Red Lion Pub

I’m not sure why more people don’t come here, but I’m okay with that. Red Lion is my scrambling-​to-​find-​a-​place-​to-​eat-​without-​reservations-​on-​a-​Saturday place.
Service: always solid. I’ve never had any issues with any of the employees here. Not even a «well, this was awkward and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt because they might be new» sort of thing. A+
Food: also always solid. I’ve gotten a couple different things here, but I think my favorite is the fish & chips (naturally). Any entrée I’ve ordered came with enough food to sufficiently fill me up. Super great if you’re craving comfort food.
Location: convenient. There’s only street parking, but it’s far enough away for other restaurants that you can usually find a good spot. The interior is clean and polished.

I loved Broach, but Red Lion is an upgrade. Some guys from the UK bought it and made it an English soccer bar. The food, beer, and atmosphere are phenomenal. The interior is gorgeous and has a very welcoming English pub feel.
The staff is outstanding, friendly, and have a good knowledge of the food and beer. I really can’t get enough of this place.

As someone with multiple severe food allergies (listed below), it’s a huge challenge to find a restaurant with both excellent customer service and the ability to customize an order to serve nonallergenic food. The staff here has been helpful on every occasion. Even the kitchen staff remembered my allergies and re assured me they practiced proper cleanliness and food prep practices. This is a major win! Red lion has become one of the only local places I can order with confidence and trust.
They accommodated my allergies which include wheat, rye, barley, oat, milk/​dairy, eggs, fish&shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, avocado, and apple. All I did was give them a list, and they were more than helpful in providing options and excellent customer care. At no point was there any sense that my allergens were an inconvenience to them. They happily went out of their way to make a custom, complete meal for me.

Awesome bartender he was very polished and friendly. cool pub like interior. I had buffalo wings, they were delicious with crispy outside and tender. Fun spot for a step up from the standard Wisconsin dive bar (although nothing wrong with a good dive bar!)

This is supposed to be a British pub, right? Not so, in my eyes. All the good British beers have been discontinued & the liquor selection is seriously lacking (no decent or interesting gin or scotch selections). The fish fry was ok. The «chips» were clearly Sysco-​frozen-​bag-​brand. The salmon was cooked until dry. The peas & carrots were also frozen-​bag-​style. In addition, I noticed that there were no ads or posters up for «footie» viewing events. Sad.
Red Lion has the façade of a British Pub for people who want to PRETEND to venture outside of their national-​chain-​restaurant-​sports-​bar comfort zone, but that’s all it is… A façade. It is on Water Street, I suppose.
The only reason I gave it 2 stars is because the service was fine, the food was edible & didn’t make us ill.
–Rena

Dave made the best bourbon press I’ve had in years!!! Amazing live music too!

Fish and chips are always delicious! Decent beer selection. Two floors and a small patio. Nice little spot a block over from the Brady street bustle.

The Marquette Young Alumni Association hosts it’s basketball game watching parties here, and even though I am no longer young, that group of folks always make me feel welcome as I hang out and network to build awareness of Marquette’s Comm Alumni Association.
What an outstanding venue! The Red Lion has a cozy separate space upstairs that lends itself well to a group of 35 – 40 people. It’s a perfect gathering space. The bartenders keep the Olde English pub spirit alive with their accents and sense of humor — very fun and funny. It’s so charming and quaint — the perfect backdrop for having fun and watching basketball.
The venue also offers food and drink specials. I like to order the «Cheatham’s Curds» for $ 4. Passing those out to other game watchers is a great way to share the wealth and make new friends, although they are so yummy I want to keep them all to myself. They’ve got other specially-​priced items on the menu including wings, cheeseburgers, and other pub fare. Drink specials and shots too!
Seriously, if you are looking to host a group, check out the Red Lion Pub. They will do you proud!

Stopped by on Saturday afternoon for a quick beer and some appetizers.
The beer selection was good with an English slant. I had an Old Speckled Hen, it was really a refreshing break from all the IPA’s I’ve been having.
The rooftop soccer billiards table was closed for the season but they let us up anyway to check it out. I definitely need to go back in the spring and try playing.
The chips (French fries to most of us) were served with mold vinegar just the way I like them.
Staff was friendly and the atmosphere is warm and quaint.

