Scruffy Murphys Irish Pub & Restaurant

I really don’t get how I’ve not reviewed this place yet. While I’m hardly a regular, I have been here more times than I can count over the last 5 years.
It’s just another pub on Murphy Street in Sunnyvale, but much like Fibbar’s they also serve food (which I’ve never had so this review is for the bar only!).
It gets loud on the nights they have a DJ, but if you go early enough it’s a good place to grab a drink before heading to dinner.
Scruffy’s earns a solid 3 stars in my book, but I’m giving an extra star for the great bartender we had that evening. He was personable and way funny. Sadly, I forget his name. I want to say Keith or Kenny? Either way, he was great. Keep up with the P90x, dude! I’m still trying to figure out how you opened a bottle wit hyour forearm! You magician, you.

They charged me a cover just so I could walk in to see if my friends were inside. Unfortunately, they were at Fibbars, another irish pub down the street. So I walked out 10 seconds later with a lighter wallet feeling like this place could use some customer service. Won’t be going back.

Disclaimer: I used to work here. Enough time has passed that I feel that I can be more or less impartial.
Not a fan of this bar, really, but we were meeting friends here and I came along. The waitress who was working was really sweet, but not that good at her job. I ordered a round of drinks beers for the guys and a double Jameson and water for me. I wanted a Jameson and gingerale, but they were out of carbon dioxide for the soda gun. We wait about 10 minutes before I ask the waitress if the drinks are going to be coming up soon. Turns out she forgot them. The boys get their beers and my «double jameson and water» was misconstrued as two shots of Jameson and a pint of water with a lemon wedge. Frusterating. Then they ran out of Jameson shortly after that. «you drank it all» the waitress tells me. Whatever.
As a customer here I never really feel at ease. The bartenders are not particularly friendly, drinks are kind of pricy, drinks are weak. Atmosphere is lacking, etc. Not horrible but not somewhere I would ever go unless I was going to meet friends already here.

I went to Scruffy’s on St. Patrick’s day for lunch with Uncle Ben. We ordered fish and chips and corned beef and cabbage to share. Along with 3 beers and 3 glasses of wine. The weather was perfect in SUNNYvale, so we got to eat outside.
Our waitress was so cute! I think she was Chinese or something, with freckles. Total hottie. Very attentive. She never forgot to refill our beers or wine, and would always come back to check on us, since we were sitting outside.
Inside the bar, it’s pretty dark, and a bit older. I wouldn’t come here to chill at the bar or meet anyone, as it’s an older creepy looking crowd and the drinks are pricey for where you’re at. But I would come here again for lunch or dinner, as the food was off the hook. The fish was buttery in my mouth, with no fishy smell, and the outside was crisp to perfection. Yes, it was really greasy, but all great things come in greasy packages. And besides, I’m already married, I can get as fat as I want! :)
It was almost my first time having corned beef… there’s no corn anywhere on the plate! But it was delicious, with a layer of fat and tendon around the outside. YUMMY!
I’m coming back, and bringing my whitey white step dad, as I’m sure he’ll enjoy the fish and chips here. :)
Price for 2 lunch entrée’s and 6 drinks was $ 87, after a $ 5 off discount from a flyer. I would say it’s pricey… but the food was really good.

This bar is average at best. Of the many times I’ve been here, I’ve only seen it busy once. Usually it’s pretty dead, which makes it kind of boring. Since I work in the area, my buddies and I decided to try out this place as an alternative to Fibbar MaGees across the street. I think we ended up leaving pretty quickly because it seemed like we were hanging out in a ghost-​town.
The only positive is that this place is two-​stories. When the place is crowded, it’s nice to sit upstairs and people-​watch from up above. Also, the upstairs has a little balcony which is cool to hang out on.

I want to say this place has potential, but after a couple visits, it really doesn’t.
The karaōke is terrible here. The KJ is a tool who really saps the fun out of the place and the crowd is horrible.
The crowd consists of idiots who just got done playing softball at Twin Creeks, creepy older men, and girls who feel self-​conscious because they are surrounded by drunken idiots and creepy old men.
The service is not very friendly. In fact, they seem pretty disinterested in serving you anything. They must be depressed because they work at a lifeless bar in Sunnyvale.
Basura!

