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Last week my wife and I went to Mackey's Pub for dinner. The pub is a couple blocks north of the Farragut West Metro station, just across the street from Border's bookstore. It being a warm day, the outside tables were packed, although the only vista is the gridlock on L Street.. We sat inside, in a booth near the bar area. The inside is all dark wood. I understand that the fittings were all imported from Dublin.
We found the range of beers disappointing for a pub. We happened to arrive during happy hour, but the cut price beers were almost all mass-produced American beers, such as Budweiser, etc. The best was Sam Adams. The rest of the draft lineup included Guinness, Sierra Nevada, Harp, Bodington's, a house ale, and a few others that slip my mind at the moment. Curiously, the house ale was listed as coming from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
The food is, of course, pub food. There is an extensive array of sandwiches, plus fish & chips, shepherd's pie, steak and Guinness pie, chicken tenderloin, battered shrimp, meatloaf, and so on. I had the steak pie, and my wife had the fish & chips. She really like the way the fish were cooked. The chips (shoestring) suffered from being served under the fish, which made them a bit soggy. The steak pie was good. It was mostly meat, and the crust was worth finishing on its own. It came with a scoop of mashed potatoes and some kind of steamed vegetables, which I didn't touch (not a vegetable sort of guy).
The atmosphere was loud and crowded. There was some kind of rock music playing. Lots of people still in shirts and ties, evidently just coming off work. The service was friendly and well paced. I neither felt that the waiter was hovering over me nor that he had retired to a place in the country.
I didn't have a bad time, but I've had better dining experiences. If you're more into the bar experience than I am, you'll probably enjoy Mackey's in the evening. I have had lunch there a couple of times previously. On those occasions I was seated deeper into the pub, away from the bar, and the atmosphere was generally quieter. On the whole, I'd say I've enjoyed the lunches better than I did this dinner.
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