Red Lion pub took over for the ailing Brocach just awhile back. I always Loved Brocach but this pub has far surpassed anything the previous restaurant could hope to be.
Service is excellent and the food is superb. Monday’s are a great night for one of the best Fish Fries in MKE. Crispy and tender Cod with a well crafted coleslaw to boot make me crave the fish n chips on the regular. Hat’s off to the chef! I always get the roasted chips and HP Sauce. Special for sure. The bread pudding is really scrumptious and I order it despite be full.
Also of note the Scotch Eggs, French Onion soup and Poutines. All in all Red Lion is a pleasing atmosphere that can suit a party of almost any size.
Cheers RLP!

Red lion like three lions is an English bar with English food. The food is pretty good with a pretty nice set up on tannery row. For the first and only time I played soccer pool which is pretty interesting.

My first time back to the pub since the ownership change from Brocach… yeah, I know, it’s been a year. Basically, the former Irish pub is now an English pub… change anything green to red, change a few posters on the wall, and it’s done. Only major change I saw was the opening of the bar. There used to be big partitions, which were somewhat awkward… but they are gone now, so who cares. It’s a great bar to grab a pint and watch the telly. Lots of good beer on tap, as well as bottles and cans. Very comfortable. Warm and cozy, but it looks like it can also get rowdy if need be during a soccer match.
I recently had lunch here and service was great. Very impressed that the entire front of the house was handled by one guy. Seating is open. He took care of everyone, including a larger group, without any notice of «being in the weeds». Good attitude, very friendly and efficient.
I went with the Chicken Vegetable Curry. Quite tasty. A bit spicy. And way too much for me for lunch. So I took half of it home. I would have liked a little more rice, and I am sure if I asked, I would have gotten some.
I’d like to come back for the $ 10 Pie and Pint Special. Only drawback I experienced was that it was a bit costly for lunch — $ 25 for a Boddington’s and Chicken Curry, I can’t do that everyday. But, I could have ordered something less expensive… so, that’s on me.
I will be happy to come back as there are so many good sounding things on the menu.
Cheers!

I met some friends at Red Lion on a Tuesday night. This was my first time here. There were only a handful of people in the bar, which was nice, so we could sit at the bar and hangout. The deal on Tuesdays is $ 10 pint and a pie. I had a couple pints and a sheppard’s pie, which was good, but not great. The service was also good, but not great. Our bartender seemed more interested in his friends at the end of the bar than us, but other than that it was okay.

I’ll start with I love his place and the people are great!!! Food, soup (!), was cold and the brunch menu on Saturday goes way to late in the day…
Chicken used for the salads look like Sysco chicken in a bag!!!
Been here before and it’s been way better.

Okay, I’ve been here a handful of times now.
The food is good. The beer selection is okay. The prices are a little high. Yes, I know it’s next to Trocadero so it probably feels like it can charge higher prices. Drink prices aren’t on the menus which really irritates me. And when the Happy Hour offers pints for $ 4 you know you’re in anywhere from 5 – 8 $ regular priced pints.
But what killed this place for me the last time was the service. I want to preface this story as such: IT WAS NOT BUSY! There was one table on the first floor, a large birthday party on the second floor, and maybe three tables on the roof.
Four of us wandered in and sat on the roof to have some drinks. Our server took 10 minutes to get us a menu (one of my friends REALLY wanted to stay so we waited). When we ordered our drinks it took another 15ish minutes to get the drinks (two of their signature cocktails and two pints). The drink order was wrong. Apparently one of the beers and one of the cocktails have the exact same name and our server never double checked which one my friend wanted. By the time she figured out it was the wrong drink (she’d been in the restroom when it arrived) our server was long gone. Well, not really, he’d stick his head out the door and then scurry off. My friend had to take her drink downstairs to the bar herself to get the proper one.
After receiving our drinks, we didn’t see our server for 20+ minutes. Our glasses sat empty for what seemed like an eternity. Rather than order another round (we were approaching the hour and a half mark at this point for one round) we asked to settle up. You guessed it, more waiting. ETA: At no point did our server acknowledge the wrong drink or even check in on us to see how we were doing.
Anyway, for the prices they charge there are better places.

