The Irish House had opened to much fanfare, going by my Insta feed, but we dropped in a few weeks later. That, and the fact that we were there relatively early in the evening – 7.30 PM – led us to believe that we’d get a table easily. That wasn’t meant to be, and I suspect that it has something to do with the Happy Hours till 8. First impressions weren’t great – the person they’d left at the door had no idea how to handle things when the place was full. We had to coax him to take down our number, and let us know when there was a table available. He kept letting people in (they never came back as they waited at the bar and took a table when it got free!) and was probably there just to open/close doors, and the lady who occasionally made a visit to the front door was probably in charge of this. But we could see that the poor thing was hassled enough, multitasking! Lesson learnt, we should reserve a table anyway! We thankfully got a table in 20 minutes.
A lot of wood, Irish green frills, and standard pub posters make up the decor, though the place is quite lively, especially the bar area, which has quite a lot of international beer brands on display. The balcony area did look promising, though we didn’t venture out. I took a picture of the hanging bike, just to ensure that I wasn’t imagining things on account of pub vapours! We had to wait quite a bit for someone to take the order, and when that happened five minutes after 8, we demanded justice – happy hour extension since we were seated and ready with our order before 8! It took a bit of debate, but they were nice about it. Yay!
The place has an exhaustive beer menu, but D choose a Butter Rum and I asked for a favourite – Old Fashioned. Pulled Pork ‘Cuban Cigars’ were the munchies to go with it. The Butter Rum was an interesting mix of rum, lime juice, honey and butter, and really worked well together. The Old Fashioned, made with Jim Beam, Angostura, and Maraschino cherry juice was smooth and balanced, and I really liked it!
For mains we chose a Steak & Kidney Pie and a Drunken Fettuccine with Grilled Chicken. The first had shredded beef, lamb kidney and mushrooms in a brown sauce, which was a little too liquid but the mashed potato that came with it helped us manage the consistency. The fettuccine had a creamy tequila-lime-jalapeno that gave it a mix of different flavours – tang, sour, and a dash of spice. The portion sizes aren’t huge, so we could manage a Dual Chocolate Torte. Dark and white chocolate mousse was an absolutely sinful, delicious way to end the meal.
We were poorer by a little over Rs.2700, which thanks to the Happy Hour, was a really good deal! The service, after the initial hiccups, improved vastly, and the place offers enough of a lively pub ambiance (with peaceful corners) for us to drop in again.
The Irish House, Level 3, VR Mall, Mahadevapura, Whitefield, Ph: 46524251