The Derby

Was good, but they closed :(

Great place for a patio happy hour, and one of the best burgers in Atlanta.

love to derby, a place to just drink good cheap beer and place pool, ppl can smoke inside and just have a good time. food is quite good for the kind of place it is.

Great Sports Bar, Dive/​Bar for Happy Hour and smokers.
The food is okay for bar food, and the bartendars are HILARIOUS, Love them.

I have been here a few times and had pretty good service except for this one time. It was horrible! I came here with 4 other women at 3 PM for a quick late lunch. We sat down and noticed that there was only the bartender who was also a server. It took her a couple of minutes to get us menus. When she did she said «oh I gotta take a potty break». I thought it was a bit unnecessary. She disappeared into the bathroom for 25 minutes and left the entire place unattended. She didn’t come get our order until another 25 minutes later. When she came by we were already fuming. We told her that we have been waiting for a while. She said that she’s the only one here and she has 12 other tables to serve. We looked around and there were like 5. The server should have just apologized for the wait. Thirty minutes later, we STILL didn’t get our food. We asked the server and she said that the burger is really big. It’s three pounds and it takes a while to cook it medium well. I was thinking, really? THREE POUNDS??? That is a hugeeeee burger or she’s an idiot. You know what the kicker after this was? We ALL saw her put our order into the computer. She ran around for 30 minutes and didn’t even put in our order!!! Now we were beyond pissed and starving. After another 25 minutes, the server comes to our table and says that the kitchen ran out of prime rib for the prime rib sandwich. She also said that the kitchen is plating the food right now. We started getting testy with her. We said that you should have known that or the kitchen should have communicated the lack of prime rib with the server. Then we just said it was fine, 2 of the women are going to split the steak sandwich and to just bring the food out once it’s ready. There’s no need to wait for it to all be done. 25 minutes later she starts bringing our food. We yelled at her and said we thought you said the food was getting plated TWENTY FIVE minutes AGO!!!
The general thought was that she was on drugs and out of it. HORRIBLE SERVICE that day.
The reason that we came here for a quick lunch was because we had been there the night before and had great food and wonderful service.

Best wings in town. Seriously. We like ‘em extra crispy and hot and The Derby does it best.
The trivia nights here have always been a good time! I’ve seen many different hosts here, and they are usually pretty entertaining :) Plus, call me whatever, but I love when indoor smoking is combined with pool tables. And I’m not even a smoker; it’s just the atmosphere!
I’ve had a couple other things here, but I hate to waste an opportunity to have the wings!
I’m not sure if they still do 20 wings and a pitcher of YUENGling for $ 20, but don’t pass it up if you get the chance!

After fighting downtown traffic and raising immortal hell about the rumbling in my stomach and the *need* of a drink, I used my handy Unilocal app and found this lovely, little honey hole. A honey hole in my own backyard, no less!
It must be a recurring theme with me, this talk of tacos and booze, but Derby certainly fostered my desire for tacos and affordable, heavy poured cocktails. Yes, it’s a smoking establishment, but it’s a true 90’s throwback, sports bar! If you can’t handle watching baseball and getting a little second hand smoke on your tater tots, you’re in the wrong place.
The bartenders know what’s up. That’s all I’ve gotta say about that. Hats off to ya, Derby staff!
There’s pool, darts, people watching, beer, strong cocktails, tater tots, and sports. Y’know, all the awesome shit that makes life worth living and could be considered major staples in my so-​called life.
I intend on making this joint a usual haunt, and I don’t mind if I reek of Marlbro Reds and poor ESPN decisions.

I occasionally meet my great friend Jack here, for lunch. He’s a smoker. They allow smoking. Catching on yet?
The food is average to good for bar food. The first time I had a crunchy fried grouper sandwich, and I am a bit of a snob where fish is concerned after living on the Florida coast for 20 years… but this was a decent bit of crunchy fried something… just not grouper.
The second time… I can’t even recall what I ate. On the plus side, the waitresses are attentive. On the negative side, I need to wash my clothes and hair before I go anywhere else. Back to the plus side… Jack is happy because he can smoke through lunch…

When you need a beer bad, they have a bad beer for you.
Kidding aside, if you’re in the area and looking for a smoky dive bar that serves decent grub and decent drinks for a decent price, this is your destination.

Had a drug crazed man run over to our table, throw money at us and sit down with our party– refusing to leave. He harassed us to see if we had drugs. The waitresses ignored him and would not help us.
Do not go here.