English pubs are the new Irish pub. Err… or something like that.
I came here when it was Brocach, and I really liked the food. The menu and décor haven’t seemed to change too dramatically but thankfully «Red Lion Pub» is a lot easier to pronounce than «you know, that Irish place by the river that starts with b.r.» (that was how I explained it in conversation.)
We came here to watch**American football** not the other kind. If you are into regular football, I guess they have a lot of matches and whatnot, but for the Packers vs. Bear’s game, all four flatscreens in the downstairs bar had that game on.
So there’s a full British-​y brunch menu going on, with bangers and eggs, full English breakfast, scotch eggs, etc. They also have a huge drink/​beer menu, with lots of interesting concoctions using cider, guiness, etc. I tried one with Strongbow and some sort of blackberry stuff in it. it was a little too sweet for me so I switched to magners pear.
Food: I had a pretty basic pub burger. I was hungry and it tasted pretty good, but if you’re picky about burgers, know that the patty looked pretty pre-​formed. It was fine and so were the thick cut fries.
My DC had this awesome concoction called baked or creamy tomato? It was a super creamy tomato soup with a whole grilled cheese sandwich on top like a chewy cheesy giant croûton. There was more cheese on top of that. I had a little and it was great! Many of the brunch items ~$ 10.
As mentioned, we were here for the game, and they do give out those standard sweet neon green shots when the packers score. It was a 20/​something crowd on a Sunday afternoon as expected. (They had some Coors special going on for the game but Coors is somewhere way in the back of my mind and I’d like it to stay there, thank you.)
Overall service was really good. There aren’t a lot of tables but we never had to wait long before our server checked on us.
I’ve been to the rooftop patio when it was brocach, and it still looks awesome (although we sat inside.) Other people have mentioned they have music and a band up there on Sunday evenings and we saw people going up with instrument’s to set up as we were leaving.
I’m pretty sure I’ll be back, so yes I’m a fan!

The rooftop patio is where it’s at for Red Lion! Football pool, ok soccer pool, in the back is a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon!
They have a good beer selection, bottled and on tap. Plus several Guinness floats — Black Cow is my favorite that I’ve tried. I haven’t had a full meal here, but apps have been good to snack on. Prices for food seem a little high for a pub.
During the season, you can watch soccer matches inside. Pretty much any league or tournament will be playing. Otherwise, they do movie nights, trivia, and other events too. Live music up top on Sundays usually. Lots going on here.

My wife & I came here during Beer Week for the «Beer Dinner». The Beer Dinner was not just a liquid dinner but a well thought out pairing of beer for a 3 course meal. They had someone from the brewery there to give a short history of the brewery & the beer. Dude was very friendly & knowledgeable.
I was very surprised at how well each beer paired with each course. Who would of thought Banana Bread beer could go with any meal!

They have banana bread beer! Whaaaaaaaat?
That was my favorite part. The whole experience was good on the whole, but I’d never heard of banana bread flavored beer so when I saw that on the menu alongside a whole bunch of local and not-​so-​local brew suggestions, I knew I had to try it. It smelled of banana stronger than it tasted of it, but it came through in the aftertaste. It actually ended up probably being a Top 10 beer for me, so as long as they’ve got it on draft I’ll probably keep checking out this place.
I was here to satisfy a friend’s craving for fish and chips. I wasn’t really feeling the whole pub thing when we arrived, but the guy who was waiting on us was cheerful (and authentically British) enough to get me in the mood. Besides the beer, I had the Red Lion Burger, which was peppery and tasty. They were having a Tuesday pie-​and-​a-​pint special, but I frankly wasn’t wanting something *quite* so heavy. I was satisfied with my burger; I’d order it again.
The people I was with both got the fish and chips and it looked great. Big portions, too. It’d be easy to have leftovers from this place.

Came for some beer and ordered the pretzel and chips to nosh on. Solid choices but nothing special. Service was good, our waiter was nice and attentive. It smelled a little when walking in; had a musky scent. Also the chairs are a weird small size.
Would come back to give the menu another try.