MacCool’s Public House

I decided to give this place a try because I was feeling up for some Irish food. Well, I ended up having a bison burger haha. The environment of it is very Irish pub-​y, and I like that a lot! Super chill. The service is good too! My waitress recommended one thing off their menu and even let me know if the corned beef was a little bit more «sour» than regular beef. Anyways, she was awesome. The bison burger was amazing, but what was even more amazing were the… «Finn Skins”(?) appetizer. Sorry, I forgot the name. But the potato skins/​cheese/​bacon… Oh my god. Sooo good. The only thing is that the burgers a bit too overpriced, but hey, you definitely leave with a full belly and feeling a little bit more Irish! Definitely worth a try!

Love love love the chicken pot pie! I never used to like it but MacCool’s changed that. I also love that they have shuffle-​board in their bar section. If I could, I would eat there everyday!

Cool restaurant mixed with an old Irish bar! Friendly staff, great food, and beer that is served the proper way! I had the Pub Club and a Black & Tan and it was great. It’s a new place to me and I’ll be brining my wife here soon!

Waitress told us the portions were big, the only thing big were the plates. Corn beef and cabbage had half a head of cabbage, two slices of carrot– literally one bite and they were gone– and the corn beef tasted waxy and had only three small slices. Complete disappointment.
Meatloaf was good but small portion. I don’t eat a lot of food but after this dinner I had to stop by another location to get more food.

MaCools is a combination of some really yummy stuff and then some «needs improvement». Overall, it is a great little pub with dishes that are hard to find in just any ol’ restaurant.
They are an Irish themed pub and so naturally you find things like shepherds pie and a decent amount of beer. But speaking specifically about the shepherds pie, their take is to fill a bowl full of all of the tasty stuff that you would expect to find inside or a traditional version, but instead of mashed potatoes or and actual pie crust they instead place a GIANT pastry puff over the top of the bowl. Points for creativity I suppose.
My only other suggestion would be that they reconsider their bread pudding. Not good. It was dry dry dry. It needed some sort of sweet or fatty sauce to pour over it… or even a scoop of ice cream… we actually resorted to pouring the extra cream we had from the coffee we ordered and that helped a little. Conversely though, they had this mud pie that was simply scrumptious!
There are some awesome menu items if you know what to look for. We are still exploring to weed out the gems from the «mehs», but happy to try.
It is worth a visit for sure!

Everyone has a little Irish in them when they walk into MacCool’s. Theyr burgers are on par! Don’t forget to try some shepherds pie or corned beef hash.
I’ll be coming back to try out some of their brunch. Mm mm!
The staff is so friendly and helpful. Some of the best service around. The manager was even helping serve food and take away dishes :)

Normally I love McCools. It’s one of my two favorite places to go for my birthday. This is now the second time I have had a less than savory experience there.
The waitress seemed less than pleased that she had to help us, let alone keep checking up on us. When my parents told her it was my birthday she didn’t seem to know how to handle it or just didn’t want to. Either way. And when she did, she just kind of slapped it down in front of me like «there you go, happy freaking birthday»
When we paid we put cash and a card in, for a split tendor. And she asked how we wanted it done. It’s just common sense to me, but oh well. And as soon as she brought the receipt back we felt rushed out.
The quality of food and customer service is severely lacking, I used to brag to everyone what a great place it is. Now, I don’t think I can recommend it anymore.
Last time we got the excuse that their a team wasn’t there. Seriously? But I’m not saying all of this for nothing, please. Save this place. It has such a cool vibe.

I was really craving irish food and seen that this place had good reviews so I decided to give it a go. We sat outside which was nice. The server wasn’t very knowledgeable of the menu but that’s okay. I went with the beef stew, which is my go to at all irish restaurants. When it came out I was disappointed. The CUP of stew was around 12 bucks and it was seriously just a small cup! Everywhere I have gone I would get a bowl with a heaping amount. But anyways, it was really bland so I had to add salt and pepper to make it taste somewhat good. And the bread that came with it? A whole different story, maybe it’s me or I’ve never tried it before but that thing was disgusting. I think I will keep searching for a good irish restaurant.

