McHugh’s Public House

Dirty beer glasses all the time. Can scrape the film off the inside of the glass. Gross…

We live really close to McHugh’s and have eaten here about 20 times in the past year. Here’s the good & the ugly:
The best items on the menu are the pizzas and the potato skins. They use real cheese for their skins (not the processed cheese spread gunk).
The OK items are wings and burgers. You can’t hit far off the mark with burgers and fries.
The worst items: anything chicken. I don’t know why but the chicken is ALWAYS rubbery and tough. The sandwiches are just as blech.
We usually take our kids with us, who love the kids meals and the service is usually pretty good.
The cocktails are decent and the atmosphere is ok– nothing special but it really doesn’t need to be for a sports bar.

We came for lunch, the bartender sat there and helped another man at the bar instead of sitting us down and handing us menus. There was almost nobody in there. So we sat and waited almost 10 minutes and decided we could go elsewhere. They just lost a good chunk of money. Overall, not impressed from the time we got in the door.

I live near McHugh’s and go there on an occasional basis. The food is pretty good for a pub/​sports bar and the drinks are reasonably priced. The patio is nice and service is quick outside.
We were there last week and I have an experience to share. I ordered a club sandwich. As we all know, these are always cut a certain way. Mine was cut strangely, in more than four pieces. The manager brought my food over and said this was his fault. If I wanted a new sandwich he’d gladly make one for me. I was totally fine with it as is. It tastes the same regardless of how it is cut. Anyway, he stopped over a little while later just to be sure I was okay with this. I really appreciated his attention and customer service. The cut of the sandwich wasn’t a big deal, but if he hadn’t said anything I would have thought «who cuts a club sandwich like this? they don’t know what they are doing.» However, he went out of his way to be sure I was happy — which I was!

So check this out… I order 12 wings and split the order, 6 Far East and 6 Buffalo, both dry rubs here at McHugh’s (which I like). I got 3 of each (not shown) brought out from someone other than the waitress that took my order. I told him I ordered 6 of each, he said that she must’ve entered it wrong. She strolls by minutes later to check on the food delivery and notices this mistakes and says she’ll bring out 3 more of each. Yay. She comes back with this and says «these were extra that are ready, they just weren’t spun down yet» huh?!? So here I am rubbing my own damn wings with rocks of dry rub, coughing and sneezing on this patio like a fool. This is a first for me. Had to share this wonderful experience. I was going to order another beer but wasn’t sure if I had to brew it myself. Can’t wait until my paycheck from #mchughs comes in the mail. #doityourselfwings #hiredonthespot #nointerview #savagelife #getem #justnothere

Excellent food. I really like the appetizers. We had the fish once, that was best ever and then order next time and it was bad. I guess fish is never a guarantee. When we told the server, they let us re-​order something else and did not charge for fish.

Food/​Drink: Came here for an early lunch on Sunday, but on hindsight could have eaten anywhere. There was a brunch and bloody mary bar which might attract some people, but we were pretty tied up for burgers and wings. The burger had a full salad on it and didn’t have any real flavoring or «umphf» factor to wow us. The wings were decent, but all the sauces seemed like they came from a grocery store shelf. Again, nothing to blow your skirt off. The menu is pretty all over the place, so they’ve got that going for them (everyone should find something) and they do have a bunch of beers which could drown your sorrow of the food if needed.
Ambiance: Here’s the theory, it’s an irish bar and it’s kid friendly. Booths are big, bar is big, menu is big (see above). But the problem is with so much bigness, it’s empty. So you feel pretty small in such a big space. They do have an outdoors patio which looks pretty awesome. I could imagine some serious drinking going on out there in the relaxed summer air of MN.
Service: OK. Nothing too stressful or complex. We had two so I’m guessing one was training. No mistakes, nothing spilled, so that’s good to know.
Overall: I won’t say No if there’s a group of people that are hell bent on going here, especially if the regular places are packed up. This is a place, I recommend the food options of going either «safe» (typical simple bar food) or «extreme» (strangest thing on the menu). It’s got to be on these polar opposites that the good comes out. Regardless, get a dark beer and pretend you’re Irish and everything turns out better.

Love their burgers and their pizza. Service its usually subpar and slow.

Great patio with reasonable prices. Mary’s having a burger and I’m going to go with the Fiesta Salad.
Great night when you just have to be outside enjoying a night at 81 degrees.

I wish this was better, since it’s in my backyard, but unfortunately I’ve been disappointed too many times.
This last time I ordered a Shamrock Burger, which has swiss cheese, bacon, lettuce, dijon ailoi, served on a grilled parmesan crusted wheat bread. The texture of the bun was excellent. Everything else was tasteless. I was shocked at just how tasteless the burger was. I used the ailoi, but to no affect.
The fries that came with it were also tasteless, other than salt.
My wife, not being too hungry, ordered a pretzel and a side of fries. The pretzel sticks kind of looked like pretzel sticks, but the texture was more like a bun and again, no flavor. I did like the mustard that came with it, but the melted processed cheese/​oil produce did not help.
The one shining star was Sam, our waitress. She was perfect! Very fast service, very attentive without being bothersome, and able to anticipate what we wanted. When I turned down a second beer, she brought a glass of ice water without asking, in case I did want it.
The atmosphere was average for a bar & grill, but they do need to find a way to dampen the noise in the restaurant area. With a full house, we could barely carry on a conversation.
I also don’t see the «Irish» theme. Yes, I did order the Shamrock burger, but other than the name, there was nothing irish about it, with SWISS cheese, FRENCH dijon, and ITALIAN parmesan cheese. As I look around, I also don’t see much of an Irish tie in. If you’re going to call yourself an irish sports bar, then embrace it!

