The Blue Leprechaun — Restaurant in Ann Arbor

My son and I stopped in to grab a bite to eat. We both ordered different corned beef sandwiches. My son had ordered the larger sandwich, which was priced the same as what I had ordered. When they arrived, I was actually a bit shocked to see the size difference between the two. My sandwich only had a few slices of meat versus the absolutely mound on his. I wouldn't have cared much, except were the exact same price with no additional items for the smaller one to compensate. Had we not ordered the same thing I would likely had not noticed or even said anything, but the side by side comparison was hard to notice. The only other issue was the sheer amount of oil(butter?) that was in the sandwich was so overwhelming it was hard to eat. After it started getting a little cold, it was unappealing.

I spoke to the waitress, who asked the manager to come over regarding the issue. I wasn't upset, but genuinely curious as to how the restaurant could charge the same for these two hugely disproportionate items. I wanted them to be able to see the sandwich size difference, since a visual reference helped. From our seat, I could see the manager's reaction to the waitresses comments. The manager went back to the bar and finished her conversation with the people at the bar, cleaned up and after about 10 minutes came over to resolve the issue. The manager explained that while his order should have had double the size, it shouldn't have been this big of a difference. She removed one sandwich from the bill and did provide a gift certificate for future use, but this wasn't really what I was looking for. She didn't address the question, which is how the restaurant justifies charging the same amount for two different amounts of food? This was just sort of shrugged off. Whether it's double or triple the size, that's a huge difference that someone setting the two meals side by side will question. Maybe it wasn't originally supposed to be that way, and someone who doesn't know the food served or the restaurant created this menu and price. I will use the gift card provided to visit them in the future and see if they have resolved these...

I will never return to the Blue Leprechaun, nor would I recommend this bar to anyone who is looking to go out and have a fun time with good service and good food. I don't think the wait staff is to be blamed for this problem, but rather the very poor management, and in particular the manager named Victor who also claims to be a partner of the bar.

In short, we waited for 20 minutes for a waitress to come by and serve us, despite the fact that there was one serving the two tables beside us multiple times, and she even noticed that we hadn't been served. Finally, I told the manager that we were waiting 25 minutes without any service, and he said he's sorry, they're busy (though the place still had many open tables), and that he would send someone by. 15 minutes later, still no one, so we went to the bar to get our own drinks. At that point, I asked to speak with the manager again, and a very nice waitress offered us one round of drinks and told me that she'd let the manager know that I wished to speak with him. Another waitress finally started serving us about an hour and 15 minutes after we arrived - though grudgingly.

About two hours later, we were getting ready to leave, and the manager Victor still had not come out to speak with me. I went back to the kitchen, where he was cooking, and said I was very disappointed with the service - to which he rudely retorted that it was our fault that we received poor service.

Bottom line, no waitress knew exactly who had to wait on which table, and they were severely understaffed as it was the night of the Stanley Cup Finals. Essentially, the management lacks the foresight to staff appropriately, and they don't even have a table map dividing the work amongst the waitresses/waiters.

Very poor, don't go unless you enjoy...

12 years after graduating from UM, I found myself in Michigan again for a wedding. I had some extra time, so I decided to revisit the Ann Arbor campus, and after a long walk, I stopped into the Blue Leprechaun for a beer. I ordered a seasonal Sam Adams lager, which turned out to be cherry-flavored, served with a cherry, and disgusting.

The Blue Leprechaun is very much a college bar, with prices, specials, and selection geared towards cheap and rapid intoxication. As I sat there, I reflected that I was too young to go to bars for my first half of college, and too "mature" (and too poor/cheap) to go out drinking by the time I turned 21, so there was no nostalgia for me there.

A cute, friendly alumna a few years younger than me came up to the bar, sat next to me, ordered twelve shots for her and her group of friends, and started chatting me up. We made a big game of guessing how old each other were, we teased each other, we compared the sizes of our hands. She came back and forth from her table to the bar to talk to me several times, and as she got sloppier, her speech became less coherent, and her flirtation grew more aggressive.

I reflected that casual drunken liaisons weren't really a big nostalgic part of my college experience either. Eventually I ducked out when she wasn't looking. Sorry if you were expecting a...