Chicken pot pie, corned beef&cabbage and lamb shank for St. Patrick’s Day! Love it!

3 stars is for the excellent service from Papa!
We ordered onion rings to start. They came out nice and hot, however could have used some salt.
My one daughter did enjoy her Shepherds Pie. My other daughter ordered the kids burger which was tasty, but there was too much flour on the bun.
I had the Boxty which tasting with the stew, however there was little beef, what pieces were in it were very tasty and the potatoes were undercooked which there were a lot of. the potato pancake that it was served with was good.
The salmon we ordered was overcooked, however it is rare these days to find a restaurant that cooks fish right.
Everything we ordered came out hot and in a timely manner. The service was exceptional, and they do offer a nice variety of Irish food. It just needs a bit of tweeking!

During a campus visit to the University of Utah with my son in March of 2015, we had dinner at MacCool’s Pubic House. Took a convenient hotel shuttle. MacCools is in a large strip mall shopping center with a variety of stores and offices.
Nice ambiance, decent food, nothing too amazing or negative from the experience. The staff was very nice. Prices were reasonable. I would not go out of my way to go back as there are so many restaurants in SLC, but I recommend it to anyone staying near campus, looking for a casual meal of decent food. It also has a small sports bar area, which can come in handy if a big game is on. Cannot see TVs from restaurant seating area, though.

Horrible food and service! Our waitress Annita was slow and constantly chatting to other employees. She never checked back to see how my over-​cooked cod was or if I liked how they cook their raw potato chips. The asparagus soup was repulsive, and how can you screw up a tuna melt? MacCools did!
Nothing cool about this dump. Dirty and worn. I should have know better when we got the filthy worn menus.
Annita dropped check on table, didn’t even take plates or ask why we didn’t finish our lunch.

I left here bugged because of the following conversation between the waitress and me:
Me: «I’ll take the pelican burger.»
W: «What side would you like?»
Me: «Are the sweet potato fries an option?»
W: «Yes, absolutely!»
I was then charged extra for sweet potato fries. I dunno, I understand it was an option, but an additional charge would have been nice to know of.
The food came, burger was good. I asked for a small small size of the curry sauce to have something in which I could dip the fries. Extra charge.
Overall, I feel like anywhere that has hidden charges & no transparency is no place for me.

The waitress we had was very nice, and I appreciate her effort. Having said that, this place must have had a change in management. The waiters and waitresses are all tattooed and have gauges in their ears. They seems more interested in each other than in their patrons. It’s sad to see a place I used to enjoy go down hill. It’s Friday night at 8:30pm, and this place is a ghost town. The quality has gone way down, and I can only blame the management.

This place appears to be my guilty pleasure and I think it’s because not only I, but my son and (maybe to a lesser extent) wife also seem to as well. If the lights were a touch dimmer and I could hold court at a corner table whilst they brought me flagon of flagon of the frothy stuff until they threw me out into a snowbank because it was closing time… alas, alas, but it’s the same dream every time I go. It’s just THAT kind of atmosphere, which really resonates with me. They also have a shuffleboard table, which I recently discovered and is one of the coolest things I’ve seen.
I just wish the service wasn’t so meandering. Get the wrong server and you’ll find yourself wishing for one of those BBQ forks so you get get jabby jabby in someone’s posterior to get them in gear. The food is also disappointing, at best. The Chocolate Rye Nitro Stout (Squatter’s) is still far and away my favorite thing here and having now closed in on eating my way through nearly the entire menu, I can safely tell you that the best entrée is… a salad. Specifically the beet salad and even that needs some modification (add an extra egg and preferably a protein that is both salty and fatty — trust me on this; it will work with the strawberry vinaigrette).
This place is still firmly rooted in the land of the potential. The food is still very heavy, very stick-​to-​your-​ribs and still several notes away from what is capable of being. I hope to report that they’ve fixed the food (and I’ll probably be so happy, I’ll award the extra star), but a ton of money has filtered through here because of me and that trend will continue on unabated.

