

[C70]

http://www.irish-embassy.com/home.html

:)

[SnackHappy]

Just wanted to say that we hit the Irish Embassy last night, and it was quite disappointing. We started with crab cakes. They were mushy, heavy on the mayo, and lacked any kind of crunch. Passable.

Then I got my steak and potato pie. It was ok. Not awful, but not very inspired either. Pedestrian.

Then came the fish and chips and what a sorry sight it was. The fries were undercooked and a pale yellowish white. The fish was dark brown and oozing grease. It was one the worst attempts at fish and chips I've ever seen from a supposedly Irish pub. Pathetic.

My dinning partner decided to return the plate and opted for the chicken tikka masala which tasted tasted like it was made from bottled curry gravy, but was, at least, edible. Mediocre.

Next time we'll go back to McKibbins.

[Fritzy]

My experience with their crab cakes, served with jalapeño aioli, (washed down with a nice Harp draught lager) was quite a bit more positive than yours. I should say also that the two crab cakes were quite generous in size and the two of them together were larger than what I would have considered an appetizer. On the other hand, the Irish Coffee I ordered to finish things off, definitely should have been served much hotter. The place was certainly quite for lunch time, even if it was a Wednesday noon.

[phedre]

I don't blame you for detesting those places!

You're within walking distance of Crescent street, where Hurley's is. It's noisy, but the food's got a decent QPR, and they have a good selection of beer on tap.

[eat2much]

Moe's has closed and the space is now a Baton Rouge which might fit the bill. The food at Brunoise is much better however.

[phedre]

Ugh. Baton Rouge is on my "NEVER AGAIN" list. We went to the spot near the bell centre once for lunch. Let's run down the list of things that went wrong:

- they lost our order due to a computer glitch, which is fine, but...
- we didn't find out til we tracked down our waiter (who'd ignored us for an hour) to see where our order was.
- we waited another hour, then had to track down someone again to find out that they had forgotten to prepare our order. Again, the waiter had not bothered to come see us.
- we had to finally track down a manager to actually get our order put in.
- after all that, they offered to comp our drinks (we were all drinking water or sodas).

Worst experience ever. I would put it on par with Cage and Peel Pub, to be honest.