Coach's Sport's Bar & Grille

The service in this place was absolutely horrendous.  I feel like we did not even have a waitress.  The food was good, and that is the only reason they are getting something better than a one star.  

The waitress refused to split our check up, and she automatically gave herself 20% gratuity which was ridiculous because she never spent any time waiting on us.  Not to mention, we were finished with our plates and meals, but they sat there in front of us for over 20 minutes because she never came back to the table to take them away!

Stay away from this place!! You will leave with a headache

As special as Jim Calhoun is to the lives of the UConn Husky faithful, his restaurant accross the street from the XL Center is... decidedly nothing special. It's not bad, it's not great. It's just kinda there.

I've been here a couple of times, usually at the request of others, and we do indeed have a good time. Kudos for the big TVs sprinkled everywhere.

Still, Coach's is searching for its lost identity in my humble opinion. It obviously wants to be a sports bar, but is presented as something supposedly more classy. The drinks are expensive. The menu is expensive, not to mention a bit foofy.

And we've had issues in the past with waitstaff mixups. We once had to wait 15 minutes for a waitress to arrive to work, only because we wanted to sit at a table with a better view of the televisions... I mean, really, you couldn't work around that slight logistical adjustment?

Average... decidedly average... Ergo, three stars.

I have no problem dining alone. In fact due to my business travel I find myself in this position quite frequently.

However, its usually more like "party for 1," as opposed to "entire restaurant for 1," which is the situation I encountered last night (Wed evening, 7:30ish).

Yes, literally, I was the only patron in the entire place.

I'd left my hotel thinking there'd be a decent crowd at Coach's to watch Carmello Anthony's debut in a Knicks jersey. Fail #1.

I also assumed that Coach's, a sports bar two hours north of NYC, would have bought the Knicks season package. They didn't. So I was unable to watch the the most intriguing Knicks game in roughly a decade. Fail #2.

My company's headquarters are in Hartford. Fail #3 (EPIC Fail).

I'm going to give Coach's 3 stars because the lack of crowd is more of a Hartford-specific thing, and not a venue thing. There's actually a nice bar with plenty of TVs, and geared towards a professional crowd (late 20s and up).

Plus, my steak dish with garlic mash and vegetable medley was surprisingly delicious and over-sized for the $16 I paid for it. Plus, Hugo the bartender was a good dude and made plenty of self-deprecating jokes to help pass the awkward emptiness.