Ever have the life sucked out of you? This is what this bar does. Good vibes go away when you hang out here.
Scruffy’s is a shell of a lifeless bar with their commercial décor. Just because you throw a Guiness poster on the wall doesn’t make it an Irish pub. The atmosphere is meh and the crowd here all seem to be coworkers that don’t like each other that are forced to come here after having some holiday party at one of the surrounding restaurants and the main reason to stay is to continue to drink expensible drinks to drink away their sorrows from hating their coworkers to much.

I thought the place is a bit underrated. Sure it’s a bit dead on Saturday nights, but it could be a good thing if you just want to hang out with some friends and actually have a conversation without veins popping out of your neck. The DJ wasn’t bad, although there are moments when people don’t feel like dancing to the music. I never tried their food, so I can’t really comment on that. The biggest problem is one that the management can’t really fix — limited space. For a bar that size it’s tough to play the pub/​restaurant/​club role well at the same time. At the end of the day, you can’t fault the efficiency.

Nice bar. Really! The décor is pub-​ish, pool table upstairs, friendly bartender and waitress staff and walking distance from work. Easy to come here and have a beer.
Karaōke is on Thursdays, and while it never gets very crowded, it is a blast. The song selection is huge and you can get the crowd going with ‘Sweet Caroline.’
There are some local career drinkers here, but they usually get scared away by the karaōke guys showing up later on. I rarely go on other nights, unless just to have a quick beer. The beer on tap is pretty good; blue moon, smithwicks and sam adams are some standards. The mixed drinks are on the weak side, but they charge just about average prices.
Occasionally, the crowd can be strange and weird things have happened here.
Food is average fried pub fare, but the shepards pie is AWESOME!

Boy was it a bad idea to leave Firehouse last night and go to Scruffy’s for more drinking. It was pretty dead, but we decided to grab a shot and chill for a bit to play darts. There was five of us and two had headed for the bathroom. We asked for 5 kamikazes and the bartender asked for our 3 IDs. Then he wouldn’t pour them until he saw the other two IDs, like we were trying to pull some kind of underage drinking on a Thursday. One returned and provided ID, and the bartender proceeded to only pour 4! WTF. Minus points for not putting enough on the first attempt to make 4 shots, so he had two tries. The 5^th finally came and he made another one.
If that wasn’t a bad enough experience, the shots had a slight taste of dishsoap, and he still charged me for full price — we were out of there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

An ok place to hang out in Sunnyvale – not my favorite of the options down there, but still a fine place to go. Back in the day, we used to have unofficial high school reunions around Thanksgiving time when we all were home on break from college. I remember thinking it was great then. 8-)
Highlights:
— They have Magner’s cider on tap. That’s pretty much my leading reason for coming here usually. I LOVE Magner’s and don’t see it much outside of London so it’s super exciting. Though they were out of it yesterday but it was St. Patrick’s Day when pubbing is at an all year high, so I understood (even though I was very disappointed).
— 2 levels: upstairs has pool table and mini bar (well not like the hotel room ones but about an ¹⁄₈ of a size smaller than the long one downstairs) and downstairs more room with tables and dance floor
— Mini balcony if you need some air
— They sometimes have live bands
— It contributes to the bar options in downtown Sunnyvale
Lowlights (my flip side to highlights):
— On a slow day, it’s pretty much just a mostly empty career drinkers spot
— During the day, it’s not so pleasant
— Sometimes those live bands are WAY too loud and not very good
— I don’t find the atmosphere to be anything special
I still come here since I live in Sunnyvale and will keep coming back for my cider. :-)

A bunch of old friends and a designated driver, does it get any better?
Yes and no. Great company and the food was pretty decent too (curry and chips, as if you had to guess). Place was fairly empty (on a Friday night in the heart of party season), which was great for us as we all just wanted to chat, but not so great if you’re looking for a happening place.
Beer selection was kind of blah — the Monterey Brit pubs typically have a better selection — but I found something to enjoy for the evening.
It turned out that later on Friday, the place becomes a DJ Dance Party, and as our table was apparently sitting on top of the dance floor, we had to move to a different table (we’d finished eating by this stage, so moving wasn’t too egregious), so that they could clear the dance floor to let the folks dance the night away.
So why three stars? — it loses one for the beer selection and loses another for DJ Dance Party. As we all left, the place was basically empty, especially the dance floor, there were no folks being denied a spot to get their groove on by our original presence.
There were also two guys manning the door, and a rope up outside to organize the crowd of invisible people waiting to get in and fill that dance floor.
I did think that maybe I’m just old and I’m leaving «early» and that within another hour, the place would be heaving, but as we got outside, we soon spied a line of people trying to get into a place across the road.
I felt better about myself as I hopped into the back of my ride and was driven out of the ‘vale.

