The Blarney Stone

This review is for dinner or early evening before the much younger night crowd rolls in.  Go there for the great choice of craft beers, at least 40 taps of good stuff.  Often have a few hard to find elsewhere like Mushy P and Flemish Monk sour.  Prices reasonable at $5-6.  Not sure?... you can even get a lil' sample.

And they always have had a beer menu available - sometimes have to ask, usually on ledge as walk in.

Always get the deep dish pizza as best anywhere.. anywhere.  And not expensive at all.  Sorry, can't recommend rest of menu, which they are upgrading to include the stupid little slider things that are everywhere now, as only get the pizza.  

Dining experience does depend a lot on which waitress you get.  Most are wonderful, a few not that great and can make the time there a downer.  Molly and Danielle are wonderful and add to pleasure of being there.  

We sit up a few steps by the fireplace near a really bad old TV.  Who cares, as nice atmosphere and other TV's to watch.  They can handle a group well in area near fireplace or larger group in a private room.  B-day party there went well as a kids can get up and move around.

Another area to left as come in w/ smaller tables allows younger kids to have fun, be a little louder w/out disturbing rest of the place.  

Now an enjoyable weekly routine... I'll think I'll have an Ol' Ras and a Robert the Bruce to start.

Two stars for the food, but "I've experienced better" sums up just about everything I could say about this place. Come in for lunch, but don't sit too close to the guy with the trach, it'll bum you out (and those things are a lot louder than you'd guess). Avert your eyes from the gambling machines, if that's at all possible, before you cry watching grandpa give away his life savings. Be sure your hat is on straight and your pants pulled up, bro. Don't want to be mistaken for a thug.

Yes they have craft beer, and lots of it. Wow. Anyone with a commercial account can have craft beer, you call the distributor and open your wallet. Do they care about craft beer? Reasonably enough, in that they want to sell it to you and will host events. Do they care about craft beer? Not enough to really keep the lines clean. I've tried most of the beers on tap elsewhere, and the few that I sampled here all tasted the same, a warning sign to my tastebuds.

They used to do growler carry outs. Dunno if that still happens, but if it does, might give 'em another star for being ballsy (it's illegal, considered "repackaging" by IL law).

They still get 4 stars because the food and beers are still great, but I came here the other nite and was quite shocked. They have a ton of beers on tap here and when I asked the bartender to see a beer menu, she told me they didn't have any. She pretty much said management is too cheap to print out 10 cent sheets of paper with their current beer list every week. Instead they have a chalk board with the beers listed. Problem was they had a huge projector screen pulled down to show college football that covered the entire board so that made the board pretty useless. Get your stuff together and print menus, I promise it's not that expensive.