Great staff (hot too). Mike the kitchen manager is an amazing chef and is one of the only reasons this place is still one of my favorite spots. Under new management and it seems like they have no idea how to run a pub. Trying to make it corporate (you can tell by new menu… lame). Maybe they will eventually realize that people go for the atmosphere and the employees, not the image. FYI if you see the lady that supposedly is in charge of the bar and staff, run. Total B*tch. I have heard her insult her staff on many occasions and is totally unprofessional. Don’t think she ever worked in the industry. Message to owners: get rid of her. Unhappy employees, declining business, not a good sign. And for the «nay» sayers below. IT’S A BAR!!! Seems like Lysa (Lisa with a «Y»…explains it all) needs a refresher course on the service industry. If you cant say something nice, stay at the 5 star restaurants and stop bashing the bars. We are there for the atmosphere. NOT TO GET WAITED ON HAND AND FOOT!!!

So I went on St Patty’s and they corned beef and fixins was awesome. I found out that they changed ownership too. Rumor has it that the folks at twisted taco bought it. They’ve worked on the ventilation, although the main room was still smokey. They pool room didn’t smell smokey at all and the inside seemed cleaned up. I’ve seen a groupon or scoutmob discount for this too. Oh and brand new flat screens looked great. Still a bit smokey. Don’t stop in prior to a date.

Never going back. The food was OK; a little expensive for what it was. The big problem that I had was that there were people smoking cigarettes, so I asked the waiter if I could smoke a cigar. He said it shouldn’t be a problem. As soon as I lit up, the bartender, walked over and said that there was no cigar smoking in the place.

It’s a bar, people, a REAL BAR where adult type people smoke, laugh, yell out loud for a sports team, know each other and enjoy some better than average bar food and good deal on drinks.
Staff is always friendly and know what they’re doing, unlike a lot of places around this are of town where you get rookies or clueess attituders.
If you smell the smoke when you walk in the door and don’t like it, take responsibility for yourself — turn around and go someplace else or deal with it. There are 42,999 non– smoking venues in ATL, so if you don’t like the smoke, go one of them and STFU.

The Derby was a good place to go for St. Patrick’s Day. They had the right level of activity, busy but not overly crowded (i.e., we got a table!), noisy, but we could still carry on a conversation, smoky yes, but not miserably so, corned beef and cabbage and green beer were offered, and Irish music and other activities as well. I had a cajun chicken sandwich from the regular menu, and she had the corned beef and cabbage from the St. Patrick’s menu. The food was okay, not esp. noteworthy, and the green was fading from the «green» beer, which was what we went for in the first place, but we had a decent time. Maybe would go back for some sports viewing or something.

My experience at The Derby, AKA «The Dirty Derby» is only based on one visit which was a work happy hour.
Cigarette smoke is nauseating, you can’t step foot in the place for 30 seconds without your hair, clothes, purse, jacket, etc reeking for days of smoke. Luckily my party had the outdoor patio area reserved.
Appetizers were decent, typical bar food like nachos and mozzarella sticks.
Clientele is mainly older men who are there to gamble, smoke and drink. If I weren’t with a large group of men and women, I wouldn’t have set foot in the place due to feeling like a total piece of meat.
Service was fine, nothing to complain about from that aspect.

The food here is pretty good. The Derby has Sunday afternoon poker game, which is how I found my way into this place. The low ceilings may cause the bar to be a little smoky for your liking if you are allergic or otherwise sensitive.
There are several pool tables in a side room if that is your thing, along with the standard bar video games (Silver Strike, Golden Tee, etc)

The food was really quite good. In fact good enough that I enjoyed it in spite of the assaults on the rest of my senses while inside…
Sight: Décor is 1980’s ‘we re-​decorated the garage into a sports bar’ styling. To this bar, style and design are things that exist only in other places.
Sound: Football was on TV, and the proprietors were quite proud that they could turn the volume on all the TV’s up to 11 on the dial! You can see the Great Wall from space… and you can hear the commercials playing on TV from this bar while you’re there.
Smell: Don’t bother bringing Cigarettes or Cigars into this bar, just take a deep breath and get a lifetime’s worth of tar in one sitting. The air handling in this place reminded me of the inside of a plastic bag.
If you’re looking for a smokey room in which to go deaf listening to 0% financing deals on a Kia while you play pool in an atmosphere of ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ styling. I recommend The Derby quite highly.
For anyone else, you’d be better off ordering a French Dip to go.

Almost every Thursday you can find me on the back table in Emily’s section with the Manheim/​Cox crew.
I’ll take a tall Bacardi/​Diet and shot of Patron.
Thanks.