Am I a dork for liking this place? I was there every Saturday night in my early twenties, it was the place to be. But now, not so much, but I like where it has gone.
If you want a kick-​back place where people won’t bug you, this is it. I feel like the mixed drinks are a little over priced, but I would rather pay the extra dollar and be able to sit and enjoy in a not so crowded place.
I was there last Saturday night from about 8:30 to 10 and there was 3 other people in there. Must get crowded after that?

I am impressed with how high they can fill my glass with pear cider. Seriously, the waitress brought me my drink and I couldn’t even lift it without spilling it, so I had to lean over and slurp it.
The waitress is also really good at remembering drink orders. We were also amused by her knowledge of balloons… she was blowing up balloons one evening and was really upset that they were not floating. Hmm. Good thing she does the waitressing skills well!
Anyhow, this has become our after-​work spot on Fridays. I like it because it is mellow and laid back. We can actually have conversations without shouting over loud music and it isn’t crowded. (I am not one for a packed-​like-​a-​sardine atmosphere.)
The only negatives are that they have fake poinsettias for decoration (we thought they were out for early X’mas decorations but now I wonder if they are there all the time?) and sometimes I can smell cigarette smoke.

In under a year I went from living in New York to spending Ffriday night drinking at Scruffy Murphys talking with a bunch of facebook peeps about their new aps.
In that former life I don’t think I would have ever set foot inside an Irish bar/​dance club unless the Steelers were playing or it was St. Patrick’s day. I also didn’t know what a facebook application was.
Oh how life has changed.
That said, Scruffy Murphys isn’t so bad… for Sunnyvale.

Went here on a Wednesday night around 9ish.
Walking in the ceiling are tall, almost a hall feeling. Plenty of tables, a long bar with lots of stools and an upstairs with a few pool tables.
The music was awful, some country with a few decent songs thrown in. Eh, hopefully it is better than that usually.
I walk up to the bar and ask if they have boddington’s — they do but only in a can. Then settle on a Harp. My friend settles on scotch– ewe. The bartender was very friendly and nice, it is always great when you find a good one!
Upstairs we wonder and chat for a while, rather undistrubed by anyone at all.
Overall, I liked the place, the staff, but certaintly not if I were looking for a happening place since it was sparsely crowded. It just had a good feel to it.

Back in my Betty days…(see my review on Toons) I used to bar hop with my best friend. Bars and clubs change all the time, but it’s good to see a few that have retained their class and cool.
You can’t go wrong with an Irish Pub. You know it’s going to be slightly dive-​y without being a dump. You know that it’s going to be fun without the frenetic craziness of a club. You know there’s going to be groups of people that are regulars who’ll amuse everyone. Best of all? FOOD!
I love the atmosphere and the staff rox!

Granted that i have not been to this bar in some 5 years, i love this place.
Dance floor, aged scotch, pool table, out door smoking. It’s a place of great memories for me. it’s one of those places that you can PROUDLY say: «it’s just a pub.»

My burger was cooked to order, and done just the right medium rare as a burger should be. The resulting texture and sensation of eating a freshly ground burger cooked this way can best be described as «chocolate», which in my opinion, rivals the burger at City Pub in Redwood City.
Friendly waitstaff. Because I was only there for lunch I’ll reserve that last star. Gotta go back for dinner to investigate further and have a beer with it!
Back from dinner — Same good service and comfortable atmosphere. I had the same juicy burger with a Fat Tire on tap. That combo is so good I don’t think I’ll ever need to try anything else on the menu there. If a good burger and beer is what you’re after — I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Trivia night: good. Food: not so good. This makes it a little silly for nondrinkers to compete at trivia night — what are you gonna use the pub credit for?
I believe the burger and steak fries were acceptable, but the rest, kind of meh. Stick to the fries. And beers.