Fun atmosphere with pub style comfort food. A little pricey when the bill is all totaled ($ 7 for a pint of Guinness?).
Started with that perfect pint followed by Finn Skins, deep fried sliced potatoes topped with onion, bacon, and some cheese. Corned beef and cabbage had a delicious broth, but the cabbage was under done, the carrots only partially peeled, and the corned beef chewy and tough. Fish and chips had generous and tasty fish fillets atop a basket of more deep fried sliced potatoes. Side of coleslaw was too sparsely dressed so just tasted like shredded cabbage. Skipped dessert.

Hit and miss basically sums up the food and service (usually the service is more towards the average to very good, although I have had a few excellent servers). I’ve been here many times over the years and even had a few company parties. For small corporate parties their pricing is hard to beat. I just wish that the food was consistently good, as the last few times I’ve been in it has left me (and everyone joining me) disappointed, knowing how awesome it can be when it’s actually good.
My latest visit, the kids food was insulting. They were served some mixed fruit that looked as if it were over a week (or more) old and my kids wouldn’t eat (they LOVE fruit) nor were we going to make them. The grapes were rotting. I mean, I get that fruit is not one of their staple foods, but it is a staple to the kids meal… Even still, if they would have told us that they needed to sub out the fruit I would have been fine with that. It was just sad to see them serve something that was obviously going bad and be okay with that.
And then, there was my burger. Granted, I asked to sub out the lamb for turkey, but the turkey was dry and they left off the basil so it was disappointing. Followed by ordering dessert, mud pie (my favorite there!), only to be told a few minutes later it was sold out. Grrr… Thankfully our server was very nice, but overall, we could have done without the $ 60 dinner and thrown in a frozen pizza instead.
Get back your good food, and match your service please, MacCool’s!
@growingfourlife

Had the perogies to start and they were delicious. Meatloaf and steak salad were good too. Had the bread pudding for dessert. Server made it easy to split the bill. Service was excellent. Will come back again soon.

Fried Cheese Burger: $ 11.99
5 STARS
½lb burger, topped with fried, aged cheddar cheese (think flattened mozzarella stick, but cheddar) crusted with panko bread crumb, and some smokey vinegrette. The waiter also recommended BBQ sauce instead of the vinegrette, so we tried that too. Overall, one of the best hamburgers we have ever tried. It’s a funky twist on a classic cheeseburger, and it’s a downright winner. They half the burger, so you can see the cheese oozing out of the panko fried crust. Beyond delicious. For added effect, they’ll throw some bacon on there for an extra buck, which just completes the taste. The Fried Cheese Burger at MacCools earns our Burger Quest Ultimate Stamp of Approval.
The Irish Burger: $ 14.59
4 STARS
½lb burger topped with grilled corned beef, melted Munster cheese, carmalized onions and Russian dressing. Not your run-​of-​the-​mill burger, but not in a bad way. The Irish Burger, aptly named, is delicious. If you prefer a classic taste, this probably isn’t for you. But if you want to hop outside the box a bit, you won’t be disappointed The corned beef compliments the patty and the cheese perfectly, and brings out the sweet onions on top. The Russian dressing is a nice twist on mayo, but not overpowering. Let’s just say, we definitely didn’t hate it.
See full review:

SLC UT — This used to be one of my favorite restaurants in Salt Lake. It still is although unfortunately I think the quality and service has slipped a tiny bit. Even still if you’re in the mood for comfort food this is a good bet.
They do half prices appetizers (except for lamb ribs) on Tuesday which is a great deal. Our favorite appetizers are the lamb quesadillas, calamari, finn skins, bangers and mash, mussels and wings.
Our non-​Tuesday favorites are the lamb ribs which are served with a yummy blue cheese sauce, the lumberjack’s breakfast and the buffalo shepherd’s pie. They are all very very tasty.
This does not impact my rating but I find it helpful since I have a baby in diapers. They do not have a changing table in the rest room.