My family and a friend’s family went here for the first time in Dec 2013. Since I had never been, I looked at Unilocal for other reviews and frankly, I was a bit concerned from the seemingly negative feedback thus far. Now, having eaten there for a dinner, I must say I was pleasantly surprised and delighted. Was it perfect? No, but what place is? I would recommend it.
We dined there on a Thursday night and sat in the dining area. The dining area wasn’t packed, so our party of 6 got seated quickly (the bar area was quite crowded).
The server was pleasant and attentive. We never waited for drinks and I think I had 2 refills on my iced tea. She made one mistake, which she completely owned and resolved with no issues. For many of the sandwiches you can opt for a wrap instead with the same ingredients. I ordered the sandwich, not the wrap, but was initially brought the wrap.
I ordered potato skins and they came out fast, hot, and I was actually impressed. These were some of the best skins I’ve seen/​eaten. They weren’t super small and horribly greasy. They had lots of cheese and bacon and looked really good.
Everyone enjoyed their meal from the burger to the club wrap to the club sandwich. The kids got chicken fingers (done just right) and a crock of mac-​n-​cheese. I very much enjoyed their waffle fries with seasoned sour cream (yum).
I will definitely be back… in my opinion, better than at least a few other local eating establishments with this particular bar/​restaurant type of setting.

Their prim rib was excellent! Burgers are very good too. Lots of TV for every sports event you could want to watch. Drink specials when Twins are playing! Prices are reasonable so you can stay and watch the whole game! Very nice outdoor eating as well. Worth the drive down 42 to get to it, you won’t be disappointed.

Good burgers and cold beer. Yup, it’s a bar.

So I ate here for the first time. I’d say it was a decent meal but definitely has room for improvements. I ordered the Irish Philly Steak Sandwich, which in theory should’ve been great but it was only sub-​par seeing that it was drowning in lack luster cheese sauce that was suppose to taste like a stout beer cheese sauce, but tasted more like straight out of a can. However, the portions from what I could tell from my buddy’s order and mine seemed decent. The prices seemed fair and competitive however, I defininately thought that the prices for the pizza was terrible. I gave this place a 3 star because if you are looking for decent/​okay food then this will be an average place to eat, if you are expecting more than look else where. With just a few improvements I do think that this place could have a better experience. Oh, staffing was decent, however the place I thought was pretty dead for being almost like a sports bar and it being college football Saturday. Defininately thought our waitress did a great job but with it being slow, it’s not that tough to do a good job either. So my recommendation is go with an open mind to try a new place and hopefully they will by that time fix those few items and all will be great, just don’t expect to have your taste buds knocked off the chair but it being extremely great.

Not too impressed when you ask the server if the Reuben is stacked with Meat and they say it’s allot and it comes with 3 Thin Slices of Deli shaved corned beef I would hate to see her option on a little must be in the Negative Numbers the Fish and Chips couldn’t of been more of a let Down if I would of got Fish Nuggets at White Castle, I will wait a week or 2 for the new place to come in when this place goes under before I walk through those doors again!

I go for the burgers and it is their specialty. My favorite is the cream cheese and green olive burger. Good quality meat that is always accurately cooked and a nice soft bun. They have changed this burger over the last couple years but is still as good as the last. They have a lot of interesting choices on the menu, but have always ordered the burgers because they are always good and satisfying.

We live close to here so I have been to McHugh’s 5 or 6 times. Not once have we had bad food, bad service, or an all around bad time. I’m not sure about the other negative reviews here and we usually don’t sit at the bar itself but rather in the dining area. One of the best things about McHugh’s is the specials. They have good happy hour specials and GREAT game day specials. My family would go there on Sundays during the football season for $ 4 burger baskets!!! and they were very good! We will be back and we will be bringing friends!

This place blows, the bartender is a jackass. If you don’t know him personally, don’t bother coming in here.

A great «average» bar and restaurant.
I’m not sure if it has had a face lift or moved to a new location since the past few reviews I’m reading… but it is very nice inside and out.
We sat at the bar and had great service, our beers were never finished before being asked if we wanted another or something else to eat. I ordered the petite sirloin and for $ 10 I thought it was pretty good. Yes, a little chewy maybe but come on, it’s $ 10.
Tip:
has $ 25 dollar gift certificates that you can buy for less than half of that… get one and try it out!

I realize that in townie bars you might not get good service if you didn’t go to high school with the bartender but this place was ridiculous. This place has a nice outside but once you step inside it smells musty and old. The bartender couldn’t have cared less about her patrons, she poured my beer with over 2 inched of head and then vanished for 15 Minutes. The food is expensive for what you get. I decided to try this place out after a bad experience a year ago because I heard they had remodeled. Ya, remodeling I guess means you painted the bar a different color. I especially like the «Come in for Monday Night Football 2009» posters that haven’t been taken down.