Flanagan's Irish Pub — Restaurant in Grand Rapids

Get it together Flanagan's!! I had high hopes for this place after the new owner came along and remodeled the entire bar. Going by the curbside appearance and the inside of the bar alone, the place looks great! Sadly though, nothing else has changed. As far back as I can remember coming to this place (I'd say the first time was about 20 yrs ago) the service has been incredibly poor. Back in the mid-90's we would go to Flanagan's with a bunch of friends and drink/have fun. The place was always packed back then and it was usually a pretty rowdy/fun crowd. However, I was in my 20's back then and priorities have since changed. Over the years I stopped into Flanagan's now and then to grab a bite or a beer and I was just never impressed. For one thing, I don't understand why you'd pawn yourself off as an "Irish themed bar" only to play really bad 80's and 90's music ALL THE TIME. Another thing, the food has always been just "ok". The service was always incredibly bad. I went in there this past weekend after reading their Facebook event for "live Irish music" on Sun, July 2nd. Apparently they do this every Sun and I had been wanting to check it out for quite some time. I was also excited to check out their new menu and see the new decor. As I said, the decor looks great. The menu, I have no idea because I was never offered one. We walk into the place to hear bad 80's music once again...after waiting a good 15 min for a server to come to our table, someone finally arrived and I asked her if they were still doing live Irish music that day. According to their FB event, it should have been going on between 4-6pm. At this point it was 4:30pm. She told me "I don't know I just got here" then said "they could be running late, I'm sure one of them will come though"....okaaayyy..weird. But whatever, I figured I'd wait a bit, maybe grab a drink and some food. After perusing their cocktail menu while waiting for her to come to our table, I noticed that none of the drinks listed the ingredients. I felt that was a bit odd but I was also willing to roll with the punches. We ordered 2 waters, my husband ordered a beer and I ordered one of their "mystery" cocktails. Waited about 10 minutes more for her to come back with the drinks. Mind you there was absolutely no one in the bar aside from maybe 6 other people. The place was dead. She brings back the drinks, no waters, no dinner menus. My cocktail ended up being some blue concoction. I knew right away I didn't really want it, but before I could even ask to change it out to something else, she was gone again. We waited another 20 minutes (at this point it was after 5pm and we got there at 4:20) for her to return. Mind you I still had no water, and a drink that was untouched because I didn't want it and planned to send it back. Had I known there was Malibu/blue mixer in it, I never would've ordered it in the first place because I hate the stuff. But when a cocktail description just states "hints of coconut and orange" I have no idea what that means. When I asked the server what was in the drink, she replied "I really can't say"....seriously??? Needless to say when she finally did come back to the table, we asked for the check and I asked if I could return my drink. I will say to her credit she was gracious about that and did not include my drink on the bill. Of course we waited another 10 full minutes for her to return w/ the bill. All in all we were there for more than an hour, never got any water, never had a drink and never got a menu/ate any food. Nor did we hear any live Irish music. We ended up going to Licari's on Knapp NE and had a far, far better experience. I will never go back to Flanagan's. It's sad really. I have Irish heritage in my family and I would absolutely love a good Irish pub to go to in GR. I really hope the new owner reads some of these reviews and maybe overhauls his staff or something. Something...

Staff: 10/10. Awesome group of people who do what they can to give you the absolute best service possible while trying to keep the place from falling apart. Owners: 0/10. The definition of unprofessional. They've allowed this place to fall into disrepair and have done nothing to aid the staff in getting rid of the cockroach infestation that plagues this place. If we needed cleaning supplies they would just tell us to buy them from dollar general.. dollar general doesn't carry the special cleaners that we need to sanitize the bar. Not to mention the mice that live by the dish pit in the kitchen just behind the grease trap. Overall I wouldn't eat here if you value your health. And before you see any response from the owners claiming that they have a plan or are working on getting this issue under control. Just know I was here for 3 years and not once could you get the owners Ben or Martha Penrod to answer their phones to help us but they can sit on their phones all day watching us on the cameras. The only person from management that gets a pass is Little Ben considering he's always done what he could to help take care of us. You'd think after not making any money in years you'd actually listen to the staff and try to fix some things. Also a little fun fact: No one who works in the kitchen has a servsafe certification so you can only imagine how safe...

We went to flanagans today around 1pm. We walked in shocked at how many empty tables there were since art prize is going on we expected it to be packed. We got menus thrown at us about 5 minutes after we sat and the waitress said she’d be right back. About 10 minutes later an older couple came in and sat down and were immediately greeted and had their drink orders taken. We tried flagging any worker down and we’re ignored by all of them. I went to the bar and asked for a manager to come over. The owner made her way to our table and we told her we had at this point been here a half hour and been ignored to take care of others. She said she’d be right back with waters and a server. More time had passed and still nothing. We left at this point. As we walked out, about 3 other groups walked out due to lack of service as well. This was our first time there and we will quite obviously never be back. It’s a great location and who doesn’t love a good Irish pub, but this is not that. I hope for their sake they figure something out and are able to get their service in check or I don’t see them lasting much longer.

I would recommend going...