Washington Tavern — Restaurant in City of Albany

Below is the account of what happened on the evening of 5/30/2017 at The Washington Tavern.

I was standing near the edge of the bar where the small pathway for the bartenders to get through would be. When the bartender was leaving, and rounding that corner to go get things to stock the bar he yelled at me for being in his way and pushed me out of the way and said not to be there again. I did my best to cram myself on the edge of that corner as out of the way as I could be. When the bartender came back around the corner he shoved me out of the way again spilling my drink on myself and those around me. I yelled back “What the ** man!”. He started yelling back saying that I needed to leave and continued to yell back, “What did I do”. Which was what I continued to ask for the next sequence of events. What happened next was fast but as I can best describe it, I was picked up, shoved repeatedly until eventually being pushed out the front door to the pavement. At this point I stood up and continued to ask the bouncer what I had done and he said “the bartender said you needed to leave”. I continued to ask him what I had done that justified this. He told me I was going to need to leave the property otherwise he was going to call the police. I told him he could go ahead; I hadn’t done anything. He then began to get aggressive and yelling in my face until he eventually pushed me, I went to push him back, at which point he began punching me until I fell to the ground. As I laid there in fetal position he continued to throw punches. I eventually got dragged back up by someone walking by. I realized now that not only was my head throbbing and scuffed up but also my glasses had been broken. Lens had been knocked right out.

I contacted the police last night as this was happening and they arrived on the scene only to take down my information and then promptly encourage me to leave and go home.

After attempting to contact the bar this morning I was told that the bar owner was ‘out of town’ for the rest of the week, which seemed like a very strange coincidence. There was oddly no police report filed after contacting the Albany Police Department and attempting to obtain an account of the incident. After being transferred several times I was eventually instructed to contact the Albany City Court, who informed me that they had no details surrounding the incident and that I would need to contact the Albany Police Department to obtain transcript of the evening. I gave up.

I know alcohol can impair judgement, and maybe I did or said something that triggered them to react the way they did, as unjustified as it may be. But I also now know what it feels like to be beaten to the ground until a random stranger pulls the man off you, and let me tell you…it’s not a good feeling.

After talking with many friends and coworkers, it turns out I’m not the only one with a story like this. Do yourself a favor and bring your business somewhere where aggressive men won’t bully and beat their patrons...

I wanted this place to be good. It is close by, the outside is charming, and I'm Irish by descent and it's a non-chain Irish bar. I wanted this place to be good. It is not.

For the liquor they're slinging, they're charging a few bucks more than anybody with only average beer prices. Ok, cute place that's their perogative right? At least the place is clean and nice right? No. The place smells constantly of bleach, I've been there three times and gotten dirty glasses twice and the whole place feels kind of dingy despite its well appointed front.

So the food is good right? If by "good" you mean, "passes healthcode" then yeah, you're not going to poison yourself. If by "good" you mean "I'll happily pay $10+ a plate for it even though that's normal for a good burger these days" then ... no, not even vaguely.

So the service has to be stellar then! Nope, with a nearly empty 12-15 seater bar, three people behind the counter, and a close to empty restaurant you will wait 20 minutes to be served, a few to get your drink, 20 minutes between getting served again, and another 20 when you go to check out. This didn't happen once, this happened THREE TIMES. Meanwhile, little to no conversation from the bartender to give a reason for it.

So the sit down portion, those folks are better right? Absolutely not, when you go in to try and have a sit down (which most of the place is set up for) the servers are just as bad and act genuinely confused about a multitude of things.

At least it's IRISH right? It's an IRISH BAR? Well, they serve Guiness and Jameson and Powers alright. They serve fish and chips ... wait ... that's British more than Irish isn't it? Well they have a BRITISH EMPIRE flag hanging near the bar to top it all off!

So ... no. I gave this bar three chances. I was nice, I tipped 20%+ each time. I didn't give anyone the stink-eye, I was polite, and I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. They didn't poison me, they didn't swear at me, and they didn't try to scam me. But in terms of everything I expect from a place I'm paying for service as opposed to a man on the bus?...

I went with a group of 9 people and the hospitality for our table was very good. The staff was attentive and very helpful. We wanted beer, wings, pizza, mozzarella sticks and we wanted to try the Buffalo chicken egg rolls. We also were outside, which was very pleasant on a summer evening. The wings were classic - we had hot and medium, and decided the medium actually had more flavor, and the hot were plenty hot. The spinach specialty pizza was good! We added mushrooms, which were fresh, not canned. We also tried the sausage pizza, which was link sausage that was sliced, not sausage crumble. I think the crowd assessment was "meh", since there were slices left over. We took advantage of the special "free pitcher of beer with 10 wings" and when all was said and done, two large pizzas, three orders of wings, three pitchers of beer and an order of Mozz sticks and and order of egg rolls was $14.00 each. It was a great dinner party with ok food and good service in a nice spot for a VERY...